An Inch of Ashes (Chung Kuo)(24)

Ling turned to him, his voice hushed. ‘Wait but a moment, Shih Tong. My master is just finishing something. Please, take a chair, he'll be with you in a while.'

Chen smiled, but made no move to sit, watching as Ling Hen went across to the figure at the control desk. If Karr was right, Herrick would have kept copies of all his jobs  –  as a precaution. But where? And where was the guardroom? Or had Herrick himself let them in?

He looked down momentarily, considering things. There were too many variables for his liking, but he had committed himself now. He would have to be audacious.

He looked up again and saw that Herrick had removed the wraparound and was staring across at him. In the light of the screens his face seemed gaunter, far more skeletal than in the dragon portrait on the wall outside.

‘Shih Tong...' Herrick said, coming across, his voice strong and rich, surprising Chen. He had expected something thin and high and spiderish. Likewise his handshake. Chen looked down at the hand that had grasped his own so firmly. It was a long, clever hand, like a larger version of his dead companion, Jyan's. He looked up and met Herrick's eyes, smiling at the recollection.

‘What is it?' Herrick asked, his hawk-like eyes amused.

‘Your hand,' Chen said. ‘It reminded me of a friend's hand.'

Herrick gave the slightest shrug. ‘I see.' He turned away, looking round him at the great nest of screens and machinery. ‘Well... you have a job for me, I understand. You know what I charge?'

‘Yes... A friend of mine came to you a few months back. It was a rather simple thing, I understand. I want something similar.'

Herrick looked back at him, then looked down. ‘A simple thing?' He laughed. ‘Nothing I do is simple, Shih Tong. That's why I charge so much. What I do is an art form. Few others can do it. They haven't the talent, or the technical ability. That's why people come here. People like you, Shih Tong.' He looked up again, meeting Chen's eyes, his own hard and cold. ‘So don't insult me, my friend.'

‘Forgive me,' loYour.&re so mChen said hastily, bowing his head. ‘I didn't mean to infer... Well, it's just that I'd heard...'

‘Heard what?' Herrick was staring away again, as if bored.

‘That you were capable of marvels.'

Herrick smiled. ‘That's so, Shih Tong. But even your "simple things" are beyond most men.' He sniffed, then nodded. ‘All right, then, tell me what it was this friend of yours had me do for him, and I'll tell you whether I can do "something similar".'

Chen smiled inwardly. Yes, he had Herrick's measure now. Knew his weak spot. Herrick was vain, over-proud of his abilities. Well, he could use that. Could play on it and make him talk.

‘As I understand it, my friend was having trouble with a soldier. A young lieutenant. He had been causing my friend a great deal of trouble, so, to shut him up, he had you make an implant of the man committing a murder. A young Hung Mao girl.'

Herrick was nodding. ‘Yes... Of course. I remember it. In a brothel, wasn't it? Yes, now I see the connection. Liu Chang. He made the introduction, didn't he?'

Chen felt himself go very still. So it wasn't Liu Chang who had come here in that instance. He had merely made the introduction. Then why hadn't he said?

‘So Captain Auden is a good friend of yours, Shih Tong?' Herrick said, looking at him again.

Auden...? Chen hesitated, then nodded. ‘Ten years now.'

Herrick's smile tightened into an expression of distaste. ‘How odd. I had the feeling he disliked Han. Still...'

‘Do you think I could see the earlier implant? He told me about it, but... well, I wanted to see whether it really was the kind of thing I wanted.'

Herrick screwed up his face. ‘It's very unusual, Shih Tong. I like to keep my customers' affairs discrete, you understand? It would be most upsetting if Captain Auden were to hear I had shown you the implant I designed for him.'

‘Of course.' Chen saw at once what he wanted and took one of the chips from his pocket. ‘Would this be guarantee enough of my silence, Shih Herrick?'

Herrick took the chip, examining it a moment beneath a nearby desk light, then turned back to Chen, smiling. ‘I think that should do, Shih Tong. I'll just find my copy of the implant.'

Herrick returned to the central desk and was busy a moment at the keyboard, then he returned, a thin film of transparent card held delicately between the fingers of his left hand.

‘Is that it?'

