Limit

Xintiandi, Shanghai, China

Jericho woke up on his couch next to two bottles and a glass streaked with drying red wine, and two emptied packets of mango chips. For a moment he didn’t know where he was. He sat up, a process which needed two attempts and which raised the question of how the hell this sodden, heavy sponge had got inside his skull. Then he remembered his good fortune. At the same time he felt some indefinable sort of loss. There was something missing that had grown as familiar as his own heartbeat over the years.

Noise.

Never again would he wake up to the hammering sound of high-rises being built around him. Never again would six lanes of early morning traffic rattle his eardrums before the sun had even risen. From now on he was living in Xintiandi, where admittedly there were hordes of tourists, but you could cope perfectly well with them. Generally speaking they never arrived before ten o’clock in the morning and then in the late afternoon they retreated, bathed in sweat and with aching feet, back to their hotels, to gather the strength to go out again in the evening to the restaurants. In the evenings it was mostly Shanghaians in the district’s bistros, cafés and clubs, the boutiques and cinemas. In Jericho’s new home, you hardly felt either invasion. That was the advantage of a shikumen house. Outside someone could be driving herds of dinosaurs through the streets, but inside all was peace and quiet.

He rubbed his eyes. You couldn’t quite say that he lived here, not yet. There were still packed crates scattered through every room in the loft. At least he’d got as far as installing the new media terminal. Tu’s customer service team had delivered it the evening before, two cheery and helpful representatives hauling the thing upstairs for him and skilfully fitting it in with the decor so that it was hardly noticeable. Right after that, Jericho had had to set out for his surprise visit to Yoyo. It was only after he got back that he had got around to playing with his new toy, and celebrating his first night in Xintiandi while he did so. He’d gone to town on it, so the two empty bottles told him, though his only company had been Animal Ma Liping and the suffering children in their cages. He wondered whether Joanna would have liked this place, then decided not to even contemplate that.

It was good not to need anyone else.

He went to shower, and switched on his various appliances. Most of all he would have liked to unpack the rest of the crates, but since yesterday Tu Tian and Chen Hongbing had come to join all the other ghosts crowding the back of his mind, and they urged him on in his search for Yoyo. Dutifully, he decided to prioritise the case. He shaved, picked out a pair of light trousers and a shirt jacket, uploaded one of Tu’s programs to the datastick in his new hologoggles, and left the house.

He would spend the next hour with Yoyo.

Handily, one of the guided tours went through the French Concession, a colonial relic of the nineteenth century. It was right next door to Xintiandi, separated only by three levels of city highway. Once he had taken the underpass and come back up into the sunlight, he walked along the busy Fuxing Zhong Lu and activated the program’s speech recognition protocol.

‘Start,’ he said.

At first nothing happened. The world on the other side of the lens looked as it always had. People scurried or strolled about. Business types communed with their mobile phones, their eyes fixed on the displays and wireless earbuds firmly in place as they crossed the street, somehow managing not to get run over. Elegantly dressed women came in and out of the chic little boutiques around, chatting to one another or on their phones, while less well-dressed women thronged the Japanese or American department stores. Groups of tourists photographed what they imagined were authentic examples of colonial architecture. Cars, mini-vans and limousines filled the roads, and dozens of the identical CODs, cars on demand, squeezed in among them on the way up to the speedway. Electric scooters and hybrid cruisers wormed their way into gaps in the traffic that were filled before they had ever really opened. Bicycles with rattling mudguards raced futuristic antigrav skates. City buses and vans crept along the packed roads, a formation of police skymobiles overflew the Fuxing Zhong Lu, a little further on an ambulance took off, turned in the air and flew west. Gleaming private cars and sky-bikes shot across the sky, following aerial guidance beacons. Everything rumbled, squealed or honked, music blared, advertising slogans and news headlines splashed across the omnipresent video screens.

A quiet day in a calm neighbourhood.

The double T of Tu Technologies appeared in front of Jericho’s eyes. The system’s projection technology fooled his retina into thinking that the logo was floating, three-dimensional, above the ground several metres away. Then it vanished, and the computer in the arm of the specs projected Yoyo onto the Fuxing Zhong Lu.

It was astonishing.

