Tom Aston - The Machine

Stone shouted questions at him in his crude Chinese, but got nothing. ‘ Ni wei shenme? Shei yao mousha..?’ The bastard was gasping for air. Probably couldn’t understand Stone’s ragged Chinese anyhow. Stone dragged him over to the wall in frustration and slammed him up against it. Let’s see if he understood a blade in his throat.

Something stepped between them, shoved Stone backwards. Then fetched the gasping man a wide, swinging blow with the back of the hand. There was a torrent of words in violent Chinese, like a ten second interrogation. The voice was Ying Ning’s. The guy didn’t answer. He looked suddenly furious and threw a fist at her. Not so exhausted that he wanted to take this from a woman. Only to be kicked hard between his legs and take another contemptuous blow from the back of her hand.

Stone stood back to enjoy the show. Incensed at being struck by a woman, the guy lashed out again. Again, his blows were parried and his feet taken from under him by a very neat martial art move, so fast Stone could barely see it in the dark. Ying Ning was hot-shit at Kung Fu or whatever she was using. She stood over the man and spat hard in his face.

Perhaps the spitting and the back-handed slaps were part of her own brand of martial art. The art of Ying Ning. It was effective, anyway, Stone would give her that.

Ying Ning fired more questions at the man, but got no answers. After a minute or so she stood back, hand on jutting hip and spat copiously at the man’s face once more. Suddenly like the whore in the Snake Market again. She lit a cigarette and turned round to Stone.

‘Come, Rockhead,’ she said, and strolled back to the motor scooter, rolling with her trademark insolent swagger. She threw Stone her helmet to hold, gestured to him to get on the back. ‘We go to your apartment.’

‘Who was he?’ asked Stone.

‘Too scared to speak,’ she said over her shoulder. She was holding the cigarette, glowing red in the fingers of her throttle hand as she went along. It was an electric motor, almost silent, and they could speak easily. Finally she spoke, ‘He try to kill you, Rockhead?’

‘Yes.’

‘Maybe you should kill him. He was weak. Should be safer, I think.’

‘Maybe I don’t want to kill people,’ he said.

Stone’s mind went bizarrely to the therapist and his “rules for living” after leaving the army. Don’t kill any more people was one of his rules, though it wasn’t one the therapist was expecting.

Ying Ning snorted. ‘You killed plenty people, Rockhead,’ she said. ‘I see in your eyes. You should kill him, before he back next time and kill you.’

There was a lot more to this girl than over-active saliva glands and a talent for social networking.

At the apartment block, the night porter nodded politely to Stone, showing no surprise that he was returning with a woman. Like he’d shown no surprise when Stone chased an assassin from the building. On second thoughts it was understandable since the guy had given the assassin a key in the first place.

In the elevator Stone turned to Ying Ning.

‘Who is trying to kill us?’ asked Stone. ‘This wasn’t a professional. It wasn’t the Chinese government, and it wasn’t Special Circumstances this time. And yet he used the robot bug, just like the one in Hong Kong.’

Ying Ning shrugged. She had a look as if to say the threat of death for her was an every day thing, and she was OK with that. She'd take things as they came. Stone had seen that look before a few years ago. In the mirror.

‘When did you first kill someone?’ he asked.

‘I was seventeen, a factory girl,’ said Ying Ning. Didn’t miss a beat. 'My boss said I had to work late. Told me to come to his office, and then he raped me. I cried for days, but I had to work, and he was laughing. It took him a month to try it again. I killed him with a screwdriver.’

She had a look on her face as if to say andI never looked back…

— oO0Oo-

Stone checked the apartment again. He had no intention of going to sleep and risking another exotic adventure with a Japanese hornet. He took out the computer and placed it on the table. He’d use the time to figure out what Semyonov’s riddles and rhymes had meant. He had a sudden desire to research variations in the earth’s gravitational field on the Internet.

Only a couple of minutes later, the door opened from the bathroom and a figure emerged into the half-light. Stone continued at the computer, but felt the cat-like, velvet steps coming towards him. Ying Ning. She was standing behind him, silent.

‘Worried I’ll kick you out for snoring?’ he said, still looking at the screen. ‘Go ahead and get some sleep. You’ve had a long day following me around Shanghai. I promise I’ll stay handy with the fly swat.’

A slender arm appeared past his right shoulder. The long, black nail of Ying Ning’s index finger rested on the power button on the laptop and then pressed. The screen went black, and the same index finger had found its way under his shirt and was running up his breastbone.

‘You should take a break, Rockhead.’ She slid round to sit on his knee, pulling the shirt off over his head. Her thighs felt light on his. ‘You need to take it easy. Let me help you…’ Ying Ning’s fingers were gently massaging his neck, the nails trailing seductively over his shoulders. Her eyes looking into his. Her hand reached up to his hair. Her head leaned to one side, and she kissed him with melting lips.

She knew what she was doing, this girl. And Stone would be lying if he said he wasn’t tempted.

No woman enjoys rejection. Even if she is a manipulative person with unknown motives. Like Ying Ning. She especially dislikes it if she is a strong-willed person used to getting her own way. Like Ying Ning. Yet Ying Ning had accepted rejection from Stone as if he’d turned down a drink at the bar or a game of Scrabble, rather than the offer of sex.

Stone sat at the table explaining the scribbled note in Semyonov’s writing to Ying Ning. She was sceptical, unco-operative, difficult — but no more than usual. Stone was being careful because of what happened when they arrived back at the apartment. Maybe that was her plan.

Stone had a theory that the numbers near to 9.8 could only refer to the constant of gravity. They were variations in the earth’s gravity which could help him find the Machine, maybe even explain what the Machine was. ‘There are two questions here,’ Stone explained to Ying Ning. ‘First — where is this place? And second, why is the gravity field different at this one spot?’

Ying Ning was looking through maps of Western China online, trying not to look like she was listening. But she was listening. She was listening intently.

‘We think of the earth as a ball-shape, a sphere,’ said Stone. ‘The earth’s gravity should be the same at any point on the sphere. But it isn’t. Gravity varies slightly between the equator and the poles. That’s because the earth is not an exact sphere. It’s slightly fatter around the middle at the equator, and that means the force of gravity at the equator is a little stronger. The force is on average 9.8 metres per second per second, but at the equator it’s roughly 9.83, whereas at the poles it’s 9.79.’

Ying Ning was looking at a gravity map of the world, with a look as if to say, ‘You expect to believe this stuff.’ But she was listening intently. ‘What else causes the variation?’ she asked finally. ‘There are tiny variations all over this map.’

It was true. Stone had seen this the night before. There were areas of red all over the map where gravity is stronger, and blue where it’s weaker. The red ones were the mountain ranges where there was more “stuff” in the earth. It was very clear with the Andes mountains. Other places, typically the deep oceans, had lower gravity.