An Inch of Ashes (Chung Kuo)(23)

‘Now the other.'

He noted the slight hesitation in Liu Chang and pressed harder with the gun.

‘Do it!'

The pimp took the strip and placed it over the other girl's mouth. She too woke and, after a moment's struggle, lay still.

Good, Chen thought. Now to business.

‘You're wondering what I want, aren't you, Liu Chang?'

Liu Chang nodded, twice.

‘Yes. Well, it's simple. A girl of yours was killed here, a month or two ago. I'm sure you remember it. There was a young officer here when it happened. He thinks he did it. But you know better than that, don't you, Liu Chang? You know what really happened.'

Liu Chang looked down, then away; anything but meet Chen's gaze. He began to shake his head in denial, but Chen jabbed the gun hard against his head, drawing blood.

‘This is no fake I'm holding here, Liu Chang. You'll discover that if you try to lie to me. I know you set Lieutenant Haavikko up. I even know how. But I want to know the ph="otheer p wrecise details. And I want to know who gave the orders.'

Liu Chang looked down miserably. His heart was beating wildly now and the sweat was running from him. For a moment longer he hesitated, then he looked up again, meeting Chen's eyes.

‘Okay, Liu Chang. Speak. Tell me what happened.'

The pimp swallowed, then found his voice. ‘And if I tell you?'

‘Then you live. But only if you tell me everything.'

Liu Chang shuddered. ‘All right.' But from the way he glanced at the girls, Chen knew what he was thinking. If he lived, the girls would have to die. Because they had heard. And because Liu Chang could not risk them saying anything to anyone. In case it got back.

Only it doesn't matter, Chen thought, listening as the pimp began his tale; because you're dead already, Liu Chang. For what you did. And for what you would do, if I let you live.


Herrick's was forty li east of Liu Chang's, a tiny, crowded place at the very bottom of the City, below the Net.

It was less than an hour since Chen had come from the sing-song house; not time enough for anyone to have discovered Liu Chang's body, or for the girls to have undone their bonds. Nevertheless he moved quickly down the corridors  –  shabby, ill-lit alleyways that, even at this early hour, were busy  –  knowing that every minute brought closer the chance of Herrick being warned.

It had been two years since he had last been below the Net, but his early discomfort quickly passed, older habits taking over, changing the way he moved, the way he held himself. Down here he was kwai again, trusting to his instincts as kwai, and, as if sensing this, men moved back from him as he passed.

It was a maze, the regular patterning of the levels above broken up long ago. Makeshift barriers closed off corridors, marking out the territory of rival gangs, while elsewhere emergency doors had been removed and new corridors created through what had once been living quarters. To another it might have seemed utter confusion, but Chen had been born here. He knew it was a question of keeping a direction in your head, like a compass needle.

Even so, he felt appalled. The very smell of the place  –  the same wherever one went below the Net  –  brought back the nightmare of living here. He looked about him as he made his way through, horrified by the squalor, the ugliness of everything he saw, and wondered how he had stood it.

At the next intersection he drew in against the left-hand wall, peering round the corner into the corridor to his left. It was as Liu Chang had said. There, a little way along, a dragon had been painted on the wall in green. But it was not just any dragon: this dragon had a man's face; the thin, sallow face of a Hung Mao, the eyes intensely blue, the mouth thin-lipped and almost sneering.

If Liu Chang was right, Herrick would be there now, working. Like many below the Net, he was a night bird, keeping hours that the great City overhead thought unsociable. Here there were no curfews, no periods of darkness. Here it was always twilight, the corridors lit or unlit according to whether or not the local gang bosses had made deals with those Above who controlled the basic facilities like lighting, sanitation and water.

Such thoughts made him feel uneasy, working for the Seven, for it was they, his masters, who permitted the existence of this place. They who, through the accident of his birth here, had made him what he was  –  kwai, a hired knife, a killer. They had the wealth, the power, to change this place and make it habitable for those who wished it so, and yet they did nothing. Why? He took a deep breath, knowing the answer. Because withou woalloh t feel unt this at the bottom, nothing else worked. There had to be this place  –  this lawless pit  –  beneath it all. To keep those above in check. To curb their excesses. Or so they argued.