Jericho had seen plenty of holographic projections in his time. The specs were one continuous curve of glass fibres, and they worked like a 3D cinema that you could carry around on your nose as you walked. The whole system had nothing in common with the early, bulky virtual reality viewscreens. Rather the computer added objects and people into the actual surroundings just by producing them on the glass lens. You could see someone who was not physically present. These could be real people or synthetic avatars, and the program could bring them closer or further away. In electronic environments, they could hardly be told apart from people who were actually there. The problems began out in the real world, when the computer had to combine the avatars’ movements and reactions with real-time events. They looked transparent against complex backdrops or if there was movement going on behind them. The illusion was broken completely if real people walked through the space where the avatar appeared to be. They simply walked straight through them. Your cheery chatty virtual pal paid no attention if, while they were talking, a truck ran them over. If you moved your head quickly, they would trail behind like ghosts. The system had to continuously scan and upload the real surroundings and synchronise them with the program to bring appearance and reality back together, and so far the attempt had seemed doomed to failure.

Yoyo, though, appeared one simulated metre away from Jericho, on the pavement, showing none of the telltale phantom characteristics of other avatars. She was wearing a close-fitting raspberry catsuit and discreet appliqués, her hair was plaited into a double ponytail and she was lightly made up.

‘Good morning, Mr Jericho!’ she said, smiling.

Pedestrians hurried past behind her. Yoyo blocked them from view. Nothing about her looked transparent, there were no fuzzy edges. She walked in front of him and looked straight into his eyes.

‘Shall we have a look at the French Concession?’ The arm of the specs played the sound of her voice into Jericho’s ear via the temporal bone.

‘A little louder,’ he said.

‘Of course,’ came Yoyo’s voice, a touch stronger now. ‘Shall we have a look at the French Concession? It’s perfect weather, not a cloud in the sky.’

Was that so? Jericho looked upwards. It was so.

‘That would be nice.’

‘My pleasure. My name’s Yoyo.’ She hesitated and gave him a look that mixed coquetry with shyness. ‘May I call you Owen?’

‘No problem.’

Fascinating. The program had automatically linked up with his ID code. It had recognised him, realised what time of day to use in saying hello, and taken a look at the weather at the same time. Already the team at Tu Technologies had topped everything that Jericho had seen in the field.

‘Come along,’ Yoyo said cheerfully.

Almost with relief, he realised that she no longer seemed so exquisitely beautiful as she had the day before. In flesh and blood, laughing, talking, gesticulating, the ethereal quality that he had thought he saw on Chen’s wobbly video was no longer there. What was left was still quite enough to make a pacemaker skip a beat.

Wait a moment. Flesh and blood?

Bits and bytes!

It really was astounding. The computer even calculated the correct angle for the shadow to fall as Yoyo walked in front of him. He no longer wondered how the program had done it but simply concentrated on her walk, her gestures, her movements. His guide turned left, took a place at his side and looked from him to the street and then back again.

‘The Si Nan Lu brings together several distinct architectural styles, including those of France, Germany and Spain. In 2018 the last of the original buildings were torn down, with a few exceptions, and then rebuilt. Using the original plans of course. Now everything is much more beautiful and even more authentic than it used to be.’ Yoyo smiled a Mona Lisa smile. ‘The first residents here included important functionaries of both the Nationalist and the Communist governments. Nobody could resist the quarter’s generous charms, everybody wanted to come to the Si Nan Lu. Even Zhou Enlai held court here for a while. This lovely three-storey garden villa on the left was his home. The style is generally called French, although in fact there are elements of Art Deco here as well, with Chinese influences. The villa is one of the very few buildings that has so far escaped the Party’s mania for renovation.’

Jericho was taken aback. How had that got past the censors?

Then he recalled that Tu had talked about a prototype. Meaning that the text would be modified later. He wondered whose idea this deviation had been. Had Tu thought up the joke, or had Yoyo suggested it to him?

‘Can we visit the villa?’ he asked.

‘We can go and have a look at it from inside,’ Yoyo confirmed. ‘The interior is largely untouched. Zhou lived a Spartan sort of life; he felt that it was his duty to the proletariat. Maybe too he simply didn’t want the Great Helmsman dropping in to rearrange the furniture.’

Jericho couldn’t help grinning.

‘I’d rather keep walking.’

‘Right you are, Owen. Let the past alone.’

Over the next few minutes Yoyo talked about their surroundings without barbed remarks. A couple of turnings off the street, they found themselves in a lively little alleyway full of cafés, galleries, ateliers and picturesque little shops selling artworks. Jericho came here often. He loved the quarter, with its wooden benches and palm trees, the neatly renovated shikumen houses with flowerpots in the window.

