Limit

Gaia, Vallis Alpina, The Moon

Julian set great store by his inventive genius that generated so many extraordinary ideas, and in particular by the fact that he could simply choose to switch the thinking process on and off. If unsolved problems tried to join him under the covers, he chose to sleep, and was wafted away on the wings of slumber as soon as his head touched the pillow. Sleep was a cornerstone of his mental and physical health, and up until now, he had always slept excellently well on the Moon.

Just not tonight.

The discussion at dinner was going round and round in his head like the horses on a merry-go-round; more precisely, Walo Ögi’s remark asking why he didn’t simply announce a divorce with Washington and declare that his technologies were up for sale to all comers, offering global access. It was true that there was a difference between taking the best offer and taking every offer. There was, even, a moral distinction. Playing favourites when it came to the wellbeing of ten billion people laid him open to charges of perfidious profiteering, even if not every one of these ten billion was in a position to build a space elevator in the front garden – charges that were unpalatable to a man who outdid all others in arguing for his autonomy as a businessman, who made speeches about global responsibility and the destructive effects of rivalry.

Tonight Julian lay awake because he saw all his private thoughts and arguments confirmed once more. Especially since, aside from all moral considerations, to make his patents generally available would not only boost economic activity on the Moon, it would also mean better business for him. The Swiss investor had put his finger on it: if another three or four nations had a space elevator, and were mining helium-3, the global switch to aneutronic fusion would be complete within a few years. Orley Enterprises, or more exactly Orley Space, could help the less wealthy countries with finance to build their elevators, which would give Orley Fusion the chance to acquire exclusive concessions for their power network. The reactor business would turn a profit and Orley Energy would become the biggest power provider on the planet. He would just have to deal with the fact that Washington would be less than happy about all this.

But it was a little more complicated than that.

Zheng Pang-Wang had tried several times to woo him for Beijing, which Julian had flatly refused until one occasion when they were having lunch together at Hakkasan, the exclusive Chinese restaurant in London, and Julian realised that he would only be betraying his American partners if he jumped into bed with one other trading partner. If on the other hand he offered his goods to everybody, this would effectively be the same as offering everybody in the world a Toyota or a Big Mac. Obviously Washington would see things a little differently. They would argue that they had signed a deal based on mutual advantage, a deal where – to continue the fast food metaphor – he supplied the burger while the government provided the bun, since neither could act on their own without the other’s support.

In a sudden fit of chattiness, he had shared his thoughts with Zheng.

The old fellow nearly dropped his chopsticks.

‘No, no, no, honourable friend! You may have a wife and a concubine. Does the concubine want to change anything about the fact that you are married? Not at all. She’s happy to share this pleasant way of life with the wife, but she will very quickly lose all taste for this at the thought you may take other mistresses. China has invested too much. We observe regretfully but respectfully that you feel obliged to your lawful partner, but if space elevators were suddenly to sprout up like beanstalks all over, and everybody were to stake a claim on the Moon, that would be a problem of a different magnitude. Beijing would be most concerned.’

Most concerned.

‘There’s only one problem, Julian. How to stay alive after such a change of direction.’

Rogachev’s remark had irked him since it showed once more how arrogant governments and their organs were. Useless mob. What kind of globalisation was this where the players didn’t even seem to want to peek at the other guy’s hand, where if you tried to give everybody an equal slice of the pie you ran the risk of being murdered? The longer he considered the matter, the higher the flood of biochemical stimulants to his thalamus, until at last, a little after five o’clock, he had had enough of tossing and turning in his bedclothes. He took a shower, and decided to use this unaccustomed attack of sleeplessness to take a stroll out in the canyon. In fact, he was dog-tired, physically at least, but nevertheless he went into the living room, put on shorts and T-shirt, yawned and shoved his feet into some light slippers.

As he raised his head, he thought he saw a movement at the far left of the window, something flitting at the edge of his vision.

He stared out at the canyon.

Nothing there.

He hesitated, indecisive, then shrugged and left the suite. Nobody about. Why would there be? Everybody was exhausted, deep asleep. He went to the locker with the spacesuits and began to dress, wriggled into the narrow, steel-reinforced harness, put on the chestplate and backpack, held his helmet under his elbow and went down to the basement.

As he went into the corridor, he thought for a moment he was hallucinating.

An astronaut was coming towards him from the train station.

Julian blinked. The other man drew nearer fast, carried along by the conveyor. White light limned his outlines. Suddenly he had the crazy feeling that he was looking at a mirror-world, that he saw himself there at the other end of the corridor, then a familiar face came into focus, oval head with hair cropped short, strong chin, dark eyes.

‘Carl,’ he called out, astonished.

Hanna seemed no less surprised.

‘What are you doing down here?’ He stepped off the belt and walked slowly towards Julian, who lifted his eyebrows, unsettled, and peered about as though more early risers might step out of the walls.

‘I could ask you the same question.’

‘Tchh, well, to be honest—’ A furtive look showed in Hanna’s eyes, and his smile slipped, becoming foolish. ‘I—’

‘Just don’t tell me that you went outside!’

‘I didn’t.’ Hanna lifted his hands. ‘Honestly.’

‘But you wanted to.’

‘Hmm.’

‘Go on, say it.’

‘Well, yes. To take a walk. I wanted to go over to the other side of the canyon, look at Gaia from over there.’

‘On your own?’

‘Of course on my own!’ Hanna dropped the schoolboy affectations and put on a grown-up face. ‘You know me. I’m not the type for eight hours of sleep, could even be I’m not house-trained for group trips like this. At any rate, I was lying there in bed and I suddenly wondered what it would be like to be the only person on the Moon. How it would feel to walk around out there without the others. Imagine there was no one here but me.’

‘That’s a half-baked idea.’

‘Could be yours, though.’ Hanna rolled his eyes. ‘C’mon, don’t be like that. I mean, over the next few days we’re going to be wandering about in herds, aren’t we? And that’s fine, really. I like the others, I won’t go walkabout. But I just wanted to know how it would be.’

Julian ran his fingertips through his beard.

‘Well, it looks as though I don’t really have to worry,’ he grinned. ‘You’ve already got lost before you could even set foot outside.’

‘Yes, that was dumb of me, wasn’t it?’ Hanna laughed. ‘I forgot where the darned airlocks are! I know, you guys showed us, but—’

‘Here. Right up ahead.’

Hanna turned his head.

‘Well, that’s great,’ he said, downcast. ‘It says so in big fat letters.’

‘Some lone wolf you are,’ Julian said mockingly. ‘As it happens, I was about to do just the same.’

‘What, just go out on your own?’

‘No, you fool, I have a great deal of practical experience which you don’t. This isn’t just a morning jog! It’s dangerous.’

‘Sure. Life’s dangerous.’

‘Seriously.’

‘Give me a break, Julian, I know my way around a spacesuit! I had an EVA on the OSS, I had one on the flight here, all of that is more dangerous than taking a hike out here on the regolith.’

‘That’s true, but—’ But I snuck out the same way you did, thought Julian. ‘Regulations say that nobody goes out on their own. None of the tourists anyway.’

‘Fine and dandy,’ said Hanna cheerfully. ‘Now there’s two of us. Unless of course you’d rather go out alone.’

‘Nonsense.’ Julian laughed. He went to the airlock and opened the inner door. ‘You were found out, so that means you have to come along with me, like it or not.’

Hanna followed him. The airlock was built to take twenty people, so they were rather dwarfed by its dimensions as they stood there letting their suits run through diagnostics. Bemused, he worried away at the question of just how unlikely this meeting was, mathematically speaking. If it were true that a person lives in just one of countless parallel universes where every possible course of events is true somewhere: almost identical worlds, radically different worlds with intelligent dinosaurs or where Hitler had won the war, then why did he have to live in the world where Julian had turned up in the corridor at exactly the same time as him? Why not ten minutes later, giving him the chance to get back to his suite unnoticed? The only consolation was that there were other realities where things had turned out even worse, where Julian had actually seen him arrive on the Lunar Express. At least he seemed not to have noticed that at all.

He would have to be more careful, pay more attention.

He, and Ebola.

Xintiandi, Shanghai, China

‘Interesting, that program of yours,’ said Jericho.

‘Ah!’ Tu looked pleased. ‘I was wondering when you would call. Which one did you try out?’

‘French Concession. You’re not seriously going to put that on the market, are you?’

‘We’ve drawn its sting.’ Tu grinned. ‘As I told you, that was a prototype. Strictly for internal use, so please don’t go peddling it. I thought that you would appreciate the jokes, and you also wanted to get to know Yoyo.’

‘Was that her idea? Taking swipes at the Party.’

‘The whole script is Yoyo’s. They’re test recordings, she was mostly improvising. Did you try chatting her up?’

‘I did. Chatting her up, and calling her names.’

Tu giggled. ‘It’s impressive, isn’t it?’

‘A few more responses to choose from wouldn’t hurt. Otherwise, very successful.’

‘The market-ready version runs on an artificial intelligence. It can generate any response instantly. We didn’t even need to film Yoyo to get them, any more than we needed sound recordings. The synthesiser can simulate her voice, her lip movements, gestures, everything really. Your version is very much simpler, but it means you get unadulterated Yoyo.’

‘You’ll have to explain one thing.’

‘As long as you don’t go selling it to Dao.’

Idiot, Jericho thought, but he kept it to himself.

‘You know I’d never do something like that,’ he said instead.

‘Just a joke.’ Tu dug about with a toothpick, produced a small green scrap of something and flicked it away. Jericho tried not to look. For all that, his eyes were irresistibly drawn to where the scrap, whatever it was, had landed. It was irritating mostly because Tu appeared on his new media screen not just life-size but in perfect perspectival detail, so that it looked as though Jericho’s loft apartment had grown an extra room. It wouldn’t have surprised him to spot the scrap of food lying on his floorboards somewhere. Seeing Tu in three dimensions was very much less enjoyable than looking at Naomi Liu.

Now she really did have nice legs.

‘Owen?’

Jericho blinked. ‘I noticed that the Yoyo avatar is remarkably stable in crowds. How do you do that?’

‘Trade secret,’ Tu sang happily.

‘Tell me. Otherwise I’ll have to go and visit my optician.’

‘There’s nothing wrong with your eyes.’

‘Clearly not. I mean, the specs themselves are transparent, just like a window. I’m seeing the real world. Your program can project details in, but it can’t change reality.’

‘Is that what it does?’ Tu asked, grinning.

‘You know perfectly well what it does. It makes people blink out of existence.’

‘You never thought that perhaps reality is just a projection as well?’

‘Could you say that a little less cryptically?’

‘Let’s say we could do without the lens on the specs.’

‘And Yoyo would still appear?’

‘Bingo.’

‘But what would be the substrate?’

‘She’d appear because none of what you see is actual reality. There are tiny cameras hidden in the arms of the specs and in the frame, feeding data on the real world into the computer so that it knows how and where it should fit Yoyo in. What you might have overlooked was the projectors on the inside edge.’

‘I know that Yoyo is projected onto the lens glass.’

‘No, that’s just what she’s not.’ Tu quaked with suppressed laughter. ‘The glass is surplus to requirements. The cameras produce a complete image, which is made up of your surroundings, plus Yoyo. Then this image is projected directly onto your retina.’

Jericho stared at Tu.

‘You mean none of what I saw—’

‘Oh, you definitely saw the real world. Just not first-hand. You see what the cameras film, and the film can be manipulated. In real time, of course. We can make the sky pink, make people disappear or have them grow horns. We turn your eyes into the projection screen.’

‘Unbelievable.’

Tu shrugged. ‘There are useful applications of virtual reality. Did you know that most cases of blindness are caused by clouding in the lens of the human eye? The retina underneath is healthy and functional, so we project the visible world directly into the retina. We make the blind see again. That’s the whole trick.’

‘I see.’ Jericho rubbed his chin. ‘And Yoyo’s been working on this.’

‘Exactly.’

‘You must trust her a lot.’

‘She’s good. She’s full of ideas. A veritable ideas factory.’

‘She’s an intern!’

‘That hardly matters.’

‘To me it does. I have to know who I’m dealing with here, Tian. How clued-up is the girl, in truth? Is she really just a—’ Dissident, he had been about to say. Stupid mistake. Diamond Shield would have filtered the word out from their conversation in an instant and put it into his file.

‘Yoyo knows what’s what,’ Tu said curtly. ‘I never said it would be easy to find her.’

‘No,’ said Jericho, more to himself than to Tu. ‘You didn’t.’

‘Chin up. I’ve remembered something else.’

‘What?’

‘Yoyo seems to have friends in a motorbike gang. She never introduced me, but I remember that she had City Demons on her jackets. That might bring you further forward.’

‘I know about that already, thanks. Yoyo didn’t happen to mention where they hang out?’

‘I think you’ll have to find that out on your own.’

‘All right then. If anything else comes back to you—’

‘I’ll let you know. Wait.’ Naomi Liu’s voice came from the other side of the projection. Tu stood up and disappeared from Jericho’s sight. He heard the two of them talking in low tones, then Tu came back.

‘Excuse me, Owen, but it looks as though we’ve had a suicide.’ He hesitated. ‘Or an accident.’

‘What happened?’

‘Something awful. Someone fell to his death. The roller-coaster had been set in motion, outside its usual hours. It looks as if whoever it was had been working up there. I’ll be back in touch, okay?’

