Chung Kuo - The Marriage Of The Living Dark Part 65

Karr stared at her, then shook his head.

"Then let us prepare what we need and go," she said, magnificent at that moment, her golden eyes burning. "Let us finish what my husbands so gallantly began."

As the glide set down on the executive parking pad Li Yuan hurried the two women ahead of him out of the irising door, carrying the two cases himself. He had spoken to Cho Yi on the flight down, and though the markets had stabilised, there was a sense of fragility about affairs that seemed to bode ill. War had not broken out between America and China, but that was not to say that, later in the day, it wouldn't And then the s.p.a.ceports would be closed and there would be no chance at all to get away.

Which was why he was going now. Because, as a gambling man, he understood when to play a hunch. And his hunch was that the whole pack of cards was about to come tumbling down.

He had sent a message to Han Ch'in, telling him what he was doing, but making no reference to the girl and her mother. If Han came and joined him at Tongjiang, they would sort matters out between them then. But he had not wanted to have what might be their last conversation spoiled by bitter acrimony.And so you lied to Han. For the first time in your life ...

He did not like what he had done. In fact, his soul rebelled against it It seemed a crime against not only brotherhood but against the mother who had died bearing him.

As they hurried across the ap.r.o.n towards his s.h.i.+p, he noted the increased activity on all sides.

So I'm not the only one flaying a hunch.

s.h.i.+ps were rising up into the air even as they came to the foot of his own craft, the noise so loud that they drowned out his shouted instructions. He waited a moment, until the rumble of one particularly loud craft faded, then shouted again.

"Wait here! I've got to deactivate the alarm!"

They huddled together under the port wing of the craft as Li Yuan went round and, reaching up into the panel underneath the fuselage, punched in the code. Satisfied, he stepped out and, taking the controls from his pocket, pointed the light-pencil at the c.o.c.kpit Lights flashed. The machine came alive.

Li Yuan smiled and looked to the two women, about to tell them to come, across, then saw the expression on their faces. Fear. Sheer naked fear. He half turned, suddenly aware of someone just behind him. A small, neat-looking man with short black hair was standing there, holding a gun up at the level of his head.

"Li Yuan," DeVore said, smiling unpleasantly. "Long time no see."

The fighting had been hard and uncompromising - to the death - but now the s.h.i.+p was theirs.

"We're losing air," Li Kuei Jen said, from where she sat in the co-pilot's seat 'Til have to seal off all of the lower deck sections. Ifd take us far too long to search and find out where the leaks are."

"Okay," Emily said, wondering how much time they had before DeVore hit back, "but make sure we haven't left anyone down there." The trouble was, they were trapped up here. DeVore had the only shuttle, and that was down there, on the world below.

She turned, looking to Han Ch'in, who had just stepped onto the bridge. He seemed troubled.

"Han?"

Han Ch'in came across. "He's bad, Emily. I don't know whether he'll come through this time. The surgeon reckons there's extensive damage to the brain." Emily grimaced. "Is Hannah with him?"

Han Ch'in nodded.

"Okay. I'll finish here, then go down and see her."

"He saved us," Han said, matter-of-factly.

"Yes," she said. "Strange, huh? DeVore's prize pupil. And look how he turns out?"

Han laughed, then gave another sigh. 'Td kill that b.a.s.t.a.r.d if I got my hands on him."

Emily's smile was tinged with a faint irony. She looked down at her own burned hand. "That's if you can get your hands on him." "Do we know where we are yet?"

Emily nodded. "Thafs our home world, all right. Geographically. But from the transmissions we're tapping into I'd say that it has a history thaf s entirely different from our own."

"Meaning what?"

"Meaning that DeVore somehow s.h.i.+fted us into an alternate reality." Han Ch'in gave a laugh of disbelief. But then, seeing that Emily was being serious, he narrowed his eyes. "What?"

"That's right. If s even possible that there are alternate versions of ourselves down there."

Han Ch'in took that in. "So what are we going to do?"

"We wait There's nothing else we can do."

"Thafs not entirely true," Li Kuei Jen said, turning in her seat "We could destroy the morph s.h.i.+p."

"Destroy it?" Emily frowned. "Why?"

"Because if 11 send a signal back to him."Emily smiled, then nodded. "Okay. Lef s send the b.a.s.t.a.r.d a message!"

"Do I know you?" Li Yuan asked.

The first of them looked up from where he was busy binding the older woman's hands and grinned at Yuan. "Not in this world." The other, who had arrived just after they had climbed on board, now reappeared in the cabin's doorway. "Okay. We've clearance. If you're ready, Howard." "Ready and willing!" the first said cheerfully. Then, straightening up, he smiled at the three of them, who now sat in their chairs, trussed up tightly. "Everyone comfortable? Good. Because we're going on a little trip. A visit to an old friend. And I want you all to be on your best behaviour, because if you aren't, I might get a little angry. And when I get angry, I'm not a nice person to be with, understand?"

The two women nodded enthusiastically, but Li Yuan simply glared. The man was little more than a common bully. A thief who used violence to get his way. Even so, the situation was dangerous and he did not want to force the man's hand.

"Okay," the man went on, "now listen carefully. When we get closer to our destination, I want you, Li Yuan, to speak to our friend - his name is Joseph Josephs, by the way - and get us permission to land on the pad at the top of the building he rents."

Li Yuan glowered. "Why should I do that?"

"Because if you don't, your young friend here," and he indicated young Fei Yen, "will have a second mouth, slightly lower than her first" The gesture of a throat being slit was unmistakable. Li Yuan studied the man's eyes and saw that he meant it "Okay," he said. "But what if they say no?"