‘Until twenty years ago, Taikang Lu Art Street was an insider tip in the art scene,’ Yoyo explained. ‘In 1998 a former sweet factory was converted into the International Artists Factory. Advertising agencies and designers moved in, well-known artists opened their studios here, including big names like Huang Yongzheng, Er Dongqiang and Chen Yifei. Despite all that, for a long time the area was still overshadowed by Moganshan Lu north of the Suzhou Canal, where the official art scene met the underground and the avant-garde and they all dominated Shanghai’s art market together. It was only when the Taikang Art Foundation was built in 2015 that the centre of balance shifted. It’s the complex up there ahead. Locals call it the Jellyfish.’

Yoyo pointed to an enormous glass dome that looked astonishingly delicate and airy despite its massive size. It had been designed to mimic biological structures, along the lines of the larger Medusozoa.

‘What was here before?’ asked Jericho.

‘Originally Taikang Lu Art Street ended in a really lovely fish market. You could buy frogs and snakes here as well.’

‘And where did that go?’

‘The fish market was torn down. The Party has a giant airbrush which it can use to remove history. Now this is the Taikang Art Foundation.’

‘Can we visit the studios?’

‘We can visit the studios. Would you like to?’

Yoyo went ahead of him. Taikang Lu Art Street slowly filled up with tourists. It became crowded, but Yoyo looked real and solid as she wormed her way between passers-by. Truth be told, Jericho thought, she actually looked more real than some of the others.

He was brought up short.

Were his eyes playing tricks on him? He concentrated entirely on Yoyo. A group of Japanese tourists approached, shoulder to shoulder, on a collision course, blind to whoever might be coming the other way. He had noticed that the computer had Yoyo step aside whenever there was the chance, but the group blocked the street on both sides. All she could do was drop back before them, or fight her way past. The Japanese, like the Chinese, didn’t shrink from barging their way through if they needed to, so Jericho reckoned that if Yoyo were really here she would be using her elbows. Avatars had no elbows, though. Not the sort that others would feel in their ribs.

He watched curiously to see what would happen. A moment later she had passed the group, without it looking as though she had simply walked through. Rather, one of the Japanese seemed to have melted away for a moment to let her by.

Irked, Jericho took off the specs.

Nothing had changed except that Yoyo had vanished. He put them back on again, fought his way through the groups and saw Yoyo a little further on. Standing on the street. She looked across at him and waved.

‘What are you waiting for? Come on!’

Jericho took a few steps. Yoyo waited until he drew level with her, and then she set off. Incredible! How did the trick work? He would hardly be able to understand it without an explanation, so he concentrated on trying to catch the program out. From a purely factual perspective, the programmers had done good work. The tour was well researched and thoroughly plotted. So far, everything Yoyo had told him was right.

‘Yoyo—’ he began.

‘Yes?’ Her glance showed amiable interest.

‘How long have you had this job?’

‘This route is completely new,’ she answered evasively.

‘Not long, then?’

‘No.’

‘And what are you doing tonight?’

She stopped and gave him a smile, sweet as sugar.

‘Is that an offer?’

‘I’d like to invite you for a meal.’

‘Pardon me for refusing, but I only have a virtual stomach.’

‘Would you like to go dancing with me?’

‘I would very much like to.’

‘Great. Where shall we go?’

‘I said I would like to.’ She winked. ‘Sadly, I can’t.’

‘May I ask you something else?’

‘Go right ahead.’

‘Will you go to bed with me?’

She hesitated for a moment. The smile gave way to a look of mocking good humour.

‘You’d be disappointed.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I don’t actually exist.’

‘Get undressed, Yoyo.’

‘I could put something else on.’ The smile came back. ‘Would you like me to put something else on?’

‘I want to sleep with you.’

‘You’d be disappointed.’

‘I want to have sex with you.’

‘You’re on your own there, Owen.’

Aha.

This was definitely not the official version.

‘Can we visit the studios?’ he asked, repeating the earlier question.

‘We can visit the studios. Would you like to?’

‘Who programmed you, Yoyo?’

‘I was programmed by Tu Technologies.’

‘Are you a person?’

‘I’m a person.’

‘I hate you, Yoyo.’

‘I’m very sorry to hear that.’ She paused. ‘Would you like to continue the tour?’

‘You’re a silly, ugly goose.’

‘I do my best to please. Your tone is not appropriate.’

‘Pardon me.’

‘No need. It was probably my mistake.’

‘Slapper.’

‘Asshole.’

World Financial Center

‘Yoyo is pretty much in demand, isn’t she?’