‘Okay.’

They hung up. Jericho stayed there, sitting thoughtfully in front of the empty screen. Something about Tu’s remark unsettled him. He wondered why. People threw themselves from skyscrapers the whole time. China had the highest suicide rate in the world, higher even than Japan, and skyscrapers were also the most cost-efficient and effective way to leave this life.

It wasn’t about the suicide.

What then?

He fished out the stick that Tu had given him, put it on top of the console and let the computer download Yoyo’s virtual guided tours, her personnel file, records of conversations and documents. The files also contained her genetic code, voiceprint and eyescan, fingerprints and blood group. He could use the tours to get to know her body language and her gestures, her intonation as well, and the documents and conversation soundfiles would yield all her frequent turns of phrase, figures of speech and even syntactical patterns. This gave him a usable personality profile. A dossier that he could work from.

Perhaps though he should start from what he didn’t have.

He went online and set his computer looking for the City Demons. It served him up an Australian football club in New South Wales, another in New Zealand, a basketball team from Dodge City, Kansas, and a Vietnamese Goth band.

No demons in Shanghai.

After he had broadened the search mode and told it to allow for spelling errors, he got a hit. Two members of a biker gang called the City Daemons had got into a fight with half a dozen drunken North Koreans in the DKD Club on the Huaihai Zhong Lu; the NKs had been singing an anthem about the murder of their dear departed Supreme Leader. The bikers had got away with a police caution, since the Chinese leadership had declared Kim Jong Un persona non grata, posthumously, in recognition of the prevailing mood in reunited Korea. Beijing had several reasons to make sure that they nipped in the bud any cult of nostalgia that might develop around North Korean totalitarianism.

City Daemons. With an ‘a’.

Next the computer found a blog where Shanghai hip-hoppers picked up on the incident in the DKD and dwelt on the bravery of two members of the City Demons (with ‘e’), who had put their lives on the line to sling the North Koreans out on their ear. A link took Jericho to a biker forum which he browsed through, hoping to find more about the Demons. This confirmed his suspicion that the Demons themselves had posted up the comments. The forum turned out to be an advertising platform for an e-bike and hybrids workshop called Demon Point, whose owner was probably, pretty nearly definitely, a member of the City Demons.

And that was interesting.

The workshop, he learned, lay on the edge of Quyu: a parallel world where hardly anybody had their own computer or a net connection, but there was the black hole of a Cyber Planet on every street corner, sucking in the local youths and never spitting them out again. It was a world ruled by several Triad subclans, sometimes striking deals, mostly at loggerheads, who only really agreed that no kind of crime was off limits. A world of complex hierarchies, outside of which its inhabitants counted for nothing. A world which sent out battalions of cheap factory hands and unskilled labour to the better parts of the city every day, and then drew them back in every evening, a world which offered few sights but which nevertheless drew the well-heeled towards it with some magic charm, offering them something that couldn’t be found anywhere else in the Shanghai of urban renewal: the fascinating, iridescent gleam of human decay.

Quyu, the Zone, the forgotten world. The perfect place if you wanted to disappear without trace.

The little bike workshop wasn’t in Quyu proper, but it was close enough to function as a gateway in or out. Jericho sighed. He found himself forced to take a step that he didn’t like at all. He often worked with the Shanghai police, as he had done just recently. He had good relations with them. The officers would sometimes help him with his own cases, depending on whether they had their own irons in the fire in the cases of corruption or espionage that Jericho was looking into. For all that, they worked shoulder to shoulder when it came to fighting monsters such as Animal Ma Liping. His reputation among the police force was growing, even before he had rooted out the paedophile. When he went out drinking with members of the force, they let it be known that they would like to pass on information if he needed it, and ever since the nightmare in Shenzhen his friend Patrice Ho, a high-ranking officer, owed him a major favour, and had made it clear that this could be a peek into police databases. Jericho would have been all too pleased to call in the favour now, but if the authorities really were after Yoyo, he couldn’t even think about it.

And that meant that he had to hack his way in.

He’d dared to do so twice. He’d succeeded twice.

At the time, he had sworn not to chance it a third time. He knew what he’d be in for if they caught wind of him. After Beijing had hacked into European and American government networks in 2007, the West had gone on a counter-offensive, supported by Russian and Arab hackers working off their own grudges. Since then, there was hardly anything China feared more than cyber-attacks. Accordingly, anybody infiltrating Chinese systems was shown no mercy.

With mixed feelings, he set to work.

A little later he had the access he wanted to various archives. Practically every area of the city was decked out with scanners hidden in the walls of houses, in traffic lights and signposts, in door handles and bell-pushes, in advertising hoardings, labels, mirrors, scaffolding and household devices. They scanned retinas, stored biometrics, analysed the way people walked and gestured, recorded voices and sounds. While the phone-tapping system had been brought to the peak of perfection some decades ago, using the American NSA system as a model, retinal analysis was a comparatively new phenomenon. The scanner could recognise individual structures in the human iris from several metres away and thereby identify a person. Microscopically small directional mics filtered the frequencies out of a noisy street crossing till you could hear one voice speaking quite distinctly. The real art of such surveillance lay in evaluating data. The system recognised wanted individuals by the way they moved, could recognise a face even obscured by a false beard. If Yoyo glanced just once into one of the omnipresent scanners, this would be enough to identify her retina, which had been data-captured first as she was born, again on her first day of school, and then at university enrolment. It had also been stored when she was arrested, and when she was released.

Jericho’s computer started sifting.

It analysed every twitch of Yoyo’s eyes, dived into the crystalline structures of her iris, measured the angle of her lips when she smiled, set up studies for the way her hair moved in the wind, calibrated the sway of her hips, the spread of her fingers as she swung her arms, the line of her wrist as she pointed, her average length of pace. Yoyo became a creature of equations, an algorithm which Jericho sent out into the phantom world of the police surveillance archive, hoping that it would meet its match there. He narrowed down the search window to the time right after she had vanished, but even so the system reported more than two thousand hits. He uploaded the stolen data to his hard drive, stored it under Yoyofiles and withdrew as quickly as he could. His presence had not been noticed. Time to begin evaluation.

Hold on, there was one piece of the puzzle missing. Unlikely though it might seem, this student with the grandiose name might actually have some information to offer. What was the guy called anyway? Grand Cherokee Wang.

Grand Cherokee—

At that moment, Jericho was struck by the realisation.

He had found out in his investigations that Wang had a part-time job at the World Financial Center where Tu’s company was headquartered. He handled the Silver Dragon—

And the Silver Dragon was a roller-coaster!

The roller-coaster had been set in motion, outside its usual hours. It looks as if whoever it was had been working up there.

Jericho gazed into empty air. His gut feelings told him that the student hadn’t jumped of his own accord, and it hadn’t been an accident. Wang was dead because he had known something about Yoyo. No, not even that! Because he had given the impression that he knew something about Yoyo.

This put the case in a whole new light.

He paced through the enormous loft, went into the kitchen and said, ‘Tea. Lady Grey. One cup, two sugars, milk as usual.’

While the machine attended to his order, he went over what he knew. Perhaps he was seeing ghosts, but his knack for spotting patterns and making connections where others saw only fragments had rarely let him down. It was obvious that there was somebody else after Yoyo, besides himself. This wasn’t in itself news. Chen and Tu had both voiced their suspicion that Yoyo was on the run. Both of them had also been doubtful that she was wanted by the police, even if Yoyo herself might believe just that. This time, she hadn’t been picked up by police officers as had happened twice before, rather she had vanished at dead of night. Why? The decision seemed to have been taken in great haste. Something must have made Yoyo fear a visit, in the next few minutes or hours, from people who did not have her best interests at heart. So what had she done before she took fright?

Had she been warned?

By whom? Against whom? If Wang had been telling the truth, she had been alone at the time, so that meant that she might have had a call: Make sure you get out of there. Or an email. Perhaps nothing of the sort. Perhaps she had discovered something on the net, seen something on the news, that frightened her.

A diffident beeping sound from the kitchen let him know that his tea was ready. Jericho picked up the cup, burned his hand, cursed and took a little sip. He decided to call customer service to reprogram the machine. Two sugars was too sweet, one not sweet enough. Lost in thought, he went back to his office area. Shanghai police were not squeamish, but they were hardly in the habit of throwing suspects off the roof. More likely, Grand Cherokee Wang would have come round in a police station. The kid had wanted to play a bluff. A chancer, who hadn’t actually had anything to sell, and had tried his act with the wrong customer.

Whose toes had Yoyo been treading on, for heaven’s sake?

‘Breaking news,’ he said. ‘Shanghai. World Financial Center.’

Headlines and images grouped themselves together on the wall. Jericho blew on his tea and asked the computer to read him the latest reports.

‘Today at around 10.20 local time a man fell to his death from the Shanghai World Financial Center in Pudong,’ said a female voice, pleasantly low-pitched. ‘Initial reports suggest that he worked in the building, with responsibility for watching and operating the Silver Dragon, the world’s highest roller-coaster. At the time he fell, the ride was in motion, outside of usual hours. The Public Prosecutor has opened proceedings against the ride’s owners. It has been impossible to establish so far whether this was an accident or suicide, but everything seems to point to—’

‘Show filmed reports only,’ said Jericho.

A video window opened. A young Chinese woman was standing in front of the Jin Mao Tower with the camera trained on her so that viewers could see the foot of the World Financial Center. Under a veneer of half-hearted distress she was glowing with joy at the thought that some nitwit had given her a headline in the summer silly season by obligingly dying for her.

‘It is still a mystery why the roller-coaster ride was even in motion, without passengers and outside of its usual hours,’ she was saying, imbuing portent and secrecy into every word. ‘An eyewitness video which happened to be filming the tracks when the accident happened has shed some light on the matter. If indeed it was an accident. There is no confirmation as yet of the identity of the dead—’

‘Eyewitness video,’ Jericho interrupted. ‘Identity of victim.’

‘The video is sadly not available.’ The computer managed to put a note of real regret into the announcement. Jericho had set the system’s affective level to twenty per cent. At this setting, the voice didn’t sound mechanical, but rather warmly human. The computer also had a personality protocol. ‘There are two reports on the dead man’s identity.’

‘Read, please.’

‘Shanghai Satellite writes: The dead man is apparently one Wang Jintao. Wang was a student at—’

‘The second.’

‘Xinhua agency reports: The dead man has been positively identified as Wang Jintao, also known as Grand Cherokee, who studied—’

‘Reports on the precise circumstances of death.’

There were a great many reports, as it turned out, but nobody wanted to commit to a particular story. Nevertheless, they made up an interesting picture. It was certain that somebody had set the Silver Dragon free ten minutes early, before the paying passengers had arrived. Grand Cherokee’s job had been to set the system in motion and look after the morning customers, which basically meant working the till and starting the ride. Nobody was supposed to be up there with him at the time of the incident, although there were indications that perhaps somebody had been there after all. Two staff in the Sky Lobby said that they had seen Wang meet a man and go into a lift with him. Further clues came from the eyewitness video, it seemed, which apparently showed Wang moving around on the tracks as the ride was already in motion.

What the hell had Wang been doing out there?

A short article in the Shanghai Satellite speculated that he could have set the ride going without meaning to. Suicide seemed the more likely explanation. On the other hand, why would somebody wanting to commit suicide pick his way along the track when he could have simply leapt from the open stretch of the boarding platform? Especially, another article added, since there were increasing indications that Wang hadn’t actually jumped but had been run over by the train as it came bearing down on him.

Accident after all? At any rate, nobody was talking about murder, although here and there some commentators speculated about an accident caused by someone other than Wang.

Two minutes later Jericho knew better. Xinhua reported that the surveillance camera footage was now being examined. Wang had apparently been accompanied by a tall man who left the floor right after Wang fell. The two men seemed to have had an argument, Wang had certainly been moving along the track with no safety gear, and the train had run into him level with the southern pillar.

Jericho drank his tea and considered.

Who was the murderer?

‘Computer,’ he said. ‘Open Yoyofiles.’

More than two thousand hits. Where should he begin? He decided to set a profile match of ninety-five per cent, which left 117 files where the surveillance system thought that it had seen Yoyo.

He ordered the computer to select files with direct eye contact.

There was only one, immediately by the block where Yoyo lived, recorded at 02.47. Jericho wouldn’t have been able to say exactly where the scanner was, but he suspected it was in a signpost. Exact coordinates were stored in a separate file. There was no doubt that the woman over there on the other side of the street was Yoyo. She was sitting on an unmarked motorbike, no licence plates, her head tilted down, both hands on a crash helmet. Just before she put it on, she lifted her gaze and looked directly into the scanner, then she put down the mirrored faceplate and sped away.

‘Gotcha,’ muttered Jericho. ‘Computer, rewind.’

Yoyo took the helmet briskly off again.

‘Stop.’

She looked him straight in the eyes.

‘Zoom, two hundred and thirty per cent.’

The new technology of the wall could give him a life-size view of Yoyo. The way she sat there on her bike, every detail clear in three-dimensional surroundings, it was as though he had opened a door out onto the night from his loft. He had judged the zoom quite well. Yoyo looked about three or four centimetres taller now than in real life, and the image was pin-sharp. A system that could recognise the structure of an iris from all the way across the street wasn’t nicknamed ‘the freckle-counter’ for nothing. Jericho knew that this would be his last good look at Yoyo for some time, so he tried to read what he could out of it.

