Tom Aston - The Machine

At this point there was a small line drawing of China. A single red dot indicated a spot in the West of China, and there was a reference to the place in latitude and longitude.

Satellite measurements of gravity and magnetic fields show that something BIG is hiding in them thar hills. The Chinese have known about this for years, but Semyonov could resist it no longer. He sold up and beat a path over there. But the “Boys from Beijing” aren’t the type to give a sucker an even break. They took his cash, and he was given the “coal truck welcome” within minutes of clearing immigration.

Seems like the Chinese take a less broadminded view of illegal immigrants than our own authorities, even if he did arrive from Alpha Centauri.

‘It’s not like you to read this kind of crap,’ said Stone. ‘In fact it’s not like you to read very much at all,’ he said, glancing at the unread pile of worthy journals. He was busting on her, but he was still annoyed with Carslake for publicizing the info he’d sent him. But why was he surprised? Few people were as fastidious about publicity and self-promotion as Stone — even Doug Carslake.

‘OK. So you’re here for the same reason, Stone,’ said Carlisle. She was calm suddenly, satisfied now that she’d got something out of him. ‘You’ve come because you think the Machine is only a few hundred miles from here. Or maybe you’re just following me in case you get lucky. Whatever. You’re too late. You probably think I spend my days in the gym and the beauty parlor,’ she said, with some satisfaction. ‘And you’d be right. I put on my work clothes and do my thing for about twenty minutes a day. I spend five times that long on makeup and wardrobe. But unlike you, I do not crawl in the dirt looking for the stories. GNN has an army of guys doing that. I’m the one who tells the story to the world. That’s why a billion people know my face, and no one knows you.’

‘It’s why a billion people aspire to nothing more than repeating the crap you tell them on TV, so long as they retain veneer of bullshit. Ignorance is Joy, yeah? It’s like something out of fucking George Orwell.’

She sneered gorgeously. ‘Cut out the professor stuff, Stone. It doesn’t suit you. You’re just another person I paid on the off chance you’d dig up a story,’ she laughed. ‘You failed, but that’s life. The money I gave you back in Hong Kong wouldn’t keep me in pantyhose.’

Stone thought about what he’d seen with Oyang in Shanghai. Maybe not the right time to bring it up with Carlisle. Also, that crazy UFO blogger Carslake had dutifully repeated the location of the Machine Stone had sent him. Stone had given a wrong location, and Carslake had made it even more wrong. Now it was out by hundreds of kilometres. Carslake was just seeking publicity, but it also served Stone's purpose of smoking out the bigger players who were interested in the Machine. He never thought Carlisle would be among them.

Stone turned to go, but she caught him by the hand. Her trick again. ‘Just a second,’ she said. ‘I’ve just figured it out.’ Stone looked at her again, and she held his eyes this time, and came up very close, still holding his shirt, looking deep into his green eyes. Smiling and knowing all of a sudden. ‘I have an idea why you came here, Professor Stone. You didn’t think you were going to get anything out of me. And you can’t be that interested why I came to Sichuan. You can watch the TV for that.’

‘So what’s your theory, Miss Nancy Drew?’

‘You’re here because you want to be.’

‘Er… I guess that makes sense.’

She pulled him closer. ‘You’re here because you like me.’

This was getting interesting. ‘Now, Virginia. What could you possibly have that I would like?’ Apart from the body and the hair , he thought. And the brains? ‘You should know me better.’

‘Uh huh…’ she said, nodding semi-sarcastically, but still gazing into his eyes. ‘Well, maybe I know you better than you think. Something tells me you’ll turn up again. And again, until you get what you want.’ She had sidled up against him. He could smell her hair and the Chanel. You don’t get this on TV.

‘Don’t tell me. You’ll be ready for me next time,’ he said. ‘Perhaps I should take what I want now, Miss Carlisle. Save us both the trouble,’ he said. 'Unless you like the idea of again and again…'

‘Maybe,’ she said.

Stone had kind of expected something like this. Maybe not so soon, but he was OK with it. He was definitely OK with it. He glanced around her suite, then looked back and met her gaze with his cool grey eyes. Her eyes were kind of melting. He had a decision to make in the next two seconds. She already had her fingers on his shirt button. It wasn’t a difficult decision.

Stone could see Virginia’s back in the mirror behind her. His fingertips were on her waist beneath the silk blouse she had on.

He inhaled her hair close-up, ran a fingertip ran along her spine beneath the shirt. ‘You have fine vertebrae,’ he said.

‘That’s good, isn’t it?’ she said.

‘It’s good.’

She felt his fingers lightly on her sides. His thumbs on her back. ‘Mmm hmm,’ she said again, arching her back as he kissed her. She had a very stylish body, he thought, as he glanced at her as and her back in the mirror. You don’t get one of these in the make-up department. Her arms reached gracefully upward, like a cat stretching as Stone took the olive blouse by the hem. Over her head in one slow movement, sweeping the hair up with it for a moment, and then letting it fall again onto the bare skin of her back, like a curtain of blond silk.

— o0°0o-

Lying on Virginia Carlisle’s bed in the afternoon, Stone weirdly thought of Ying Ning and the poem again, on the plane. The Ballad of the Lovely Women . Du Fu, her Eighth Century intellectual rebel. The feminist, the anti-war guy. Du Fu loved those upper class women in spite of himself. “Peerless women, with the names of Northern lands”. Did she know something? On second thoughts, Ying Ning had probably never heard of a place called Carlisle.

Ying Ning was more his type in a way. Edgy, moody, difficult. Darkly attractive. Yet here he was with Virginia Carlisle. Funny that.

‘Don’t tell me,’ he said to Virginia. ‘A nap in the afternoon gives you added sparkle in front of the camera. Energy.’

‘Honey. I already got the sparkle,’ she said. ‘And it seems you have plenty of energy too, Stone. We must be good for each other.’ She winked.

Lovely manners, this Vassar girl. In many ways, the perfect hostess.

Thirty seconds after Stone left, Virginia Carlisle was on her cell phone. ‘Jim. There’s a guy just left my room. Tall. Kinda handsome, slim. Blondish hair — could use a cut. Have him followed by some of the Chinese guys when he leaves the hotel.’

Ying Ning had been followed before of course — often in fact. She sometimes wondered why she hadn’t been picked off by an over-enthusiastic young Communist cadre with a gun, given her notoriety. Still, China had laws. The Gong An would catch her and put her on trial one day. It wouldn't last long, but yes, she would get her day in court.

Today it was different. Usually they worked in teams of three — two men and one woman, all in their late twenties, all average-looking. Average height, average build, all fit from their training in the Gong An’s schools of martial arts. Today it was just one guy. He was much taller than average and easy to spot. She led him through the crowds into the Du Fu Park, where Sichuan’s humidity and greenery still held the upper hand over Chengdu’s concrete. The park was like a jungle, peppered with old-style Chinese pavilions, picturesque bridges and ponds of koi carp, their well-fed muzzles plopping lazily in and out of the water. There are worse places to be followed.