He set the thoughts aside. This now was not for the Seven. This was for Axel. And for himself. Karr's hunch had been right. If Ebert had been paying for Axel's debauchery, the chances were that he was behind the death of the girl. There were ways, Karr had said, of making a man think he'd done something he hadn't: ways of implanting false memories in the mind.

And there were places where one could buy such technology. Places like Herrick's.

Chen smiled. He was almost certain now that Karr was right. Liu Chang had said as much, but he had to be sure. Had to have evidence to convince Axel that he was innocent of the girl's murder.

Quickly, silently, he moved round the corner and down the corridor, stopping outside the door beside the dragon. At once a camera above the door turned, focusing on him.

There was a faint buzzing, then a voice  –  tinny and distorted  –  came from a speaker beside the camera.

‘What do you want?'

Chen looked up at the camera and made the hand sign Liu Chang had taught him. This, he knew, was the crucial moment. If Liu Chang had lied to him, or had given him a signal that would tip Herrick off...

There was a pause, then, ‘Who sent you?'

‘The pimp,' he said. ‘Liu Chang.'

Most of Herrick's business was with the Above. Illicit stuff. There were a thousand uses for Herrick's implants, but most would be used as they had on Haavikko  –  to leave a man vulnerable by making him believe he had done something he hadn't. In these days of response-testing and truth drugs it was the perfect way of setting a man up. The perfect tool for blackmail. Chen looked down, masking his inner anger, wondering how many innocent men had died or lost all they had because of Herrick's wizardry.

‘What's your name?'

‘Tong Chou,' he said, using the pseudonym he had used in the Plantation that time; knowing that if they checked the records they would find an entry there under that name and a face to match his face. Apparently they did, for there was a long pause before the door hissed open.

A small man  –  a Han  –  stood there in the hallway beyond the door. ‘Come in, Shih Tong. I'm sorry, but we have to be very careful who we deal with here. I am Ling Hen, Shih Herrick's assistant.' He smiled and gave a tiny bow. ‘Forgive me, but I must ask you to leave any weapons here, in the outer office.'

‘Of course,' Chen said, taking the big handgun from inside his jacket and handing it across. ‘You want to search me?'

Ling Hen hesitated a moment, then shook his head. ‘That will not be necessary. However, there is one other thing.'

Chen understood. Again, Karr had prepared him for this. He took out the three ten thousand yuan ‘chips' and offered them to the man.

Ling smiled, but shook his head. ‘No, Shih Tong. You hold on to those for the moment. I just wanted to be sure you understood our house rules. Liu Chang's briefed you fully, I see. We don't deal in credit. Payment's up front, but then delivery's fast. We guarantee a tailored implant  –  to your specifications  –  within three days.'

‘Three days?' Chen said. ‘I'd hoped...'

Ling lowered his head slightly. ‘Well... Come. Let's talk of such matters within. I'm sure we can come tor, et a ho>&l some kind of accommodation, neh, Shih Tong?'

Chen returned the man's bow, then followed him down the hallway to another door. A guard moved back, letting them pass, the door hissing open at their approach.

It was all very sophisticated. Herrick had taken great pains to make sure he was protected. But that was to be expected down here. It was a cut-throat world. He would have had to make deals with numerous petty bosses to get where he was today, and still there was no guarantee against the greed of the Triads. It paid to be paranoid below the Net.

They stepped through, into the cool semi-darkness of the inner sanctum. Here the only sound was the faint hum of the air-filters overhead. After the stench of the corridors, the clean, cool air was welcome. Chen took a deep breath, then looked about him at the banks of monitors that filled every wall of the huge, hexagonal room, impressed despite himself. The screens glowed with soft colours, displaying a thousand different images. He stared at those closest to him, trying to make some sense of the complex chains of symbols, then shrugged; it was an alien language, all this, yet he had a sense that these shapes  –  the spirals and branching trees, the clusters and irregular pyramids  –  had something to do with the complex chemistry of the human body.

He looked across at the central desk. A tall, angular-looking man was hunched over one of the control panels, perfectly still, attentive, a bulky wraparound making his head seem grotesquely huge.