Grand Cherokee gave Xin a knowing wink as his fingers swept across the smooth surface of the steering deck. One by one, he let the computer check the Silver Dragon’s systems. It promised to be a perfect day for a roller-coaster ride, sunny and clear, so that despite the omnipresent blanket of smog passengers would still be able to see such distant buildings as the Shanghai Regent or the Portman Ritz Carlton. The skyscraper façades reflected the early morning light. Tiny suns came and went on the bodywork of the skymobiles that swept in graceful curves above the Huangpu. Away from the shore, Shanghai blurred together into the vague suggestion of a city, but on the other side of the river the colonial relics of the Bund stood out all the more clearly in a brightly coloured row of palaces.

Grand Cherokee had met Xin in the Sky Lobby and chattered incessantly in the lift on the way up about what a signal honour it was to be allowed to enter the dragon’s lair right at this moment. For all that, he told Xin, the track itself wasn’t especially interesting, not considered as a roller-coaster as such: hardly any upside-down stretches, just one classic vertical loop with a heartline roll either side, well, that meant that there were three zero-g points all in all, but basically it was nothing special. Rather, he went on as they walked through the empty glass corridor, the thrill of the thing lay in its speed, combined with the fact of zooming about half a kilometre above the ground. As he opened up the control room and they went in, he kept up his monologue: this masterpiece of adrenalin was one of a kind, worldwide, controlling the ride needed good nerves, just like riding in it, you needed to be a strong personality to tame the dragon.

‘Interesting,’ Xin had said. ‘Show me then. What exactly do you have to do?’

This was when Grand Cherokee stopped for a moment. He was accustomed to seeing reality through the distorting mirror of his own inflated ego, but this last remark got through even to him, and he was suddenly rattled. In fact controlling the ride was perfectly straightforward. Any idiot capable of touching three control boxes on a screen could do it. He stammered out something about irony and hyperbole, and showed Xin the controls, telling him that all he really needed to do was clear the safety checks, which meant knowing the security codes.

‘There are three of them,’ he told Xin. ‘I just put them in one after another – like that – then number two – three – done. System’s ready. So now I activate this field on the top right, which unlocks the carriages, this box below starts the catapult, and the program does the rest. This one underneath is the emergency stop. We’ve never needed it though.’

‘And what’s this for?’ Xin pointed to a menu along the upper edge of the screen.

‘That’s the check assistant. Before I set the ride in motion, I let the computer run through a set of parameters. Mechanical systems, programs.’

‘Simple really.’

‘Simple, but clever.’

‘Almost a pity that we won’t have the chance for a ride, but my time is short. I’d like to—’

‘In principle, you could climb in,’ said Grand Cherokee and began the check. ‘I’ll give you such a ride that you won’t know which way to stand up when you climb out. I’d have to register it as an unscheduled ride though.’

‘Don’t bother. Let’s talk about Yoyo.’

This was the point when Grand Cherokee grinned at his visitor and made the crack about Yoyo being pretty much in demand. He wanted to add something, but stopped. Something had changed in the other man’s face. There was curiosity there now, not just about where Yoyo might be but about Grand Cherokee himself.

‘Who else is interested in her?’ Xin asked.

‘No idea.’ Grand Cherokee shrugged. Should he play his trump card already? He had wanted to use the detective to put a little pressure on Xin, but perhaps it was better to play him on the line for a while. ‘That’s what you said.’

‘Said what?’

‘Yoyo needed protection because someone was after her.’

‘True.’ Xin inspected the fingernails on his right hand. Grand Cherokee noticed that they were perfectly manicured, all filed down to exactly the same length, the crescents the colour of mother-of-pearl. ‘And you were going to find things out, Wang. Telephone some people, and so on. Bring me to Yoyo. As I remember it, money changed hands. So what do you have for me?’

Pompous arsehole, thought Grand Cherokee. In fact he’d thought up a story the night before. It was all based on a remark that Yoyo had made about the party lifestyle getting on her nerves, that she wanted to go to Hangzhou and the West Lake for a weekend. His grandmother had always spouted clichés and proverbs, and wasn’t one of them that Hangzhou was the image of Heaven here on Earth? Grand Cherokee had decided that that was where Yoyo could be found, in some romantic little hotel on the West Lake, and the hotel might be called—

Wait though, he shouldn’t be too specific. There were all sorts of places to stay right around the lake shores, for every sort of price. Just to be sure, he had done an internet search and found several named after trees or flowers. He liked that. Yoyo’s retreat would be a hotel with a flowery name! Something with a flower, but sadly his contact (who didn’t exist anyway) couldn’t quite remember what. He hadn’t been able to find out more than that for the money, but it was something, wasn’t it? Grand Cherokee had laughed out loud at the thought of Xin travelling 170 kilometres to the West Lake to check out every hotel with a botanical name, especially since he planned to send the detective out to the same place. Those two fools wouldn’t notice, but they would constantly be crossing paths. For a bit more money, he could also mention the motorbike mob, a completely different lead, since after all the City Demons had little or nothing to do with West Lake. On the other hand, a motorbike trip out to the countryside? Why not?