You’re frightened, thought Jericho. But you hide it well.

Also, your mind is made up.

He stepped back. Yoyo was wearing pale jeans, knee-boots, a printed T-shirt down over her hips and a short puffy jacket of patent leather that looked as though it might have come from one of the spray cans he had found in her room. Most of the slogan printed on her shirt was in shadow, or under the jacket, and only a little showed where the jacket was open at the front. He would look into that later.

‘Find this person in the folder called Yoyofiles,’ he said. ‘Ninety per cent match.’

Straight away he got the answer, seventy-six hits. He considered having the computer play all the films, but told it instead to plot the recordings’ coordinates onto a city map of Shanghai. A moment later the map came up on the wall, showing Yoyo’s route, where she had gone on the night she disappeared. The last sighting had been just across from Demon Point, the little e-bike and hybrids workshop. After that, the trail went cold.

She was in the forgotten world.

Yoyo had only remained undiscovered in Quyu because there were hardly any surveillance systems there. Even so, Quyu wasn’t a slum in the classic sense, not to be compared with the festering shantytowns that surrounded Calcutta, Mexico City or Bombay and oozed out into the surrounding countryside. As a global city on a par with New York, Shanghai needed Quyu the way the Big Apple needed the Bronx, meaning that the city left the district in peace. It didn’t send in the bulldozers, or the riot police. In the years after the turn of the millennium, the historic inner-city areas and slums in the Shanghai interior had been torn down systematically until those boroughs were free of any sort of authentic history. Where the outer district of Baoshan ran up against this new Shanghai core, Quyu had grown up and been allowed to grow, much as a landowner might allow scrubland to grow in order to save the cost of a gardener. Quyu, north-west of Huangpu, now marked the crossover to swathes of makeshift settlements, vestigial villages, run-down small towns and abandoned industrial estates – a Moloch that grabbed more of the surrounding land each year, guzzling down the last remnants of a region that had once been rural.

Quyu was internally autonomous, and externally it was watched as closely as a prison camp; it was one of the most impressive examples of twenty-first-century urban poverty. The population was made up of people displaced from their original homes in the heart of Shanghai, of those who had lived here even before Quyu absorbed their small towns, of migrants from poor provinces lured to the promised land of the global city and living on temporary residence permits that no one ever checked, of battalions of illegal labourers who didn’t officially exist. Everybody in Quyu was poor, though some were less poor than others. Most money was made in drugs or in the leisure sector, largely prostitution. The social structure of Quyu’s population was unregulated in every way, with not a hint of health insurance, oldage pension or unemployment benefit.

But it was still more than just a horde of beggars.

After all, most of them had work. They manned the assembly lines and the building sites, they cleaned the parks and streets, drove delivery trucks and cleaned the houses of the better-off. They would turn up like ghosts in the regulated world, do their job and then vanish again once they were no longer needed. They were poor because everybody living in Quyu could be replaced at twenty-four hours’ notice. They stayed poor because, in the words of the wise old sage Bill Gates, they were part of a global society divided into those who were networked and those who weren’t. In Quyu, nobody was networked, even if they owned a mobile phone or a computer. Being networked meant playing the same high-speed game as the rest of the world, not letting your attention lapse for a second. It meant sifting out the relevant information from the irrelevant, grabbing advantages that lapsed as soon as you logged off. It meant being better, faster, leaner, more innovative and more flexible than the competition at every moment, it meant moving home when required, switching jobs.

It meant getting a place at the table.

Gates had said that the future belonged to the networked. Logically, non-networked society therefore had no future. Individuals outside the network were like spiders who didn’t spin threads. Nothing got caught in their web. They would starve.

Officially, nobody had starved to death in Quyu yet. Even if the powers-that-be in China had a blind spot when it came to slums or shantytowns, they wouldn’t quite so readily allow anyone to die of hunger on the streets of Shanghai. Less from the milk of human kindness, and more because you just couldn’t have that sort of thing happening in a world financial centre. On the other hand, official attitudes to Quyu mattered not a jot. What sort of official figures might come out of a district with totally opaque demographics, which was widely seen as ungovernable and uncontrollable, which actually ran its own affairs in some incomprehensible way and where the police hardly dared venture, although they had put a ring of iron around its edge? It was known that there was infrastructure of sorts, houses of sorts, some habitable, others barely more than damp caves. Clean drinking water was scarce, power cuts frequent, there was hardly a flush toilet in the place. There were doctors and ambulances in Quyu, hospitals, schools and kindergartens, snack bars, tea houses, bars, cinemas and kiosks and street markets of the sort that had almost completely vanished from the rest of Shanghai. Nobody knew, though, how life went on in Quyu exactly. Crimes committed there were hardly followed up, and this too was part of the tacit agreement that the district should look after itself, and was to be cut loose from the dynamic of social development. Residents were given no support but they were not held to account either, as long as they didn’t break the law outside the borders of their tribal reservation. There was no future here, and that meant no past, or at least not a past one could boast of or build on. Without a network, they lived outside of time itself, on the dark fringes of a universe whose shining centres were connected by multi-storey freeways and sky trains. Certainly the shortest routes from Shanghai city centre out to the luxurious commuter towns ran through districts like Quyu, but that didn’t mean anybody had to pass through the forgotten world and actually take notice of what went on there. The routes simply ran right overhead, as though the place were a swamp.

For a while the leadership in Beijing had asked themselves whether this method of running Shanghai might lead to revolt. Nobody doubted that terrorists and criminals had gone to ground there. Nevertheless the necessity of tightening the State’s grip in the district was undermined by scepticism that a rabble of migrant farm workers, factory girls, errand boys and building labourers would ever be able to coalesce into anything like a workers’ uprising. Large-scale political violence was expected from the bourgeoisie instead, since they had access to the information superhighway and to all kinds of hi-tech. On the other hand, the conventional criminals who haunted Quyu would feel all the safer there, the less danger they were in from outside. When had the Mafia ever called the workers to arms? In the end, the opinion prevailed that every criminal in Quyu was one less in Xaxu, leading Beijing to issue a clear recommendation:

Forget Quyu.

Yoyo had taken shelter in a world which was one of the blank spaces on the map of urbanisation. Jericho wondered whether anyone in Quyu had ever thought that it was also a form of discrimination not to be under surveillance.

Probably not.

He had spent the evening looking on the net for texts that Yoyo might have written since she went under. He used the same technology for this that Diamond Shield used in its hectic search for dissidents, or that the American Secret Services used in the unending war on terror, the same he had used himself against Animal Ma Liping. The rhythms of keystrokes on a computer keyboard were just as individual as fingerprints. A suspect could be identified in the very moment that he began to write his text into a browser. Advances in Social Network Analysis were even more interesting: choice of vocabulary, favoured metaphors, everything left grammatical and semantic clues. A computer only needed a few hundred words to identify who was writing with almost one hundred per cent accuracy. Most interesting of all, the system didn’t just blindly pile up words, it recognised meaning and context. To a certain extent, it actually understood what the writer was trying to say. It developed an unconscious intelligence, and became capable of tracking down whole networks, world-spanning structures of terrorism or organised crime, where neo-Nazis, bombers, racists and hooligans living thousands of miles apart met in a virtual alliance – though in real life they might well have beaten one another to pulp.

This had helped to track down paedophiles and uncover industrial espionage, but it also proved to be a nightmare for dissidents and human rights activists. It was no surprise that repressive regimes in particular showed great interest in the methods of Social Network Analysis. Nevertheless, Yoyo had always managed to stay one step ahead of the security services’ analytical programs, until a few days ago she had been exposed and identified. If indeed that was what had happened. At least Yoyo must have believed that that was the case, and this explained her headlong flight.

What he still couldn’t understand was how she noticed.

Jericho yawned.

He was dog-tired. He had had the computer running after clues all night. Obviously he would not be finding Yoyo any time soon. The Internet Police had spent years snapping at her heels, with no success. She probably knew the analytical programs’ algorithms inside out and backwards; in such matters, working for Tu Technologies was like sitting in the Jade Temple of Enlightenment. Feeling fairly baffled, he wondered how he could manage something that until just recently not even the government had been able to do; but he had one invaluable advantage.

He knew that Yoyo was one of the Guardians.

While the computer was chasing her virtual shadow, Jericho had unpacked the rest of the crates and turned the loft into something that pretty nearly resembled a flat. When at last the furniture was in place, the pictures were hanging on the walls and his clothes were in the wardrobe, once everything was tidied away and in its place, and Erik Satie’s Trois Gymnopédies rippled through the room, he felt happy and at peace for the first time in days, free from those images of Shenzhen, and had even lost all interest in Yoyo for the time being.

Owen Jericho, snug in a cocoon of music.

‘Match,’ announced the computer.

Irksome.

So irksome that he decided there and then to dial up the personality protocol by thirty per cent. At least then the computer would sound like someone you could share a coffee or a glass of wine with.

‘There’s a blog entry that looks like Yoyo,’ said the warm female voice, almost human. ‘She posted an entry on Brilliant Shit, a Mando-prog forum. Should I read it out?’

‘Are you sure that it’s Yoyo?’

‘Almost certain. She knows how to cover her tracks. I imagine Yoyo is working with distorters. What do you think?’

Without the personality protocol the remark would have come out as: ‘Eighty-four point seven per cent match. Probability that distorter is being used, ninety point two per cent.’

‘I think it’s very probable that she’s working with distorters,’ Jericho agreed.

Distorters were programs that go over a text and alter the writer’s personal style. They were becoming more and more popular. Some of them rewrote texts using the style of great poets and writers, so that you could dash off a message and have it reach the recipient looking as though it had been written by Thomas Mann, Ernest Hemingway or Jonathan Franzen. Other programs imitated politicians. It became dangerous when malevolent hackers cracked the profiles of other, unsuspecting users and borrowed their style. Many dissidents on the net preferred to use distorters that would rewrite with randomly generated standards, using a variety of styles. The most important thing was that the meaning remain the same.

And that was precisely the weak spot in most programs.

‘Elements in the blog post are not stylistically uniform,’ said the computer. ‘That confirms your theory, Owen.’

A nice touch, using his first name. Polite too to pretend that it had been his theory, as though the computer itself hadn’t suggested that a distorter was at work. God knows, fifty per cent personality protocol was enough. At eighty per cent the computer would be crawling up his backside. Jericho hesitated. In fact he was fed up with calling the thing ‘computer’. What would a girl like this be called? Maybe—

He programs her with a name.

‘Diane?’

‘Yes, Owen?’

Great. He likes Diane. Diane is his new right-hand woman.

‘Please read the entry.’

‘Glad to. Hi all. Back in our galaxy now, have been for a few days. Was really stressed out these last days, is anybody harshing on me? Couldn’t help it, really truly. All happened so fast. Shit. Even so quickly you can be forgotten. Only waiting now for the old demons to visit me once more. Yeah, and, I’m busy writing new songs. If any of the band asks: We’ll make an appearance once I’ve got a few euphonious lyrics on the go. Let’s prog!’

Once again Jericho wonders how the program can identify a writer from such a mishmash, but experience has taught him that even less would be enough. Still, he doesn’t have to understand it. He’s an end-user, not a programmer.

‘Give me an analysis,’ he says. It’s really quite cosy by now, with Satie and this velvet-smooth voice.

‘Of course, Owen.’

That’s to say, this ‘of course’ has to go. It reminds him of HAL 9000 from A Space Odyssey. Ever since the satnav system was invented, every speaking computer has been doing its best to copy crazy HAL.

‘The text is supposed to sound cocky,’ the computer said. ‘The style is broken though by the terms even so quickly and euphonious. The old demons to visit me once more seems rather forced – I don’t believe that the distorter was at work here. Everything else is just minor detail. Lyrics on the go for instance doesn’t fit the style of the second and third sentences.’

‘What do you make of the content?’

‘Hard to say. I might have a couple of suggestions for you. First off, galaxy. That might just be loosely meant, or it might be a synonym for something.’

‘For instance?’

‘Probably for a locality.’

‘Go on.’

‘Demons. You’ve already been looking for demons. I suspect that Yoyo is referring here to the City Demons, or City Daemons.’

‘I’m with you there. By the way, Daemons was a blind alley. Anything else strike you?’

The computer hesitated. The personality protocol once more.

‘I don’t know enough about Yoyo. I could give you about three hundred and eighty thousand variant interpretations of the other wording and phrases.’

‘Put a sock in it,’ Jericho murmured.

‘I’m sorry, I didn’t quite catch that.’

‘Doesn’t matter. Please search Shanghai for the word galaxy in connection with some place or other.’

This time the computer didn’t hesitate. ‘No entries.’

‘Good. Locate where the text was sent from.’

‘Of course.’ The computer gave him the coordinates. Jericho is astonished. He hadn’t expected it would be so easy to track back the route the message took. He would have thought that Yoyo would lay a few more false trails when communicating.

‘Are you sure that you haven’t just found an intermediary browser?’

‘One hundred per cent sure, Owen. The message was sent from there at 6.24 local time on the morning of 24th May.’

Jericho nods. That’s good. That’s very good!

And his hope becomes a certainty.

Forgotten World

As Jericho steered his COD along the Huaihai Donglu towards the elway, he went over his conclusions from last night once more.