"They won't say no. And the reason they won't is because you'll tell Mister Josephs that you have information that is crucial to him. Information about myself."

"And why should that interest him?"

"Because, Mister Li, I'm behind all of this. I sent the market into free fall. I had President Newell a.s.sa.s.sinated. I pushed the world to the very brink of war." Yes, Li Yuan thought, staring back at him and knowing in that instant that the man, though psychotic, was telling the truth; you may have done all that, but if I'm right, our friend Josephs stopped you somehow. And now you want to get to him.

And he could prevent that But could he just sit by and watch the b.a.s.t.a.r.d cut her throat?

Li Yuan looked down. "Okay," he said. "Just tell me what I have to say."

The wheel of fire burned in the air above Kalevala; a ma.s.sive, turning hoop that lit the cratered surface of the ancient moon. Close by the two craft squatted like strange insects as the six besuited figures approached them. Watching from the window of his father's study, Sampsa s.h.i.+vered, wondering if he would ever see those six again.

They'll be okay, Tom said inside his head; but Sampsa could sense Tom's own uncertainty behind the words.

It seems harder to stand and watch than go oneself, he answered silently, speaking to Tom across the distance between Kalevala and their rooms in Fermi. You think we should have gone, then?

Sampsa nodded. He turned briefly, staring across at the two figures in the room behind him, stretched out in their coffins. He had always thought his fattier would outlive him. Why? Because Kim had seemed so invulnerable But time and circ.u.mstance had caught him like the rest of them, and now he lay there, those distinctive atoms that had made him what he was, slowly returning to the universal mix.

He felt Tom's unworded sympathy and smiled.

Turning back, he saw that they had arrived beside the craft and were climbing into the seats. The two machines had the look of fairground rides that have been dismantled and abandoned. They looked quite incapable of the task they would be asked to accomplish. But if his father had designed them, then they would work.

That's what I'll miss the most, he said to Tom; the magic of it.

Kim would have frowned to hear you call it that.

Yes, but what else was it?It dtdn 't ever seem like normal science.

And yet it worked.

Yes, Sampsa said, and sighed aloud. Out on the surface, the six were now strapped in. There was a moment's inactivity, and then the generators at the centre of each craft began to glow, as if a luminous electric snake was endlessly climbing a pulsing silver pole.

Slowly the two craft lifted, then turned towards the ma.s.sive, burning wheel. "Good luck!" he called quietly, hearing the echo of the words inside his head as Tom, too, said them.

Good luck ...

The explosion lit the late evening sky over Beijing. Flying back in from Tientsin, DeVore looked up, then s.h.i.+elded his eyes. "Howard! Get up here quickly!"

As the light faded, DeVore stepped into the cabin. "What is it?"

'The stars.h.i.+p. If s blown up!"

Taking a seat beside his twin, he started to tap out the code that would connect them to the stars.h.i.+p's bridge. There was a green glow on the panel.

"No, look ... if s still there"

"Then what?"

A face appeared on the screen above them. "Howard... oh, and Howard, too. How good to see you both!"

"Ascher!" DeVore said, snarling.

"Who?" his twin asked, glancing at him.

But DeVore's attention was fixed on the screen. Emily smiled. "You let me go once before, Howard. I thought you would have learned from that mistake. Never take prisoners, you told me once. Never. Well, you should have killed me while you could."

"I'll kill you yet."

"You can try, a.r.s.ehole."

'Til..."

The screen went dead.

DeVore sat back, then slammed his fists down on the console. "s.h.i.+t! f.u.c.king s.h.i.+t!"

"Problems?" his twin asked, a faint amus.e.m.e.nt on his lips.

"No," DeVore said distractedly. "No ..."

"No? Then what was that explosion?"

DeVore blinked. "The no-s.p.a.ce s.h.i.+p ..."

"So there's no way back now, eh?"

DeVore slowly shook his head.

"Ah well..." the other said, reaching out to pat his arm. "We'll just have to make do with f.u.c.king things up here!"

Emily sat back, chuckling to herself. "Did you see his face? Did you see it!"

Han Ch'in was grinning. "Looked like he'd eaten a whole orchard full of lemons!" "Maybe," Kuei Jen said, sounding a cautionary note, "but we're still limited as to our options. And if he gets hold of a ground-to-air missile, we're done for." "Then maybe we ought to move out of range," Emily said, sobered by that thought "Can we manoeuvre this thing?"

"Absolutely. Only how far away is safe? And if we do get back out of range, how is that going to help whaf s going on down there? No, Emily, we need to get back into the game somehow. We need some way of getting down there" "Could we land this thing?"

Kuei Jen shook her head. "Not a chance. It isn't designed for it By destroying all but one of the shuttles, DeVore made sure only he could come and go." "So we sit here?" Han Ch'in asked, disgruntled.

"Looks like it" his half-brother answered.

"Hmmm."

"What are you thinking?" Emily asked, seeing the frown of concentration on his face.

"Just that there have to be other craft that we could use as a shuttle."

"Maybe. But they're all earthside."

"Then maybe we could coax one of them up here. To help us out."

"How? We don't know anyone down there."

"Don't we? I thought Emily said just then that there are other versions of us down there."

"I said there might be."

"Well... why don't we appeal to some of them? Tap in to their media channels and see what happens. They certainly seemed interested enough in our appearance." Emily looked to Kuei Jen, who shrugged.

"If s worth a try."

"Then lefs do it," Emily said. "Anything's better than sitting on our hands up here!"

Kuei Jen grinned, then sat forward, meaning to make the connections, when the whole of the sky in front of the craft seemed to light up. A great hoop of burning light was rotating in the darkness between them and the planet below.

"Kuan Ym'