Tom Aston - The Machine

‘Ready?’

She nodded.

Stone took a deep breath and picked up the phone. An American voice answered, but this time it was Semyonov. Which was a surprise, and not altogether a pleasant one. What had happened to Virginia? Was Semyonov now co-operating with Ekstrom just as the Swede had said he would, to get his precious Machine out of the hole? It looked like it.

‘Stone,’ said Semyonov’s flat New England voice. ‘Is that you? Are you there?’

‘It’s Stone. Can you wind us up?’

‘Sure.’

‘Give me two minutes,’ said Stone and hung up, his mind racing. He’d agreed with Ying Ning they’d squeeze into the cage together. It gave them both a chance at least. And two people in the cage would probably die sooner than one if it came to it.

Stone climbed in first and tried to hook his bad ankle behind him. It was excruciating again. Then it was Ying Ning’s turn to somehow squeeze in with him. In she came, slinky as ever, somehow fitting in around him. He thought of the time she’d sat athwart his lap to seduce him in Shanghai.

Stone remembered for a second of the prisoner of war stories he’d read as a child, where the prisoners stripped naked — to create the extra millimetres of space they needed to escape the prison camp through a tight bend in a culvert pipe. Was it weird to think like of being naked with Ying right now? He should have succumbed to Ying Ning's seduction in Shanghai. What the hell had he been thinking?

Stone and Ying Ning were locked into the cage, unmoving for about thirty seconds before the cage slid smoothly upwards and the utter darkness of the half-mile tube began. Stone was willing the cage up every single metre of its progress. He hoped Ying Ning was too, but it didn’t look like it. She was either meditating, or sleeping. More likely she was scared shitless, but she was incapable of showing any emotion. Any genuine emotion at any rate. The cage rattled slowly upwards, at what seemed like about half the speed it had done before. Was it the extra weight? Unlikely. Stone feared the worst.

Which was borne out after what Stone reckoned was about half the ascent. In fact, knowing Ekstrom it would halfway to the exact metre. Anyhow, the cage slowed to a crawl, then finally stopped altogether, with four hundred metres of solid rock above and below. Stone had half expected it, but had shut his mind to the possibility. Ekstrom was torturing them. He was going for mental torment, and Stone would be lying if he said it wasn’t working. Even Ying Ning’s eyes were screwed tight.

Ekstrom could have walked away off the site and left them stranded for a slow death. That might appeal to him. He would really get a hard on about that. But it wouldn’t work. If Ekstrom left them there stranded for a slow death, there was a decent chance they would be discovered and rescued. Stone weirdly found himself hoping that they would be stranded there for a few hours or days.

But such feelings pass, when you’re stuck in cage hundreds of metres into the rock. He tried to take refuge in analysis again,

Rationally, there were two things which could come next: either they would continue upwards, or the cage would go into freefall, and they would have a mercifully quick death as the cage hit the bottom. If the cage went upwards, it would probably stop again and again, to torment them.

Sure enough, after who knows how many minutes, the cage began to move slowly upward once more, resuming its painful crawl. Ying Ning’s eyes screwed even tighter. She wriggled imperceptibly for space. It was getting to her. There was a danger one of them was going to freak out in there and it could be her. Stone was almost glad of the exquisite pain in his ankle to take his mind off it.

The cage stopped again. Not for as long this time, but at least a few minutes. Ekstrom must find it less satisfying — he’d done it once, and anyway he couldn’t see what was happening. The cage started up again, and they climbed much quicker. Stone actually shook his head at the crass, twisted feelings which must be driving Ekstrom’s sadism. He actually knew what was going to happen next — not that it would help him or Ying Ning. Ekstrom actually wanted the pleasure of seeing them stuck in that cage. What that it? He wanted them to beg or something? The cage, after progressing so slowly, was now going up the tube like a rifle bullet, spinning and rattling. Ekstrom couldn’t wait for his fix of sadism. He was interested only in indulging his crude, atavistic urges.

Then, as Stone expected, the cage slowed up to a stop a few metres below the surface. Maybe ten metres. So it was still very dark. Both Stone and Ying Ning stared upwards through the three-way frame of the cage at the small disc of light ten metres above them, Stone full of anger and Ying Ning with her little pointed face: cute but expressionless, supplicating, like a fox staring upwards out of a snare. Ekstrom’s face was there in the distance, laughing wildly, his tongue sticking out and swirling lasciviously over his lips. Stone imagined the man might masturbate over such things.

Then Ekstrom’s face disappeared.

‘Go!’ rasped Stone.

Ying Ning slithered upwards in the cage, angled her shoulders between the bars of the frame and she was off. Fast. Out through the gap and climbing up the wire in the narrow shaft. Shit, she was fast, feet on the side of the tunnel and hands pistoning up on the wire.

There was a sudden sound of sawing, resonating deeply in the wire and the cage. What the fuck? Ekstrom was making to saw off the wire! It was pure theatre. He’d never cut through that steel wire. The grating continued, but Ying Ning was still climbing. She was going to get out.

Abruptly the sawing stopped and seconds later, the cage jerked upwards, accelerating up the shaft and out into the air. Still going. Stone’s cage shot up out of the shaft. It slammed into the winding wheel and swung Stone wildly round in the air, like a demented fairground ride, five metres above the ground. Stone scrabbled for the door latch of the cage, but was thrown back and forth. A loud, single gun shot below him.

Below him, Ying Ning had jumped aside as she came out of the shaft. She was on the ground making for the controls, where Semyonov was slumped lifeless. The Great Man had somehow made it to the control desk while Ekstrom was playing his sadistic games, and brought the cage sharply out of the hole. Saving Stone’s life.

Ekstrom had turned and shot Semyonov through the forehead for his troubles, using only one bullet to snuff out all two hundred IQ points. Now the Swede was lounging there, half-sitting on the control desk next to Semyonov’s inert bulk, smiling pityingly over his shoulder at Ying Ning. Unable to credit that the little woman would take him on, but happy to kill her anyway. Ekstrom leveled the gun at Ying Ning, grinning, just as he had done with Hooper.

Stone’s fingers groped blindly for the door latch down the outside of the swinging cage. The latch, where was the latch ?

‘Up here,’ Stone yelled, five metres above them. He meant to distract, but Ekstrom was too sharp. The Swede kept his eyes on Ying Ning. Cocked the handgun. Stone still couldn’t get his fingers on the latch.

Ying Ning ducked and scampered forward at Ekstrom. Stone’s fingers hit the latch and his body hurled itself from the cage. He landed on Ekstrom’s shoulder, putting him down. But the killer still had the gun. Ekstrom rose to one knee, swinging the weapon round at Stone.

But Stone had bought enough time. Ying Ning skipped side-on toward them and made a perfect, iron-hard heel kick to the side of Ekstrom’s head. A neck-breaker. Ekstrom toppled over like a sickening horse, blood coming from his mouth and ears.

Stone hobbled to his feet, and hopped over to where Semyonov’s high-tech wheelchair was on its side, and the smooth, white bulk of the alien intelligence was lying over the control desk. Stone checked his pulse, his breathing. No sign of that asthmatic wheezing anymore. But for Semyonov, Stone and Ying Ning would have died in that shaft. Semyonov had just given his life to save them. It was the final, human act of an alien intelligence.