Hi all. Back in our galaxy now, have been for a few days.

Which could mean, I’ve been back in Quyu for a few days. Obvious. Not so clear though why Yoyo would call Quyu a galaxy. More likely that she meant one particular place in Quyu.

Was really stressed out these last days, is anybody harshing on me?

Stress. Well, obviously.

And why would anybody be angry at her? That was also fairly easily told. Yoyo wasn’t actually asking a question here, she was giving an explanation. That somebody had tracked her down, that this someone was dangerous, and that she didn’t know whom she was dealing with.

Couldn’t help it, really truly. All happened so fast. Shit.

More difficult. She had taken flight at panic speed. But what did the first part mean? What couldn’t she help?

Even so quickly you can be forgotten.

Trivially easy. Quyu, the forgotten world. Almost a platitude. Yoyo must have been in a hurry to get the message out.

Only waiting now for the old demons to visit me once more.

Even easier: City Demons, you know where I am.

Yeah, and, I’m busy writing new songs. If any of the band asks: We’ll make an appearance once I’ve got a few euphonious lyrics on the go. Let’s prog!

Which was as much as to say, I’m trying to get the problems under control as fast as I can. Until then, we’ll disappear.

And who is we?

The Guardians.

The city freeway ran at an angle to Jericho’s route. An eight-lane road with enough traffic on it for sixteen, and with several storeys of elevated highway soaring above. Cars, buses and vans crawled through the morning as though through aspic. Hundreds of thousands of commuters flooded into the city from the satellite towns, taxi drivers glowered out at the world around. Not even bikers found a spot where they could squeeze through here. They all wore breathing-masks, but nevertheless you expected to see them turn blue and slump from their saddles. Even though there were more fuel-cell cars in use in the metropolises of China than anywhere else in the world, more hydrogen motors and more electric engines, a blanket of smoggy exhaust fumes lay over the city.

A special traffic track ran high above everything else. It was supported by slender telescopic legs, had only been opened for use a few years ago and was reserved exclusively for CODs. Now COD tracks connected all the most important points in the city and led out to the commuter towns and the coast, some of them at dizzying heights. Jericho threaded his way onto the steep sliproad, waited for his vehicle to click into place on the rails and entered his destination coordinates. From now on he didn’t need to steer the COD, which would have been impossible anyway. As soon as CODs were in the system, the driver played no further part.

Jericho’s COD climbed up the slope in a row of identical machines. Up on the track, he could see countless numbers of the cabin-like vehicles racing away at more than 300 kilometres per hour, gleaming silver in the sun. One storey down, any sort of movement had ceased.

He leaned back.

The vehicles approaching in the outside lane braked just enough to leave a precisely measured gap for his vehicle to slip into. Jericho loved the moment of rapid acceleration when the COD took off. He was pressed briefly against the back of his seat, then he had reached cruising speed. His phone told him that he had received a message from the computer. The display scanned his iris. An additional voice-print check wasn’t really necessary, but Jericho liked to make assurance doubly sure.

‘Owen Jericho,’ he said.

‘Good morning, Owen.’

‘Hello, Diane.’

‘I’ve analysed the writing on Yoyo’s shirt. Would you like to see the result?’

He had given the computer this job before he set off. He linked his phone to the interface on the car dashboard.

‘What does it say?’

‘It’s evidently a symbol.’

A large A appeared on the COD monitor. At least, Jericho supposed that it was supposed to be an A. The crossbar was missing, although in its place a ragged ring slanted around the letter instead. Underneath he could read four letters, NDRO.

‘Have you looked for similar symbols on the net?’

‘Yes. What you see is the result of image enhancement. It’s a reconstruction based on high-probability matches. The symbol doesn’t turn up anywhere in the data store. The letters might be an abbreviation, or a word fragment. I’ve found NDRO as an abbreviation several times, just not in China.’

‘What word do you reckon it might be?’

‘My favourites are androgynous, android, Andromeda.’

‘Thank you, Diane.’ Jericho thought for a moment. ‘Can you see whether I left the bedroom window open?’

‘It’s open.’

‘Shut it, please.’

‘Shall do, Owen.’

The COD alerted him that it would leave the track in a few seconds. It had taken only four minutes to travel almost twenty kilometres. Jericho took his phone from the interface. The COD slowed, drew out and threaded into the queue of cars that were leaving the network just before Quyu. He made fairly good speed down the turn-off and onto the main road. Even here, far outside the city centre, the traffic flowed sluggishly, but at least it was moving. Quyu was separated from the city by several storeys of freeway. Streets leading out were bundled together by roadblocks and fed through pinch points, with a police station near every one. There were also army barracks to the east and west. For all that, only a very few people in Quyu could even afford a car or the COD hire fee, so that metro lines and trolley-buses connected the district to the city.

The Demon workshop was just outside Xaxu in a historic quarter, not two kilometres west of here. It was one of the last of the really old quarters. Earlier it had been a village, or a small country town, and sooner or later it would have to give way to the phalanxes of anonymous modern houses. Now that the downtown had been completely remodelled, the planners were having a go at the periphery.

Only Quyu would stay untouched, as ever.

Fast though he had got here on the COD track, it was painfully slow getting to the part of town he wanted to go. It was a typical old-style neighbourhood. Stone buildings, one to three storeys high, with black and dark red gables, lined busy streets where many little alleys branched off, and courtyards opened up. There were open shopfronts and food sellers lurked under colourful awnings, and washing lines stretched between the houses. The Demon Point workshop took up the whole ground floor of a rust-streaked house with a gap-toothed wooden balcony around its first floor. Some windowpanes were missing, others were crazed and blind.

Jericho parked the COD in a side street and strolled across to the workshop. Several handsome hybrids and e-bikes were lined up in front of other, less attractive specimens. There was nobody to be seen until a thin boy in shorts and a baggy T-shirt smeared with oil came out from a tiny office and got to work on one of the e-bikes with a rag and a tin of polish.

‘Hello,’ said Jericho.

The boy looked up briefly and turned back to his work. Jericho squatted down next to him.

‘Very nice bike.’

‘Mm-hm.’

‘I can see how you’re polishing it. Are you one of the ones who cleaned the NKs’ clocks as well, in the DKD Club?’

The kid grinned and kept on polishing.

‘That was Daxiong.’

‘Good work he did.’

‘He told the wankers to shut their traps. Even though there were more of them. Said that he didn’t feel like listening to their fascist crap.’

‘I hope he didn’t get any trouble from them.’

‘Little bit.’ The boy seemed only now to realise that he’d fallen into conversation with somebody he didn’t know at all. He put down his rag and looked at Jericho distrustfully. ‘Who are you anyway?’

‘Ahh, I was just headed for Quyu. Sheer chance that I spotted your workshop here. And given that I’d read that blog post – Well, I thought, since I’m here anyway—’

‘Interested in a bike?’

Jericho stood up. He looked where the boy was pointing. Over at the back of the workshop, a burly chopper, an electro, was up on its chocks. The rear wheel was missing.

‘Why not?’ He walked over to the machine and admired it ostentatiously. ‘Been thinking for years of getting a chopper. Lithium-aluminium battery?’

‘That’s right. It’ll give you 280.’

‘Range?’

‘Four hundred kilometres. Minimum. Are you from downtown?’

‘Mm-hm.’

‘That’s hell for cars. You should think about it.’

‘Shall do.’ Jericho took out his phone. ‘I don’t know my way around here, sadly. I’m supposed to meet someone, but you know how Quyu is for addresses. Maybe you can help me.’

The kid shrugged. Jericho projected the A with the hazy ring around it onto the back wall of the workshop. The boy’s eyes gave him away – he knew the place.

‘That’s where you want to go?’

‘Is it far?’

‘Not really. You just have to—’

‘Button your lip,’ said somebody behind him.

Jericho turned around and stared at a chest that began somewhere in the southeast and ended further along to the north-east. Way up above the chest there had to be something that the brute used to think. He put his head back and made out a shaven skull, with eyes so narrow that it was hard to believe he could see through them. A blue appliqué on the chin looked vaguely like a pharaoh’s beard. The leather jacket was open at the front, and beneath it he could see the City Demons logo.

‘It’s fine.’ The boy looked upwards, uncertain. ‘He was just asking where—’

‘What?’

‘Everything’s okay.’ Jericho smiled. ‘I wanted to know whether—’

‘What? What do you want to know?’

The man-mountain made no attempt to bend down to talk to him, which would have made conversation considerably easier. Jericho took a step back and turned his projector to the wall again.

‘I’m sorry if I’ve come at a bad moment. I’m looking for an address.’

‘An address?’ The other man turned his massive head and looked – as far as Jericho could tell – at the projected image.

‘I mean, is that even an address at all?’ Jericho asked. ‘I’ve only got—’

‘Who gave you that?’

‘Someone who didn’t have much time to give me directions. Someone from Quyu. Someone I want to help.’

‘What with?’

‘Social problems.’

‘Is there anyone in Quyu who doesn’t have those?’

‘True enough.’ Jericho decided not to take this treatment any longer. ‘What now? I don’t want to keep this person waiting.’

‘He’s also interested in the chopper!’ added the boy, in a tone that suggested he had already talked Jericho into buying the machine for an enormous sum.

The man-mountain pursed his lips.

Then he smiled.

The suspicion melted sheer away from his features, making way for warm friendship. An enormous paw swooped through space and landed with a playful smack on Jericho’s shoulder.

‘Why didn’t you say so right away?’

That had broken the ice. His suddenly hearty manner didn’t yield any more information though, but rather a detailed description of all the chopper’s supposed virtues, and he reached a genial crescendo as he named an exorbitant price. The ogre even managed to price the missing rear wheel separately.

Jericho nodded and nodded. At the end, he shook his head.

‘No?’ said the giant, surprised.

‘Not at that price.’

‘Fine. Name your price.’

‘I’ll give you another idea. An A with a frayed ring around it and four mysterious letters beneath. You remember? I go there, I come back. Then we do business.’

The giant wrinkled his brow laboriously. He was thinking, Jericho had to assume. Then he described a route which seemed to run the whole length and breadth of Quyu.

What had the kid said just now? Not really far?

‘And what do the letters mean?’

‘NDRO?’ The giant laughed. ‘This friend of yours must really have been in a hurry. It’s Andromeda.’

‘Ah!’

‘It’s a live concert venue.’

‘Thanks.’

‘Your knowledge of Quyu seems to rest on the very slightest acquaintance, if you don’t mind my saying so.’

Jericho had to raise his eyebrows. He would never have expected that a man-mountain like this, with such a tough-looking skull, would produce such a refined turn of phrase.

‘It’s true, I hardly know the place.’

‘Then take care of yourself.’

‘Of course. I’ll see you later, umm – May I ask your name?’

A grin spread across the huge face.

‘Daxiong. Just Daxiong.’

Aha. Six Koreans had come away with injuries. Slowly, the story was becoming clearer.

Jericho had never been in Quyu before. He had no idea what was lying in wait for him when he drove through beneath the freeway. But in fact nothing happened. Quyu didn’t begin at any clearly marked spot, at least not in this part. It simply just – began. With rows of low-built houses like the ones he had just left. Hardly any shops as such, but instead street vendors cheek by jowl, who had spread out onto their sheets and carpets anything that seemed saleable and couldn’t run away. A woman in a rickety rattan chair, dozing in the shadow of a jury-rigged canopy, a basket of aubergines in front of her. A shopper took two of these, put money in her apron and went on without waking her. Old people chatting, some in pyjamas, others bare-chested. Jostling crowds on crumbling pavements. Criss-crossing the street, overhead, the flapping banners of washing hung out to dry, smocks and shirts waving their sleeves at one another whenever the wind found its way between the houses. Murmurs, chatting and shouting, melodic, booming, shrill or low, all woven together into a cacophony. Cheap pedal-bikes everywhere, clawing at the nerves, squeaking and rattling, the thud of hammers and the whine of drills, the sounds of running repairs, maintenance of the make-do-and-mend school. Some traders spotted Jericho’s head of blond hair, leapt to their feet and yelled ‘Looka, looka!’ across the street, waving handbags, watches, sculptures; he ignored them, concentrating on not running anyone over. In Shanghai, downtown Shanghai, traffic was a state of war. Lorries hunted buses, buses chased cars which chased bikes, and all of them together had sworn death to all pedestrians. In Quyu it was less aggressive, but that made it no better. Rather than attacking one another, road users simply ignored one another. Folk who had just now been haggling over chickens or kitchen-ware would hop down into the road, or stand there in little knots, debating the weather, the price of groceries, their families’ health.

With every street he went down, Jericho saw fewer traders aiming at the tourist market. The goods offered for sale became poorer. As the number of cars on the street dropped, there were more and more pedestrians and bicycles, and the throng thinned out. More and more often he saw half-demolished houses, their missing walls meagrely patched with cardboard and corrugated iron, all of them inhabited. In between, years and years of rubble. A cluster of grey and dull blue modular blocks appeared at the side of the road as though cast carelessly down like dice, arthritic trees twisted double in front of them, the randomly parked cars dating back to the days when Deng Xiaoping had proclaimed the economic miracle which had never quite taken place in this part of China.

All of a sudden it was dark around him.