Herrick nodded. ‘This is just the analog copy. The visual element of it, anyway. The real thing is much more complex. An implant is far more than the simple visual component.' He laughed coldly, then moved past Chen, slipping the card into a slot beneath one of the empty screens. ‘If it were simply that it would hardly be convincing, would it?'

Chen shrugged, then turned in time to see the screen light up.

‘No,' Herrick continued. ‘That's the art of it, you see. To create the whole experience. To give the victim the feeling of having committed the act, whatever it is. The smell and taste and touch of it  –  the fear and the hatred and the sheer delight of doing something illicit.'

He laughed again, turning to glance at Chen, an unhealthy gleam in his eyes. ‘That's what fascinates me, really. What keeps me going. Not the money, but the challenge of tailoring the experience to the man. Take this Haavikko, fohen thenuend toucr instance. From what I was given on him it was very easy to construct something from his guilt, his sense of self-degradation. It was easy to convince him of his worthlessness  –  to make him believe he was capable of such an act. That, too, is part of my art, you see  –  to make such abnormal behaviour seem a coherent part of the victim's reality.'

Chen shuddered. Herrick spoke as if he had no conception of what he was doing. To him it was merely a challenge  –  a focus for his twisted genius. He lacked all feeling for the men whose lives he destroyed. The misery and pain he caused were, for him, merely a measure of his success. It was evil. Truly evil. Chen wanted to reach out and choke him to death, but first he had to get hold of the copy and get out with it.

An image began to form on the screen. The frozen image of a naked girl, sprawled on a bed, backing away, her face distorted with fear.

‘There's one thing I don't understand, Shih Herrick. My friend told me that Haavikko took a drink of some kind. A drug. But how was the implant put into his head? He's only a junior officer, so he isn't wired. How, then, was it done?'

Herrick laughed. ‘You think in such crude terms, Shih Tong. The implant isn't a physical thing  –  not in the sense that you mean. It's not like the card. That's only storage  –  a permanent record. No, the implant was the drug. A highly complex drug made up of a whole series of chemicals with different reaction times, designed to fire particular synapses in the brain itself  –  to create, if you like, a false landscape of experience. An animated landscape, complete with a predetermined sequence of events.'

Chen shook his head. ‘I don't see how.'

Herrick looked away past him, his eyes staring off into some imaginary distance. ‘That's because you don't understand the function of the brain. It's all chemicals and electrics, in essence. The whole of experience. It comes in at the nerve-ends and is translated into chemical and electrical reactions. I merely bypass those nerve-ends. What I create is a dream. But a dream more real, more vivid, than reality!'

Chen stared at him, momentarily frightened by the power of the man, then looked back at the screen. He didn't want to see the girl get killed. Instinctively, he reached across, ejecting the card, and slipped it into his pocket.

Herrick started forward. ‘What the fuck...?'

Chen grabbed Herrick by the neck, then drew the knife from his boot and held it against his throat.

‘I've heard enough, Shih Herrick. More than enough, if you must know. But now I've got what I came for, so I'll be going.'

Herrick swallowed uncomfortably. ‘You won't get out of here. I've a dozen guards...'

Chen pulled the knife towards him sharply, scoring the flesh beneath Herrick's chin. Herrick cried out and began to struggle, but Chen tightened his grip.

‘You'd better do as I say, Shih Herrick, and get me out of here. Or you're dead. And not pretend dead. Really dead. One more shit comment from you and I'll implant this knife in the back of your throat.'

Herrick's eyes searched the room, then looked back at Chen. ‘All right. But you'll have to let me give instructions to my men.'

Chen laughed. ‘Just tell them to open the doors and get out of the way.' He raised his voice, looking up at one of the security cameras. ‘You hear me, Shih Ling? If you want to see your boss again, do as I say. Any tricks and he's dead, and where will you be then? Runnererrrtab;llsed to some gang boss, dead in a year.'

He waited a moment, searching the walls for signs of some technological trickery. Then there was a hiss and a door on the far side of the room slid open.

He pressed harder with the knife. ‘Tell them I want to go out the way I came in, Shih Herrick. Tell them quickly, or you're dead.'

Herrick swallowed, then made a tiny movement of his head. ‘Do as he says.'

They moved out slowly into the corridor, Chen looking about him, prepared at any moment to thrust the knife deep into Herrick's throat.