Xin was lost in contemplation of his fingernails. Grand Cherokee considered. Soon enough he’d be spinning the same line to Jericho, through there he ran the risk that the detective might be less generous.

And there was still a chance.

‘You know,’ he said slowly and as neutrally as he could manage, ‘I’ve been thinking about it.’ He finished the check for the Silver Dragon and looked at Xin. ‘And I think you could pay a bit more to find out where Yoyo is.’

Xin didn’t look especially surprised. Instead he looked exhausted, as though he’d been waiting for the penny to drop.

‘How much?’ he asked.

‘Ten times.’

Shocked at his own daring, Grand Cherokee felt his heart beat faster. If Xin swallowed that—

Wait a moment. It could get even better!

‘Ten times,’ he repeated, ‘and another meeting.’

Xin’s expression turned to stone.

‘What’s this about?’

What’s it about? thought Grand Cherokee. Simple enough, you varnished monkey. I’ll take the money and run off to Jericho, and give him a choice. Either he tops your offer and gets the exclusive story, or he turns me down, and you get it. But not until I’ve spoken to Jericho. And if Jericho coughs up twenty times as much, then we’ll try you for thirty times.

‘Yes or no?’ he asked.

The corners of Xin’s mouth lifted, almost imperceptibly. ‘Which movie have you got this from, Wang?’

‘I don’t need to watch any movies. You’re after Yoyo, I couldn’t care less why. I find it much more interesting that the cops want something from her as well. Conclusion: you’re obviously not a cop. Meaning that you can’t do anything to me. You have to take what you can get, and’ – he bowed, and bared his teeth – ‘when you can get it.’

Xin looked around, his smile frozen. Then he glanced at the control panel.

‘Do you know what I hate?’ he asked.

‘Me?’ said Grand Cherokee, laughing.

‘You’re vermin, Wang, hatred is too good for you. No, I hate spots. Those greasy fingers of yours have left nasty smears all over the display.’

‘So?’

‘Clean them up.’

‘Do what?’

‘Clean up those greasy smears.’

‘Listen here, you designer-suited piece of shit, what exactly do you think—’

Something odd happened then, something Grand Cherokee had never experienced before. It was quick as lightning, and when it was over, he was lying on the floor in front of the control panel, and his nose felt as though a grenade had exploded in it. Flashes of colour sparked in front of his eyes.

‘Your face wouldn’t do very well to keep things clean,’ said Xin, then reached down and pulled Grand Cherokee to his feet like a puppet. ‘Oh, you look dreadful. What happened to your nose? Shall we talk?’

Grand Cherokee staggered and put a hand on the console to steady himself. He felt his face with the other hand. His forehead appliqué fell into the palm of his hand. He looked at Xin, nonplussed.

Then he swung at him, enraged.

Xin languidly poked him in the sternum.

It was as though somebody had unhooked all systems in the lower half of Grand Cherokee’s body. He fell to one knee while a gout of pain shot through his chest. His mouth opened, and he made choking sounds. Xin squatted down and supported him with his right arm before he could collapse.

‘It’ll pass soon,’ he said. ‘I know, for a while you think you’ll never be able to talk again. Wrong though. Generally speaking, people actually find it easier to talk after they’ve had that done to them. What did you want to say?’

Grand Cherokee gasped. His lips formed a word.

‘Yoyo?’ Xin nodded. ‘A good start. Try your best, Wang, and above all’ – he took him under the arms and heaved him up – ‘get to your feet.’

‘Yoyo is—’ panted Grand Cherokee.

‘Where?’

‘In Hangzhou.’

‘Hangzhou?’ Xin raised his eyebrows. ‘Mercy me. Do you actually know something? Where in Hangzhou?’

‘In – a hotel.’

‘Name?’

‘No idea.’ Grand Cherokee sucked in greedy lungfuls of air. Xin was right. The pain passed, but he didn’t feel in the least bit better for it. ‘Something with flowers.’

‘Don’t make things so complicated,’ Xin said mildly. ‘Something with flowers is about as specific as somewhere in China.’