The deeper Jericho went into the heart of Quyu, the less clearly structured it became. Every possible style of architecture seemed to have been thrown on the heap here. High-rise blocks abandoned halfway alternated with derelict low-rises and silos several storeys high, their hideousness emphasised by the peeling remains of several colours of paint. Jericho was most moved by the pathetic attempts to make the uninhabitable look like a habitation. There was something almost like an architectural vernacular going on here in the tangle of hand-built shacks, most little more than posts rammed into the ground and covered over with tarpaulin. At least there was life here, while the silos looked like post-atomic tombs.

In the midst of a wasteland of rubbish he stopped and looked at women and children loading whatever they thought they could use onto barrows. Whole swathes here looked as though once-intact city blocks had been pulverised by bombing raids. He tried to remember what he knew about districts like these. A number that he had noticed somewhere flitted through his mind. In 2025, there were one and a half billion people living in slums worldwide. Twenty years before it had been one billion. Every year, twenty or thirty million came to join them. A new arrival in the slums had to fight his way up bizarre hierarchies, where those on the lowest rung collected trash and made from it whatever they could sell or trade. According to Daxiong’s description, he would need at least another hour to get to the Andromeda. He drove on, thought of the quarter he had wound up living in years ago, shortly before it had been torn down to make room for the development where Yoyo lived. At the time he hadn’t been able to understand why the residents were so attached to their ruins. He understood that they had no choice, except that some of them could have taken up the offer of being relocated in relatively luxurious apartments outside Shanghai, with running water, baths and toilets, lifts and electricity.

‘Here, we exist,’ they had answered, smiling. ‘Outside, we are ghosts.’

It was only later that he realised that the measure of human misery is not in the condition of the housing. Scarce drinking water, overflowing gutters, blocked drains, all these had their place in the annals of hell. But while people were living on the streets, at least they could meet. It was where they sold their wares. It was where they cooked for the labourers who never otherwise had a chance to make a meal. Food preparation alone provided a living for millions of families, and fed them in turn, a livelihood that could only be earned down at street level, just as the street provided social cohesion. People stood by their doorways, deep in conversation. Life at ground level, the openness of houses, all this spread warmth and comfort. Nobody dropped in to buy something on the tenth floor of a high-rise, and if you stepped outside the door, all you could see was a wall. The road took him to a hill. From up here, he could see in every direction, as much as he could see anything through the dirty brown blanket of smog. The COD was air-conditioned, but Jericho thought he could feel the sun on his skin. All around him was a sight he had grown used to by now. Shacks, high-rise blocks, all more or less shabby, poles standing drunkenly festooned with dangling power cables, rubble, dirt.

Should he go on?

Baffled, he told his phone to take bearings. It projected him right in the middle of no man’s land. Off the maps. It was only when he zoomed out that it deigned to show him a couple of main roads that ran through Quyu, if the data was still up-to-date.

Was Yoyo really hiding in this desolation?

He entered the coordinates from where the blog post had been uploaded to Brilliant Shit. The computer showed him a spot not far from Demon Point, near the freeway.

Back the other way.

Swearing, he turned round, narrowly avoided a barrow which several kids were pushing across the road, garnered a few choice insults and then drove off fast, back where he had come from. He passed by on his left the area he had driven through at first, got lost in a tangle of streets, blundered through a garment district, spotted a through road between street stalls heaped with clothes and found himself on a wide street with walls each side and remarkably neat-looking houses behind them. It was seething with people and with vehicles of all kinds. The scene was dominated by food stalls, fast food chains, shops and booths. He passed several branches of Cyber Planet. The whole thing looked like a down-at-heel version of London’s legendary Camden Town when there had still been a subculture there to speak of, thirty years ago now. Prostitutes leaned in doorways. Groups of men who were definitely not in the peace-and-love business sat around in front of cafés and wok kitchens, or walked about with appraising eyes. Jericho’s COD was given many thoughtful looks.

According to the computer his destination was very close, but it seemed there was a curse on him. He kept taking wrong turns. Every attempt to get back to the main road led him deeper into this off-kilter world that was obviously ruled by the triads; this must be where the slumlords lived, the lords of decay. Twice groups of men stopped him and tried to drag him from the car, for whatever reason. At last he found a shortcut, and the quarter was suddenly behind him. The blocky silhouette of a steelworks showed in the distance. He drove over a bulldozed stretch to a gigantic rust-brown complex with chimneys. A group of bikers overtook him, went past and vanished on the other side of the walls. Jericho followed them. The road led to a large open yard, obviously some kind of gathering place. There were bikes parked everywhere, young people sitting together smoking and drinking. Music boomed across the factory yard. Pubs and clubs, brothels and sex-shops had been set up in empty workshops. The inevitable Cyber Planet took up one whole side of the yard, surrounded by stalls offering handmade appliqués. Another shop was flogging second-hand musical instruments. A two-storey brick building stood across from the Cyber Planet. A van was parked in front of the open doors, and martial-looking figures were carrying gear and electronics inside.

Jericho couldn’t believe his eyes.

A huge letter A, twice as tall as a man, leapt out at him from above the doors. Underneath, in large letters, a single word:

Tyres squealing, he stopped in front of the van, jumped out and walked back a few paces. All at once he realised what the ragged ring that replaced the crossbar on the A was supposed to be. Diane had done her best with the image that she had, but the whole picture only made sense in the original. The ring was a picture of a galaxy, and Andromeda, or rather the Andromeda nebula, was a spiral galaxy in the Andromeda constellation.

Hi all. Back in our galaxy now, have been for a few days.

Yoyo was here!

Or maybe not. Not any more. Daxiong had sent him on a wild goose chase so as to give her time to disappear. He swore, and squinted up at the sun. The smog smeared its light into a flat film that hurt his eyes. In a foul mood he locked the COD and entered the twilit world of Andromeda. There was this at least: Chen Hongbing had been afraid that his daughter might be sitting in a police cell somewhere with no official charges. Jericho could disabuse him of that worry. On the other hand, Chen hadn’t even hired him for this job, at least not in so many words. He could go home. His job was done.

At least, everything seemed to say that he had found Yoyo’s trail.

And then lost it again.

Irritating, that.

He looked around. A spacious foyer. Later in the evening, this would be where they sold tickets, drinks, cigarettes. The wall across from the cash till was hidden by a flurry of posters, flyers, newsletters and a pinboard bristling with announcements. Obviously some kind of subculture clearing house. Jericho went closer. It was mostly requests for work or for rideshares, for rooms, instruments and software. Second-hand goods of all sorts were offered for sale, some doubtless stolen, and sexual partners for hire – for a night, for longer, for particular tastes. Sometimes the offers matched what other notices sought. Most of the sheets of paper were handwritten, an uncommon sight. He went into the actual concert venue, a bare hall with high windows giving onto the courtyard. Most of the windowpanes were boarded or painted over, so that little light filtered through despite the harsh sun outside. Here and there a sheet of cardboard stood in for missing glass. The far end of the hall was taken up by a stage that could easily have accommodated two full orchestras. Speaker boxes were piled up each side. Two men on ladders were adjusting spotlights, others carried crates of kit past him. A steel stair ran up to a balcony along the long side wall across from the windows.

Jericho thought of Chen Hongbing and the suffering in his eyes.

He owed Tu more than just conjecture.

Two men pushed past him with a huge trunk on wheels. One of them lifted the lid and took mic stands from inside, handing them up to the stage. The other went back towards the foyer, paused, turned his head and stared at Jericho.

‘Can I help?’ he asked in a tone of voice that suggested he should shove off.

‘Who’s playing tonight?’

‘The Pink Asses.’

‘The Andromeda was recommended to me,’ Jericho said. ‘Apparently you have some of the best concerts in Shanghai.’

‘Could be.’

‘I don’t know the Pink Asses. Worth my time?’

The man looked at him derisively. He was well-built, handsome, with regular, almost androgynous features and shoulder-length hair. The orange T-shirt above his shiny leather trousers clung to him like a second skin; it could have come from a spray-can. He wasn’t wearing the usual appliqués found in this subculture, or any other jewellery.

‘Depends what you like.’

‘Anything that’s good.’

‘Mando-prog?’

‘For instance.’

‘You’re in the wrong place then.’ The man grinned. ‘The music sounds just like the band’s name.’

‘It sounds like pink backsides?’

‘It sounds like arseholes fucked bloody, you simp. Both genders. Ass Metal, never heard of it? You still want to come?’

Jericho smiled. ‘We’ll see.’

The other man rolled his eyes and went outside.

Jericho felt stymied for a moment. Should he perhaps have asked the guy about Yoyo? It was easy to be paranoid in a place like this. Everybody here seemed part of a shadow army whose mission was to stop folks like him asking anything about Yoyo.

‘Rubbish,’ he muttered. ‘She’s a dissident, not the Queen of Quyu.’

Tu had spoken of six activists. Six, not sixty. Yoyo’s blog post had suggested that all six were members of the City Demons. Further, she had to have helping hands here in the Andromeda. It was quite certain that most people here had no idea who Yoyo was nor that she was hiding somewhere in the complex. The real problem was that the locals in a place like Quyu refused on principle to answer questions.

As he watched them putting down cables and lugging instruments up to the stage, he considered his options. Daxiong had warned Yoyo that someone was interested in the Andromeda. He must believe that Jericho was still wandering around in the Quyu hinterland with no clue where he was, out of circulation for the next few hours. Yoyo would think the same.

Time was still on his side.

He glanced all about. The stage was covered over by a kind of alcove, where two windows which used to look out over the factory floor were bricked up. Work went on around him. Nobody was paying him any attention. Unhurried, he climbed the metal steps and went along the balcony. It ended in a door, painted grey. He turned the handle. He had been expecting to find it locked, but it swung silently inwards and showed him a twilit hallway. He slipped in, went through a doorway to the right and found himself in a neon-lit room with a single window that overlooked the yard.

He was right over the stage.

Even though it was cold, barely furnished and unwelcoming, there was something indefinably lived-in about the room, typical of a place vacated just moments before. An energy that lingered on, unconscious memories stored in the molecules, objects that had been moved, recently breathed air. He went to a table with chairs around it, formica seats on rusty legs, under the table a half-full waste-paper basket. A few open shelves, mattresses on the floor, only one of them in use to judge by the tangled sheets and the pillow. Laptops on the shelves, a printer, stacks of paper, some of it printed. More stacks of comics, magazines, books. The centrepiece was a prehistoric stereo with radio and record player. There were vinyl records ranged along the wall, by the look of them survivors from the time when CDs were still rare. Right now of course CDs were a dying species as well. But you could buy records again, in today’s download era, new records from new bands.

A few of them really were old, though, as Jericho found out when he squatted down to look. He flicked through the sleeves and read the names on the covers. There were examples of Chinese pop and avant-garde, such as Top Floor Circus, Shen Yin Sui Pian, SondTOY and Dead J, but also albums by Genesis, Van der Graaf Generator, King Crimson, Magma and Jethro Tull. There was scarcely a gap in the collection from the sixties and seventies, the era when prog rock was invented. In the eighties it had been fighting a losing battle against punk and New Wave, in the nineties it was on its last legs, in the first decade of the new millennium it seemed to be dead, and the genre owed its revival not to Europeans but to Chinese DJs who had begun to mix it in with dance beats around 2020. This glittering new mixture of concert rock, dance floor and Beijing Opera had been enjoying a boom ever since, with new bands sprouting daily. Popular artists such as Zhong Tong Xi, third-party, IN3 and B6 made whole new worlds of sound from the complex concept albums of the prog era, and the local superstars Mu Ma and Zuo Xiao Zu Zhou organised all-star projects with grand old men of rock such as Peter Hammill, Robert Fripp, Ian Anderson and Christian Vander, filling clubs and concert arenas.

Yoyo’s music.

An omnipresent hum tickled at Jericho’s eardrums. He looked up, spotted a fridge at the back of the room, went over and looked in. It was half full of groceries, mostly untouched fast food. Bottles, full or half full, water, juice, beer, a bottle of Chinese whisky. He breathed in the cold air. The fridge made a clicking sound. A breath of air stroked the back of his neck.

Jericho froze.

That click hadn’t been from the fridge.

The next moment he was flying through the air, to land on one of the mattresses with a dull thud. The impact drove all the air from his lungs. Fast as lightning, he rolled to one side and raised his knees. His attacker lunged for him. Jericho slammed his feet at him. The man leapt back, grabbed an ankle and twisted him about so that he ended up on his stomach. He tried to get up, felt the other man jump on him and drove an elbow backwards in the blind hope of hitting him somewhere it would hurt.

‘Take it easy,’ said a voice that seemed familiar. ‘Or this mattress will be the last thing you see in your life.’

Jericho wriggled. The other man pushed his face deep into the musty fabric. Suddenly he couldn’t breathe. Panic galvanised him. He flailed wildly around, kicked his legs, but the man pressed him mercilessly down into the mattress.

‘Do we understand one another?’

‘Mmmm,’ said Jericho.

‘Is that a yes?’

‘MMMMMM!’

His tormentor took his hand from the back of his head. The next moment, the weight was gone from his shoulders. Gasping for breath, Jericho rolled onto his back. The good-looking type he had spoken to earlier was leaning above him, and gave him a knife-blade smile.

‘This isn’t where the Pink Asses are playing, simp.’

‘I wouldn’t advise them to.’

‘What are you looking for up here?’

Well, at least they were on speaking terms now. Jericho sat up and pointed at the shabby furniture.

‘You know, I’m a lover of luxury. I was thinking of spending my holidays—’

‘Careful, my friend. I don’t want to hear anything that might make me angry.’

‘Can I show you something?’

‘Give it a try.’

‘It’s on my computer.’ Jericho paused. ‘That’s to say, I’ll have to reach into my jacket, and I’m going to produce a device. I don’t want you thinking it’s a weapon and doing something hasty.’

The man stared at him. Then he grinned.

‘Whatever I do, I can assure you I’ll have the time of my life doing it.’

Jericho called up Yoyo’s image and projected it onto the wall opposite.

‘Have you seen her?’

‘What do you want with her?’

‘I’ll tell you when you’ve answered my question.’

‘You’ve got some nerve, little man.’

‘My name’s Jericho,’ Jericho said patiently. ‘Owen Jericho, private detective. I’m five foot eleven, so don’t call me that. And drop the mind games, I can’t concentrate when someone’s trying to kill me. So, do you know the girl or not?’

The man hesitated.

‘What do you want from Yoyo?’

‘Thank you.’ Jericho switched off the projection. ‘Yoyo’s father, Chen Hongbing, has hired me. He’s worried. Truth to tell, he’s worried sick.’

‘And what makes you think his daughter might be here?’

‘Among other things, your friendly and forthcoming manner. Incidentally, who do I have the pleasure of addressing?’

‘I ask the questions, friend.’

‘All right.’ Jericho raised his hands. ‘Here’s a suggestion. I tell the truth, and you stop the hackneyed dialogue. Can we agree on that?’

‘Hmm.’

‘Your name’s Hmm?’

‘My name’s Bide. Zhao Bide.’

‘Thank you. Yoyo’s living here, right?’

‘It would be a bit much to call it living.’

‘So I see. Look, Chen Hongbing is worried. Yoyo hasn’t been in touch for days, she didn’t turn up for their meeting, he’s a bundle of nerves. My job is to find her.’

‘And do what?’

‘And do nothing.’ Jericho shrugged. ‘Well, I’ll tell her she really should call her father. Do you work here?’

‘In a very loose sense.’

‘Are you one of the City Demons?’

‘One of—’ Something like annoyance flickered in Zhao’s eyes. ‘No, what makes you think so?’

‘It would make sense, wouldn’t you say?’

‘Do I look like one?’

‘Not a clue.’

‘That’s right. You’re clueless.’

‘Right now I think that Yoyo’s closest friends are the City Demons.’

Zhao looked at him mistrustfully.

‘Check my story,’ Jericho added. ‘You’ll find all you need to know about me on the internet. I don’t mean Yoyo any harm. I’m not from the police, I’m not Secret Service, I’m nobody she needs to be afraid of.’

Zhao scratched behind his ear. He seemed at a loss. Then he grabbed Jericho by the upper arm and propelled him towards the door.

‘Let’s go and drink something, little Jericho. If I find out that you’ve been lying to me, I’ll bury you here in Quyu. Alive, just so you know.’

They sat at a café in the sun across from the venue. Zhao ordered, and a girl with so many appliqués stuck onto her shaven scalp that she could have been mistaken for a cyborg brought two bottles of ice-cold beer.

They drank. For a moment, glorious silence reigned.

‘It won’t be easy to find Yoyo,’ Zhao said eventually. He took a long swig at his bottle and belched loudly. ‘It’s not just her father who’s lost sight of her. So have we.’

‘Who’s we?’

‘Us. Yoyo’s friends.’ Zhao looked at him. ‘What do you know about the girl? How much did they tell you?’

‘I know that she’s on the run.’

‘Do you know why?’

‘Why do you ask?’ Jericho raised his eyebrows. ‘Wondering if you can trust me?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘And I don’t know if I can trust you, Zhao. I only know that this isn’t getting us anywhere.’

Zhao seemed to consider this.

‘Your knowledge for mine,’ he suggested.

‘You begin.’

‘Fine then. Yoyo’s a dissident. She’s put the Party in a fine old tizzy these last few years.’

‘True.’

‘As part of a group calling themselves the Guardians. Criticising the regime, calling for human rights, the odd act of cyber-terrorism. All ideas you can agree with. Until recently, she got away with it.’

‘Also true.’

‘Your turn.’

‘On the night of 25 May, Yoyo left her flat in a hell of a hurry and fled to Quyu.’ Jericho took a swig, put down his bottle and wiped his mouth. ‘I can only speculate as to why, but I should imagine she saw something online that scared her.’

‘All true so far.’

‘She was found out. Or at least that’s what she thinks. With her previous record, she must be more frightened of being exposed than of anything. She was probably expecting a visit from the police or the Secret Services that same night.’

‘Quyu is her fallback position,’ said Zhao. ‘It’s practically free of surveillance, no scanners, no police. Terra incognita.’

‘Her first port of call was the City Demons workshop. It’s just that it’s not safe there for very long. So she came here to the Andromeda, as she has done before.’

‘How did you find out that she was at the Andromeda?’

‘Because she posted a message to her friends from here.’

‘And you read it?’

‘It brought me here.’

Zhao narrowed his eyes mistrustfully.

‘How did you get hold of the message? Usually only the security services can manage something like that.’

‘Take it easy, little Zhao.’ Jericho smiled. ‘Cryptography is part of my job. I’m a cyber-detective; most of my work has to do with industrial espionage and IP infringement.’

‘And how did Yoyo’s father get hold of you?’

‘That’s really none of your concern.’ Jericho tipped cold beer down his throat. ‘You said that Yoyo has disappeared again.’

‘Looks like. She was supposed to be here.’

‘When did she vanish?’

‘Sometime today. Could be that she’s just gone for a walk. Maybe we’re worrying unnecessarily, but she usually says if she’ll be gone for a while.’

Jericho turned the bottle between his finger and thumb once more. He wondered how to proceed. Zhao Bide had confirmed his suspicions. Yoyo had been here, but that wouldn’t be enough to set Chen Hongbing’s mind at ease. The man needed certainty.

‘Maybe we really don’t need to worry,’ he said. ‘The City Demons let her know I was coming. This time Yoyo disappeared because of me.’

‘I understand.’ Zhao pointed his bottle at Jericho’s silver COD, gleaming in the sun in front of the Andromeda. ‘Especially given that you travel fairly ostentatiously, by our standards. CODs don’t come to Quyu often.’

‘Clearly.’

‘Could be that Yoyo was running from the other guy, though.’

Jericho wrinkled his brow. ‘What other guy?’

Zhao swept his hand further to the right. Jericho followed the motion and saw another COD parked at the other end of the factory hall. Startled, he tried to remember whether it had already been there as he arrived. He had been distracted by the surprise of reaching the Andromeda, combined with the realisation that Daxiong had been leading him by the nose. He stood, and put his hand up to shade his eyes. As far as he could see, there was nobody in the other car.

Coincidence?

‘Did somebody follow you?’ asked Zhao.

Jericho shook his head.

‘I blundered around half of Quyu before I got here. There was no COD behind me.’

‘Are you sure?’

Jericho fell quiet. He knew all too well that a person could be followed without his knowledge. Whoever had parked that car could have already been on his tail in Xintiandi.

Zhao got up as well.

‘I’ll check you out, Jericho,’ he said. ‘But my sense for the pure and good tells me that you’re clean. We’re obviously both concerned for Yoyo’s wellbeing, so I suggest that we team up for a while.’ He got out a pen, scribbled something down on a scrap of paper and passed it to Jericho. ‘My phone number. You give me yours. We’ll try to find Yoyo together.’

Jericho nodded. He saved the number and handed over his card in exchange. Zhao was still an unknown quantity, but at the moment his suggestion was the best he had to go on.

‘We should make a plan,’ he said.

‘The plan is that we commit to sharing information. As soon as one of us sees or hears something, we let the other guy know.’

Jericho hesitated. ‘Do you mind if I ask you a personal question?’

‘Just as long as you don’t expect me to answer.’

‘What’s your relationship with Yoyo?’

‘She’s got friends here. I’m one of them.’

‘I know that she has friends. What I want to know is what your relationship with Yoyo is. You’re not a City Demon. You know that she’s one of the Guardians, but that doesn’t mean that you’re one yourself.’

Zhao emptied his bottle and belched again.

‘In Quyu, we’re all in it together,’ he said equably.

‘Come on now, Zhao.’ Jericho shook his head. ‘Give me an answer or just drop the thing, but don’t try this romance-of-the-slums business on me.’

Zhao looked at him.

‘Do you know Yoyo in person?’

‘No, just from recordings.’

‘Anybody who’s met her in person has two choices. He falls in love, or puts his feelings on ice. Since she doesn’t want to fall in love with me, I’m working on the second option, but whatever happens, I’ll never leave her in the lurch.’

Jericho nodded and asked no more questions. He glanced across to the second car again.

‘I’m going to have another look round in the Andromeda,’ he said.

‘What for?’

‘Perhaps I’ll find something that might help us.’

‘If you like. If you get into trouble, it wasn’t me who said you could.’ He clapped Jericho on the shoulder and went across the yard to the rusty delivery van. Jericho saw him speaking to one of the roadies, gesticulating. It looked as though they were talking about where the stage lighting should go. Then the two of them heaved another wheeled trunk from the van. Jericho waited a minute and followed them inside. As he entered the main hall, the sound engineer’s desk was just being set up. There was nobody on the balcony. He went up the steel steps, slipped through the grey door, pulled on a pair of disposable surgical gloves and went into Yoyo’s shabby den once more. The first thing he did was put a bug under one of the floorboards. Then he quickly scanned the piles of printouts, magazines and books. Nothing there gave him any clues as to where Yoyo might be. Most of it was about music, fashion, design, hip Shanghai, politics, virtual environments and robotics. Specialist literature that Yoyo probably read to keep up with work at Tu Technologies. He went to the table and sorted through the waste-paper basket underneath: torn packaging, scrunched up and smeared with leftovers. Jericho smoothed them out. Several were from a place called Wong’s World, and bore its rather inept logo, a globe on a dish, covered with sauce and served with what was probably supposed to be vegetables. The globe even had a face, and looked visibly depressed.

Jericho took some photos and left the room.

As he went down the steel steps, Zhao looked up at him briefly and then turned back to the mixing desk. Jericho walked past him without a word and went outside. In the foyer, he spotted a poster for the Pink Asses. Unbelievable. They really did use the tagline Ass Metal, promising that their music went ‘right up your arse’.

He was fairly sure that he didn’t want to hear that.

As he unlocked the COD, he scanned his surroundings. The second car was still parked a little way away. Somebody had been on his tail, it would be naïve to imagine otherwise. He was probably being watched right at this moment.

A student who had promised to get some information about Yoyo, and fell to his death when his own roller-coaster ran him over. A COD that turned up right after he had arrived at the Andromeda. Yoyo’s renewed disappearance. How many coincidences did you have to shrug off before dry fear began to fur your tongue? Yoyo hadn’t been starting at shadows. She had every reason to hide, and there was still no knowing who was after her. The government, or its representatives the police and the Secret Services, would not shrink from murder if circumstances demanded. But what circumstances could force the Party to go this far? Yoyo might have earned the distinction of being an enemy of the State, but killing her for that wouldn’t have been the style of a regime that locked dissidents up these days, rather than killing them as in Mao’s times.

Or had Yoyo awoken a quite different sort of monster, one that didn’t play by the rules?

It was clear that whoever was hunting her also had Jericho in their sights. Too late to drop the case. He started the COD and dialled a number. It rang three times, and then Zhao’s voice spoke.

‘I’m getting out of here,’ Jericho said. ‘In the meantime, you can make yourself useful in this new partnership of ours.’

‘What should I do?’ asked Zhao.

‘Keep an eye on the second COD.’

‘Right you are. I’ll be in touch.’

Kenny Xin watched him drive away.

Fate was a fickle mistress. It had led him here, from the lofty eyrie atop the World Financial Center to the black crud that accumulated under the fingernails of the world’s economic superpower. This was always happening to him. No sooner did he think he had escaped the clutches of that syphilitic whore called humankind, thought that he no longer owed her a glance, would never have to endure her stinking breath again, than she dragged him back to her filthy lair. He’d had to endure the revolting sight of her back in Africa, let her touch him until he feared he was infected all over his body, that he would dissolve into a pool of ichorous pus. Now he had ended up in Quyu, and again the hideous mask of her visage was grinning at him and he couldn’t turn away. He felt dizzy, as always when overcome by this disgust. The world seemed to hang skew-whiff, so that he was amazed not to see the houses tumbling down and the people lose their footing.

He pressed finger and thumb against the bridge of his nose until he could think clearly again.

The detective had disappeared. It would have been the easiest thing in the world to bug his COD, but Xin had no doubt that Jericho had left Quyu for the time being and would return the car to the grid soon. He didn’t need to follow it. Jericho couldn’t get away from him. His gaze wandered over the yard, and he got rid of the disgust he felt by shedding waves of it to every side. How he hated the people in Quyu! How he had hated the underfed, chronically ill, dispirited creatures in Africa! Not that he had anything against them personally. They were anonymous, mere demographic statistics. He hated them because they were poor. Xin hated their poverty so much that it hurt him to see them alive.

High time to get out of here.

Jericho

He was just steering up the slipway onto the high-speed track when he got a call. The display stayed dark.