‘Might have been something with trees, even,’ Grand Cherokee yelped. ‘My informant said flowers.’

‘In Hangzhou?’

‘On the West Lake.’

‘Where on the West Lake? On the city side?’

‘Yes, yes!’

‘On the western shore then?’

‘That’s it.’

‘Aha! Maybe near the Su dam?’

‘The – I think so.’ Grand Cherokee felt a glimmer of hope. ‘Probably Yes, that’s what he said.’

‘But the city is on the eastern shore.’

‘P-perhaps I didn’t quite hear.’ The glimmer died away.

‘But near the Su dam? Or the Bai dam?

Bai dam? Su dam? It was becoming ever more complicated. Where were these dams anyway? Grand Cherokee hadn’t thought about it all that much. Who the hell expected all these questions?

‘I don’t know,’ he said feebly.

‘I thought your informant—’

‘I just don’t know!’

Xin looked at him reproachfully. Then he jabbed his fingers into Grand Cherokee’s kidney region.

The effect was indescribable. Grand Cherokee opened and closed his mouth rapidly like a fish snatched from the water, while his eyes opened wide. Xin held him in an iron grip to stop him from collapsing again. For all that the surveillance cameras could see, they were standing side by side like old friends.

‘So?’

‘I don’t know,’ Grand Cherokee whimpered, while part of him detachedly observed that pain was orange. ‘Really, I don’t.’

‘What do you know, if anything?’

Grand Cherokee lifted his eyes, trembling. There was no mistaking what he could read in Xin’s eyes about what would happen to him if he lied one more time.

‘Nothing,’ he whispered.

Xin laughed contemptuously, shook his head and let go of him.

‘Do you want the money back?’ Grand Cherokee mumbled, and bent double with the memory of the pain that had shaken his body.

Xin pursed his lips. He looked out at the city shimmering below. ‘I keep remembering something you said,’ he remarked.

Grand Cherokee gaped at him and waited. The part of him that had floated off detached, pointed out that in fifteen minutes the first visitors would be let in, that it would probably be full because the weather was so exceptionally fine.

‘You said that Yoyo is pretty much in demand. I believe those were the words you used, am I right?’

Still fifteen minutes.

‘You can make up for lost ground, Wang. Tell the truth this time. Who else was asking about her?’

‘A detective,’ muttered Grand Cherokee.

‘Very interesting. When was this?’

‘Last night. I showed him Yoyo’s room. He asked the same questions as you.’

‘And you gave the same answers. That you’d find something out, but that it would cost a little.’

Grand Cherokee nodded, downcast. If Xin went to Owen Jericho with this information, then he could kiss goodbye to that money. Hurrying to carry out the next order before it was given, he took out Jericho’s card and handed it to Xin, who took it with both hands, looked at it curiously and put it away.

‘Anything else?’

Of course. He could have told Xin about the motorbike gang. The one trail that might actually lead to Yoyo. But he wouldn’t do this fucker any such favour.

‘Fuck you,’ he said instead.

‘Meaning no.’

Xin looked thoughtful. He stepped out of the open door to the control room, to the area between the turnstile and the platform. He paid no further attention to Grand Cherokee, as though he no longer existed. Which would probably be the best thing right now. Just stop existing until the bastard had left this floor. Not give a peep, become about as big as a mouse, less than a fingerprint on a computer display. All this was as clear as anything ever had been, to the detached part of Grand Cherokee Wang, and he spoke a well-meaning word of warning which the other Wang, the Wang blinded by hatred, ignored. Instead he shuffled after Xin and thought about how he could recover his dignity, the dignity of the man who guarded the dragon, which right now was in a fairly shabby state. You vicious arsehole? Xin probably knew that he was vicious, and arsehole was too small a word. Grand Cherokee reckoned that insults probably slid straight off Xin anyway.

How could he get at the fucker?

And while the detached part of Grand Cherokee was looking for a mousehole to creep into, he heard Grand Cherokee the big-mouth say:

‘Just don’t think you’re free and clear, you moron!’

Xin, who was just going through the turnstile, stopped.

‘First thing I’ll do is call Jericho,’ yelled Grand Cherokee. ‘Then the cops, right after that. Who’s going to be more interested, huh? You make sure you get away from here, out of Shanghai if you can, out of China. Off to the Moon, perhaps they’ve got something for you up there, ’cos down here I’m going to put the boot into you, you can count on that!’

Xin turned around slowly.

‘You silly fool,’ he said. It sounded almost sympathetic.