‘The guy who’s following you has left the complex,’ Zhao told him.

Automatically, Jericho glanced into the mirror. Silly idea. There were only CODs up here on the tracks, all the same shape and the same colour.

‘I haven’t seen anyone so far,’ he said. ‘At least he can’t have followed me directly.’

‘No, he waited a while.’

‘Can you describe him?’

‘Chinese.’

‘I see.’

‘About my height. Well dressed, elegant. Somebody who pretty clearly didn’t belong in Xuyu.’ Zhao paused. ‘Even you were less out of place.’

Jericho thought that he heard a grin in his voice. The COD accelerated.

‘I went through Yoyo’s waste-paper basket,’ he said, without responding to Zhao’s jab. ‘She seems to pick up her food in a place called Wong’s World. Heard of it?’

‘Maybe. Fast food joint?’

‘Could be. Might be a supermarket as well.’

‘I’ll find out. Can I reach you this evening?’

‘You can reach me any time.’

‘Thought so. You don’t look like a guy who has someone waiting at home.’

‘Hey, wait a moment!’ Jericho yelped. ‘What do you mean by—’

‘Talk later.’

Idiot!

Jericho stared ahead into a red cloud of rage, but it soon dissipated. In its place came a feeling of impotence, vulnerability. The worst of it was that Zhao was right. He had nobody waiting for him, not for years now. The man might be a roughneck, but he was right. This, even though Jericho’s type was much in demand. He was trim and blond and his eyes were light blue; he was generally taken for a Scandinavian, who were well-liked by Chinese women. He was also well aware that he hardly ever paid attention to the man who looked back at him from the mirror. His clothes were functional, but otherwise nondescript. He groomed himself just enough not to look unkempt. He shaved chin and cheeks every three days, went to the hairdressers every three months to clear the topgrowth, as he liked to say, he bought T-shirts by the dozen without wondering whether they suited him. Fundamentally, even Tu Tian, fat and bald though he was, took more pains in his artlessly messy way.

When the high-speed track spat him out again at Xintiandi, his anger had given way to a brackish sort of defeatism. He tried to visualise his new home, but found no comfort there. Xintiandi seemed further away than ever, a good-time town where he didn’t belong, because it wasn’t in his nature to have a good time, and others didn’t have a good time with him around.

There it was again, the old stigma.

And he had thought he was over it. If there was one thing that Joanna had taught him, it was that he was no longer the kid from his schooldays, the boy who still looked about fifteen when he was eighteen years old. The boy who had never had a girlfriend because every last girl at school was after some other boy. Even that wasn’t quite true. They had certainly appreciated having him as an understanding male friend, which he reckoned was just an underhanded way of saying a punchbag. They came to him in floods of tears, torturing him with details of their relationships, in endless therapy sessions which they always concluded by telling Jericho that they loved him like a brother, that he was, thank God, the only boy on Earth who didn’t want anything from them.

Broken-hearted, he patched up their tattered souls and only ever once tried anything more, with a snub-nosed brunette who had just been dumped by her older boyfriend, a notorious love cheat. More precisely, he had invited her for a meal and tried to flirt with her a bit. It worked like a dream for two hours, although only because the girl hadn’t realised what he was doing. Even when he put his hand on hers, she just thought that he was being funny. It was only then that she realised that punchbags had feelings too, and she left the restaurant without a word. Owen Jericho had to turn twenty before a Welsh pub landlord’s daughter took pity, and took his virginity. She hadn’t been pretty, but she had been through the same sort of hell as he had, and this, along with a few pints of lager, was enough for him.

After that it had gone a little better, or even quite well, and he had his revenge on the pathetic wet blanket who had so stubbornly claimed to be Owen Jericho. With Joanna’s help he had buried that boy, although it had been a stupid idea to bury him alive, not suspecting that it would be Joanna too who would bring him back from the grave. The zombie had come back here in Shanghai, where the world was reinventing itself, and taken revenge in turn. The zombie was the boy in his eyes who frightened off the women. He scared them. He scared himself.

In a foul mood, he steered his car to the nearest COD point and hooked it back up to the grid. The computer calculated what he had to pay and deducted the amount as he held his phone against the interface. Jericho got out. He had to find out why Grand Cherokee had had to die. He stopped in the middle of the street and called Tu Tian. He only spoke a few words to Naomi Liu. She obviously picked up that he was in a bad mood, smiled encouragingly and put him through.

‘I found the girl,’ he said without preamble.

Tu raised his eyebrows. ‘That was fast.’ There was even something like awe in his voice. Then he noticed Jericho’s sour look. ‘And what’s the problem? If there is just one problem.’

‘She slipped through my fingers.’

‘Ah.’ Tu tutted. ‘Well then. You’ll have done your best, little Owen.’

‘I don’t particularly want to talk over the details on the phone. Should we fix up a meeting with Chen Hongbing, or would you like to hear about it first?’

‘She is his daughter,’ Tu said diplomatically.

‘I know. I’ll say it straight. I’d rather speak to you first.’

Tu looked reassured, as though that was what he had been hoping for. ‘I think we’ll do that, though it doesn’t mean we won’t do the other,’ he said magnanimously. ‘But it would certainly be wise to let me know what’s on your mind. When can you be here?’

‘In a quarter of an hour, if the roads aren’t jammed. Something else, Tian. The fellow who fell from your roof this morning—’

‘Yes, a bad business.’

‘What do you know about it?’

‘The circumstances of his death are somewhat curious, to say the least.’ Tu’s eyes gleamed. He seemed less distraught than fascinated. ‘The guy went for a walk along the tracks, five hundred metres up! I ask you, is that normal behaviour for a student who was just looking to earn a few yuan on the side? What was he doing there?’

‘I hear there’s a video.’

‘An eyewitness video, that’s right. It was on the news.’

‘Have they released it?’

‘Yes, but you can’t see very much. Just this what’s-his-name, Grand Chevrolet, climbing about like a monkey up there and then trying to jump over the carriages.’

‘Grand Cherokee. His name’s Grand Cherokee Wang.’ Jericho massaged the bridge of his nose. ‘Tian, I have to ask you for a favour. In the news it said that the surveillance cameras on the top floor of the World Financial Center showed Wang with a man. Obviously they had an argument. I’d like to have a look at the footage, and—’ Jericho hesitated – ‘at Wang as well, if possible.’

Tu stared at him. ‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Well, more specifically—’

‘What are you thinking here, Owen? Have you lost your wits? Should I just call up the morgue and say, hey, how are things, could you just take Mr Wang from the drawer, a friend of mine’s got a thing for splatted corpses?’

‘I want to see his effects, Tian. Whatever he had in his pockets. His phone for instance.’

‘How am I supposed to get hold of his phone?’

‘You know half of Shanghai.’

‘But nobody in the morgue!’ Tu snorted and shoved his shabby glasses back up; they had worked their way down the bridge of his nose as they talked. His jowls quivered. ‘And as for what the surveillance tapes show, don’t get your hopes up.’

‘Why not? The footage must be on the system hard drive.’

‘I’m not authorised to look at it though. I’m just a tenant here, not the owner. Besides, once the police get involved, that footage will be evidence. You’re the one with contacts to the police.’

‘In this case it might not be very wise to bother them.’

‘Why not?’

‘Tell you later.’

‘I don’t know if I can help you.’

‘Yes or no?’

‘Unbelievable!’ Tu snapped. ‘Is that any way to talk to a Chinaman? We don’t do “yes or no”. We Chinese hate to commit ourselves to anything, you must have learned that by now, Longnose.’

‘I know, you chaps prefer an unambiguous “maybe”.’

Tu tried to look outraged. Then he grinned and shook his head. ‘I must be mad. All right though. I’ll do whatever I can. I’m really curious to see what you find so interesting about the jumper.’

In the few minutes that the conversation had lasted, the traffic on the Yan’an Donglu nearby had increased dramatically. The Huaihai Donglu, running parallel, was also suffering from clogged arteries. This heart attack seized hold of the city centre between Huangpu and Luwan twice daily. It was delusional to take your own car, but when Jericho went back to the COD point, he was left standing watching while someone took the last free one. That was the problem with CODs. On the one hand, there were too few of them; on the other hand, every COD that wasn’t up on the high-speed track was one car too many on the Shanghai streets.

Jericho’s mood plummeted. When he had still lived in Pudong, it had been easier to visit Tu. He walked to Huangpi Nanlu metro station and went down into the brightly lit passages, where hundreds of people were being shoved on board the overcrowded Line 1 by stoical crowd-handlers. Hardly had the carriage doors closed than he was bitterly regretting not having walked the mile to the river bank to catch a ferry. Obviously he still had to learn a few tricks about life in his new neighbourhood. He’d never lived so centrally before. In fact, he couldn’t remember ever having taken the metro at this time of day. Even less could he imagine doing it again.

The train picked up speed without any of the passengers even swaying. Almost all the men around were holding their arms up in the air so that their hands were in full view. This habit was based on the fear of being accused of groping. Where twelve people were standing shoulder-to-shoulder on every square metre, it was impossible to say whose hand it was on your crotch. There was sexual molestation every day on the most crowded trains, and often the victims didn’t even have the chance to turn around. Once more and more men were also being attacked, women too had got into the habit of raising their hands. A metro trip was a silent agony, and the children suffered most of all in the fug of clothes smell, sweat and genital odour that swirled round their heads.

Jericho was wedged in place right by the doors. As a result, the pressure of the crowd shoved him out onto the platform first at the next stop. He briefly considered going to Houchezhan, where the maglev ran through, connecting Pudong Airport to the town of Suzhou in the west; it ran right past the World Financial Center and offered an invigoratingly luxurious ride, though the price of a ticket was exorbitant, which was why it mostly ran half empty. He’d be at his destination within a minute, but the problem was that getting to the maglev station would take just as long as going on with the metro to Pudong. Nothing would be gained. At the same moment, the mass of humanity pushed him onto the conveyor for Line 2, and he let them carry him on, comforted by the certain knowledge that the bloke who had snapped up the last COD from under his nose wouldn’t have got a hundred metres by now.

When he crept out of the air-conditioned passages at Pudong, it felt as though he’d been slapped in the face with a hot towel. The sun hung amidst streaks of high cloud, an unfriendly, glaring dot. Slowly it clouded over. He looked over to the World Financial Center, standing off to one side behind the Jin Mao Tower. Grand Cherokee had been walking along those tracks, as though on a tightrope? Incredible! Either he’d gone mad, or circumstances had left him no choice. He logged on to the internet and loaded up the eyewitness footage on his phone. The shot was very shaky, but zoomed in crisp and clear. It showed a tiny figure up on the tracks.

‘Diane,’ he said.

‘Hello, Owen. What can I do for you?’

‘Enhance the video I have open. Get me everything you can with contrast and depth of field. Freeze every three seconds.’

‘As you say, Owen.’

He walked over to the bottle-opener, crossed the shopping mall and went up to the Sky Lobby.

Tu Technologies

Tu’s company took up floors 74 through 77, with the hotel above and the viewing platform and roller-coaster crowning the lot. A woman smiled warmly at Jericho and wished him good morning. Everyone knew her. Her name was Gong Qing, China’s newest female superstar, who had won an Oscar last year and had other things to do with her time than checking who came and went at Tu Technologies. Tu’s staff were used to it, they simply returned her greeting and went right on past, while visitors were asked their name and invited to place their palm on the actress’s outstretched right hand. Jericho did this too. Briefly he felt the cool surface of Gong Qing’s transparent 3D projection box. The system read his fingerprints and the lines on his hand, scanned his iris and stored his voiceprint. Gong Qing confirmed that he was already stored in the system and didn’t trouble to ask his name. Instead, a friendly look of recognition flitted across her features.

‘Thank you, Mr Jericho. It’s a pleasure to see you again. Who would you like to see, please?’

‘I have an appointment with Tu Tian,’ Jericho said.

‘Go up to the seventy-seventh floor. Naomi Liu is waiting for you.’

In the lift, Jericho silently paid tribute to Tu’s trick of managing to get a different well-known face for the reception routine every three months. He wondered how much Tu had paid the actress, left the lift and stepped into a vast room that took up the whole floor. All four floors of Tu Technologies were modelled this way. There were no little territories of desks and offices, no empty lifeless corridors. The staff roved around a manifold workscape assisted by their luggage-like lavobots, which carried an interfaced computer in their innards along with storage space for whatever material a staffer might need for that day’s work. All the staffers had their own personal lavobot, which they would pick up at reception in the morning and which followed them around from desk to workplace and docked there. There were open workspaces, closed cubicles, team spaces for brainstorming, and glassed-in soundproofed offices fitted with adjustably tinted glass. In the middle of every floor was a lounge oasis with sofas, a bar and a kitchen, harking back to the fireplaces which early man had gathered around two millennia ago.

We don’t just give our staff work to do, Tu used to say. We give them a home to come to.

Naomi Liu sat at her desk flanked by a curved conical screen two metres high. The screen, like the surface of her desk, was transparent. Documents, diagrams and film clips ghosted across the surfaces, as Naomi opened or shut them with her fingertips or gave voice commands. When she spotted Jericho, she bared her pearl-white teeth in a smile.

‘And? Happy with your new holowall?’

‘I’m afraid not, Naomi. The holograms don’t carry your scent to me.’