‘I’ll—’ Grand Cherokee gulped, and then it dawned on him that he had probably just made the biggest mistake of his life. Xin walked nonchalantly towards him. He didn’t look like someone who planned to do much more talking.

Grand Cherokee scuttled backwards.

‘This area is under video surveillance,’ he said, trying to put a warning note in his voice; it slipped into panic halfway through.

‘You’re right,’ said Xin, nodding. ‘I should hurry.’

Grand Cherokee’s stomach cramped. He jumped backwards and tried to get a grip on the situation. His foe was standing between him and the passage through to the glass corridor. There was no way past him, and right behind Grand Cherokee was the edge of the platform with the roller-coaster train resting on its rails on the other side. The area where the passengers got on and off was closed off with a transparent wall that curved round underneath, and to the right and left the tracks curved off into empty space.

The look in Xin’s eyes left no room for misunderstanding.

With one leap, Grand Cherokee was in the middle car. He glanced towards the head of the dragon. Each car was nothing more than a platform with seats mounted on it, the back of each seat looking like a huge scale or a wing, which made the vehicle vaguely resemble a silver reptile. The only extra detail was up at the front: a projection, something like a long, narrow skull. There was a separate steering system up there which could be used to move the whole train a short distance, in emergencies. Not through the loops, but along the straight sections of track.

Where the track passed around the building’s side pillars, just before it began to climb, there was a short bridge from the track into the building, one on each side. Inside the pillars was plant and electronics, and storage rooms. The steel bridges led right into the glass façades of the pillars, and if necessary they could be used to evacuate the train if for some reason it couldn’t get to the boarding platform. The bridges led to a separate staircase and lift, not reachable from the glass corridor.

Grand Cherokee ran through all of this in his head as he crouched there, which was his second mistake; he was losing time, instead of acting right away. Xin pounced and landed between him and the dragon’s head. There were only two rows of seats between them, and Grand Cherokee realised that he had thrown away his chance of reaching the steering unit. He considered jumping back onto the platform, but it was clear that Xin would be right behind him if he did. Probably he wouldn’t even make it as far as the turnstile.

Xin came closer. He clambered through the rows of seating so fast that Grand Cherokee stopped thinking and fled to the end of the train. The glass barrier for the boarding platform ended a little way beyond. Here, the track swung out from the front of the building, curved around a good distance and then about twenty-five metres on, turned the corner that led behind the pillar.

‘Very stupid idea,’ said Xin, as he approached.

Grand Cherokee stared out at the track, then back to Xin. He had long ago realised that he had gone too far, and the guy meant to kill him. Damn Yoyo! What a dumb bitch, getting him into this kind of trouble.

Wrong, the detached part of Grand Cherokee told him, you’re dumb yourself. Ever thought you could climb through thin air? And when big-mouth Wang had no reply, the calm, distant voice added: You do have one great advantage. You don’t suffer from vertigo.

Does Xin?

Knowing that the enormous height did nothing to him suddenly freed Grand Cherokee’s limbs of their paralysis. His mind made up, he put one foot on the track, took one step, another. Half a kilometre below him he saw the green forecourt in front of the World Financial Center, criss-crossed with footpaths. Cars moved like ants along the two levels of the Shiji Dadao, running from the river to the Pudong hinterland. The sun burned down on him through the enormous hole in the tower as he left the protection of the glassed-in boarding platform and went along the track, one metre at a time. Gusts of warm wind tugged at him. To his left, the glass façade of the tower grew further away with every step, or more exactly, he was getting further away from it. To the right he could see the roof of the Jin Mao Tower. The business high-rises of Pudong grouped themselves around and behind it, with the shimmering curve of Huangpu, and Shanghai stretching all around, unimaginably vast.

His heart beating wildly, he stopped and turned his head. Xin was standing at the end of the train, staring at him.

He wasn’t following.

The arsehole didn’t have the guts!

Grand Cherokee took another step and slipped between two of the spars.

His heart stopped beating. Like a cat falling, he flung out all four limbs, grabbed hold of the rail and for a hideous moment swung there above the abyss before he managed, using all his strength, to heave himself up. Panting like an engine, he tried to stand. He was halfway between the boarding platform and the curve of the corner, and the track was beginning to tilt. The wind fluttered his coat, which was turning out to be the least practical garment imaginable for a stroll at five hundred metres.

Gasping, he looked round again.

Xin had vanished.

Onward, he thought. How far to the bridge now? Twenty-five metres, thirty? At the most. Get moving! Make sure that you round that corner. Get to safety. Who cares what Xin is doing?

He took heart and walked on, arms stretched for balance, master of himself once more, when he heard the noise.

The noise.

It was something between a rattle and a hum, following a heavy metallic clunk. It drew away in the other direction. It froze the blood in Grand Cherokee’s veins, although it was a noise he knew well, a noise he heard every day he spent up here at work.

Xin had woken the Dragon.

He had started the ride!

A scream of fear broke out of him, that was torn away by the warm gusts and scattered over Pudong. Whimpering, he clambered on as fast as he could. His ears told him that the train had just passed the northern pillar, then he saw it climbing the slope through the great gap. At the moment the dragon was still moving slowly, but once it got to the roof it would pick up speed, and then—

He crawled forward like a mad thing in the shadow of the southern pillar. The tilt on the tracks was becoming more pronounced, so that he had no choice but to move ahead on all fours.

Too slow. Too slow!

The fear will burst your heart, thought the detached part of Grand Cherokee. Try cursing.

It helped.

He screamed hell and damnation into the deep blue sky, his voice cracking, grabbed hold of the warm metal of the track and hopped rather than crept forward. The rails had begun to thrum. Twice he nearly lost his balance and fell off the curve, but each time he caught himself and worked his way stubbornly onward. High above him a hollow whistling sound signalled that the carriages had reached their highest point and were now on the flat stretch up above, and he still had not reached his goal. Trying to catch sight of the dragon, he saw only himself reflected in the mirrored glass on the pillar façade, somehow looking damn good, like a movie hero. All in all he should have been having the time of his life here, but there was the nagging question of the happy ending, the fact that the dragon had just passed the catapult.

The rails began to vibrate mightily. Grand Cherokee clambered onward, choking out the word ‘Please!’ over and over like a mantra, ‘Please, please, please—’ in sync with the thrumming of the rail.

‘Please—’ – Raddangg – ‘Please—’ – Raddangg—

He came round the pillar. He could see the steel bridge not ten metres in front of him, leading from the rails to the wall of the building.

The dragon swept down from the roof.

‘Please—’

The train hurtled down, thunderous, deafening, into the depths, then coiled in on itself in the loop and shot upwards. The whole structure was moving, shaking. The rails seemed to dance to and fro before Grand Cherokee’s eyes. He stood up, managed to leap across several spars at once and keep his balance despite the tilt.

Five metres. Four.

The dragon rushed down in the loop.

Three metres.

– shot round the corner—

Two.

– flew towards him.

In the moment that the train crossed the point where the bridge led off, Grand Cherokee did the impossible, a superhuman feat. Howling wildly, he leapt clear, an enormous standing jump. The sharp bow of the front carriage passed below him. He stretched out his arms to grab hold of one of the seats, touched something, lost his grip. His body smashed into the backs of the seats in the next row, was flung high, pirouetted and for a moment seemed to be heading into the deep blue sky, as though he had decided to reach outer space.

Then he fell.

The last thing that went through Grand Cherokee’s head was that he had at least tried.

That he hadn’t been so bad after all.

Xin craned his head. High above him he could see people going into the glass viewing platform. The corridor would be opened soon as well. Time to get going. He knew how things worked in high-rise surveillance control rooms, he knew that hardly anybody would have glanced at the monitors in the last quarter of an hour. Even if they had, they wouldn’t have seen much. Leaving aside the two moments when Wang had suddenly dropped to the control room floor, they had been standing close beside one another most of the time. Two close friends having a chat.

But now he had set the dragon moving. Before the usual time. That would be noticed. He had to get out of here.

Xin hesitated.

Then he quickly wiped his fingerprints from the display with his sleeve, paused, and also wiped the places where Grand Cherokee had fumbled about with his greasy fingers. Otherwise those blasted smears would haunt his dreams. There were some things that tended to cling to the inside of Xin’s skull like leeches. Lastly, he hurried along the corridor and left it the way they had come. In the lift he peeled the wig from his head, took off his glasses, tore the moustache from his upper lip and turned his jacket inside out. It had been made specially for him, reversible. The grey jacket became sandy beige, and he stuffed the wig, beard and glasses inside. He decided to change lifts in the Sky Lobby on the twenty-eighth floor, then went down to the basement, through the shopping mall and out into the bright sunshine. Outside he saw people running towards the south side of the building. Cries went up. Somebody shouted that there had been a suicide.

Suicide? All okay then.

As Xin walked onward, faster, under the trees in the park, he took out the detective’s card.