‘You exaggerate so elegantly.’

‘Not at all. My senses are rather sharper than other people’s. Don’t forget, I’m a detective.’

‘Then of course you’ll be able to tell me what perfume I’m wearing today.’

She looked at him half expectantly, half mocking. Jericho didn’t even try to guess a brand name. All perfumes smelled the same to him, flowers ground to powder and dissolved in alcohol.

‘The best,’ he said.

‘That answer gets you through to see the boss. He’s in the mountains.’

The ‘mountains’ were a shapeless seating range in the back of the room, its elements ceaselessly adjusting with a life of their own to the bodies which climbed or sprawled over it. You could flop down, climb up or lounge about. The range was stuffed with nanobots which made sure that the range itself constantly shifted position, as did the bodies that had plumped down into it. Experts held that thought came more easily when the body changed posture more often. Practical results bore them out. Most of Tu Technologies’ trailblazing ideas had been hatched in the cradling dynamic of the mountains.

Tu was enthroned right at the top, with two project managers, looking like a proud, fat kid up there. When he spotted Jericho, he broke off the conversation, slid down and got to his feet puffing and grunting, making futile attempts to smooth his rumpled trousers. Jericho watched patiently. He was sure that the trousers had already looked like that first thing in the morning.

‘An iron would work wonders there,’ he said.

‘Why?’ Tu shrugged. ‘These are all right.’

‘Aren’t you a bit old to go climbing about like that?’

‘Really?’

‘You came down that slope about as elegantly as an avalanche, if you’ll pardon my saying so. You might slip a disc.’

‘My discs are not up for discussion. Come along.’

Tu led Jericho to one of the glassed-in offices and shut the door behind them. Then he turned a switch so that the glass tinted itself dark and the ceiling began to glow. In a few seconds, the walls were completely opaque. They took seats at the oval conference table, and Tu settled, an expectant look on his face.

‘So, what have you got?’

‘I don’t believe that the authorities are looking for Yoyo,’ Jericho said. ‘At least, not the usual security organs.’

‘Is she still at large?’

‘I imagine so, She’s gone to ground in Quyu.’

To his surprise, Tu nodded, as though he had expected nothing less. Jericho told him everything that had happened since last time they spoke. Afterwards, Tu sat there in silence for a while.

‘And what are your suspicions regarding this student who died?’

‘My guts tell me he was murdered.’

‘Well, hooray for your guts.’

‘He lived in Yoyo’s flatshare, Tian. He wanted to drum some money out of me for information which he probably didn’t even have. Maybe he was playing the same game with somebody else, who was less patient with that sort of thing. Or maybe he really did know something, and was got out of the way before he could tell anybody.’

‘You, for instance.’

‘Me, for instance.’ Jericho gnawed at his lip. ‘Well, it’s a theory. But it sounds plausible to me. Yoyo clears off, her flatmate makes gnomic remarks about knowing where she is, he wants money and then he falls off the roof. It rather raises the question of who helped him do that. The police? Not on your life! They would have put the kid through the wringer, not tossed him overboard. Apart from which, they would only have one reason to go after Yoyo, and that would be if they had exposed her. Has there been even a single policeman up here to see you?’

Tu shook his head.

‘They’d have come here, you can bet your life on that,’ Jericho said. ‘Yoyo works for you. They’d have been knocking at Chen’s door, and squeezing Yoyo’s flatmates for information. None of that happened. She must have been stepping on somebody else’s toes. Somebody less squeamish.’

Tu pursed his lips. ‘Hongbing and I could put a blog entry up on this forum she posted to. We could tell her—’

‘Forget it. Yoyo can do without you trying to make contact.’

‘I don’t understand. Why didn’t she at least send Hongbing some message?’

‘Because she’s frightened of dragging him into it. Right at the moment, she’s completely concentrated on just how much she can risk without bringing danger down upon herself and other people. How is she to know whether or not Chen’s under surveillance, or you? So she’s playing dead, and trying to get some information. She was safe in Quyu, for a while, but then she got word that I was on my way. Since then she knows that I’ve been there. And that someone was following me. With that, the Andromeda was done with as a hiding-place. She had to leave there as well, leaving no more sign than when she left her flat.’

‘This Zhao Bide,’ Tu said thoughtfully. ‘What part do you think he plays in all this?’

‘No idea. He was helping to set up the concert, so presumably he’s something to do with the Andromeda.’

‘A City Demon?’

‘He says no.’

‘On the other hand, he knows that Yoyo is a Guardian.’

‘Yes, but I get the impression that he knew nothing about the message she posted up on Brilliant Shit. It’s hard to place him. Definitely some of the Guardians are also City Demons. But not all the Demons are Guardians. Then there are people who help Yoyo without belonging to either group. Such as Zhao.’

‘And you think she trusts him?’

‘It looks as though he’d very much like her to. Mind you, she hasn’t told him where she ran off this time.’

‘She didn’t tell me or Chen either.’

‘Also true. That doesn’t get us any further though.’ Jericho looked at Tu reproachfully. ‘As you well know.’

Tu returned his gaze equably.

‘What are you getting at?’

‘Every time Yoyo has to run, the number of people she can trust with her whereabouts becomes smaller. But there have to be some who know quite well.’

‘And?’

‘And with all due respect, I’m wondering whether there’s anything you’ve been keeping from me.’

Tu steepled his fingers.

‘You think I know the rest of the Guardians?’

‘I think that you’re trying to protect Yoyo, and yourself as well. Let’s assume that strictly speaking you didn’t need my help at all. Nevertheless, you gave me this investigation to carry out so that you didn’t have to take action yourself. Nobody’s supposed to know that Tu Tian is unduly interested in a dissident’s whereabouts. Chen Hongbing on the other hand is Yoyo’s father, there’s no problem if he hires a detective.’

Jericho waited to see whether Tu would say anything about that, but all he did was take his crooked glasses off his nose and start polishing them on a corner of his shirt.

‘Let’s also assume,’ Jericho went on, ‘that you know where Yoyo skedaddles to when there’s trouble. And now Chen Hongbing comes along, knowing nothing whatsoever of all this, and asks you for help. Should you tell him what his daughter gets up to online, and that you know all about it? More than that, that you approve of what she does and you know where she’s hiding? He would go crazy, so you point him towards me and you also slip me the vital clue: the City Demons. By the way, Grand Cherokee Wang told me about them as well. That was how you told me where I should look. Your plan was simple enough: I find the girl, you keep a low profile, you don’t need to bare all to Chen, the father is reassured as to where his daughter is, and his friend can sleep soundly.’

Tu looked up briefly and kept on polishing his glasses, not saying a word.

‘For all that, what you didn’t know and still don’t, is who Yoyo’s enemies are, and what this whole thing’s about. That has unsettled you. Now that Yoyo has left the Andromeda, you’re groping around in the dark just like I am. Things have got complicated. You’re just as clueless and worried as Chen, and on top of that, someone’s dead.’

Breathe on glasses, polish with shirt.

‘Meaning that from now on, you really need me.’ Jericho leaned forward. ‘And this time it’s for a real investigation.’

Breathe, polish.

‘But to do that, I have to be able to investigate!’

With a dry snap, the arm of the glasses, patched already with sticky-tape, broke. Tu cursed under his breath, cleared his throat noisily and tried to put them back on the bridge of his nose, where they balanced like a car about to slip off the edge of a cliff.

‘I could recommend you an optician, by the way,’ Jericho added drily. ‘But first of all you have to tell me what you’ve been keeping quiet so far. Otherwise I can’t help you.’

Otherwise, he found himself thinking, I could fall off a roof myself soon enough.

Tu drummed on the table with the arm of his glasses.

‘I knew what I was doing when I hired you. It’s just that it wouldn’t do you any good if I give you the names of the other five Guardians. They’ll have gone to ground as well.’

‘For one thing, I have a trail to follow. For another, I have an ally.’

‘Zhao Bide?’

‘Even if he’s not a City Demon, he’ll know their faces. I need names and photos.’

‘Photos, that will take some time.’ Tu dug around in his ear. ‘You’ll get the names. Anyway, you know one of them already.’

‘Really?’ Jericho raised his eyebrows. ‘Who?’

‘His nickname’s Daxiong – Great Bear.’

‘The man-mountain with the cannonball head?’ He tried to imagine Daxiong being politically aware, armed with an intellect that could put the Party in uproar. ‘I can hardly believe that. I was convinced that his bike had a higher IQ than him.’

‘A lot of people think that,’ Tu commented. ‘A lot of people think that I’m a fat old coot who doesn’t have an optician and eats canned crap. Do you really think that Yoyo got away from you because the Great Bear was that dumb? He sent you off on your tour of the underworld, and you meekly followed his directions.’

Jericho had to admit that he was right.

‘Anyway, Tian, now you know why I don’t want to trouble my contacts,’ he said. ‘The police might be somewhat surprised. By now they’ll have found out that Wang was Yoyo’s flatmate. They’ll make inquiries and they’ll find out that I’m looking for the girl. Then they’ll start putting two and two together: a dead student, possibly murdered, a dissident with a record, a detective asking questions about one who’s also looking for the other. They shouldn’t be able to draw these conclusions; I want to be able to investigate discreetly. I might end up giving them the idea that they should pay more attention to Yoyo.’

‘I understand.’ Tu’s fingers glided across the tabletop, and the wall across from them became a screen. ‘Have a look at this, then.’

He saw the glass corridor and the door to the roller-coaster boarding platform, from the perspective of two security cameras.

‘How did you get the footage so quickly?’ asked Jericho, surprised.

‘Your wish was my command.’ Tu giggled. ‘The police put an electronic lock on it, but something like that’s not a problem for us. Our own surveillance network is linked in with the in-house cameras, apart from which we also hacked into some totally different systems. There would only have been trouble if they’d put a high-security block in place.’

Jericho considered this. Security blocks were commonplace. The fact that the officers in charge hadn’t bothered to install one told him something about how important they considered the case to be. Another indication that the police didn’t have Yoyo on their radar at all.

Two men appeared in the glass corridor. The shorter man walking in front had long hair and was fashionably dressed, with appliqués on his forehead and cheekbones. It was clearly Grand Cherokee Wang. A tall, slim man in a well-tailored suit walked behind him. There was something dandyish about his combed-back, brilliantined hair, thin moustache and tinted glasses. Jericho watched the way he turned his head about as he walked, scanning the whole corridor and resting his eyes for a fraction of a second on the security camera.

‘Smart operator,’ he muttered.

The two of them went to the middle of the corridor and disappeared from the corner of one camera’s view. The other showed the two of them entering the glass box of the control room with its console.

‘They talk for a while.’ Tu switched to fast-forward. ‘Nothing very much happens here.’

Jericho watched Grand Cherokee gesticulating with jerky speed, obviously showing the other man how the control unit worked. Then the two of them seemed to converse.

‘Now watch this,’ Tu said.

The film slowed down again to real time. The two men still stood next to one another. Grand Cherokee took a step towards the taller man, who stretched out an arm.

The next moment, the student collapsed, crashed his face into the edge of the console and fell to the ground. The other man took hold of him and pulled him back to his feet. Grand Cherokee staggered. The stranger held him tight. On a cursory examination, it must have looked as though he were holding up a friend who had had a sudden dizzy spell. A few seconds went by, then Grand Cherokee fell to his knees again. The tall man squatted down next to him and talked to him. Grand Cherokee doubled over and then lurched to his feet. A little while later the tall man left the control room, but then stopped and turned back. For the first time since he had stepped into the corridor, he turned his face to the camera.

‘Stop,’ said Jericho. ‘Can you blow him up?’

‘No problem.’ Tu zoomed the torso and face until they filled the screen. Jericho squinted. The man looked like Ryuichi Sakamoto playing the Japanese occupier in Bertolucci’s The Last Emperor.

‘Does he remind you of anybody?’ Tu asked.

Jericho hesitated. The resemblance to the Japanese actor–composer was striking. At the same time he had a creeping feeling that he was barking up the wrong tree. The film was ancient, and Sakamoto was well above seventy.

‘Not really. Send the picture over to my computer.’

Tu let the clip play on. Grand Cherokee Wang left the control room and then recoiled from the stranger. The two of them were lost to view for a while, then the tall man came back into sight. He went into the control room and started working at the console.

‘I’m wondering why the security guards didn’t react to that,’ Tu pronounced.

‘To what?’ Jericho asked.

‘What do you mean, to what?’ Tu stared at him. ‘To what you can see here!’

‘What does it look like?’

‘Well, the two of them had a spat, didn’t they?’

‘Did they?’ Jericho leaned back. ‘Aside from the fact that Wang fell to the ground twice, nothing happened at all. Maybe he’s doped up or drunk, or not feeling well. Our oily friend helps him back to his feet, that’s all. Also, the guards have a hundred storeys to watch here, you know how it works. They don’t spend their whole time staring at the screens. Anyway, is there any exterior footage?’

‘Yes, but it’s only put through to the Silver Dragon control room.’

‘Meaning that we can’t—’

‘That they can’t,’ said Tu. ‘We certainly can.’

Just at that moment the tall man left the control room, walked along the corridor and vanished into the next part of the building. Tu started another clip. The screen split up into eight smaller pictures, which taken together showed the whole course of the Silver Dragon’s track. One of the cameras showed Grand Cherokee standing at the end of the last carriage and looking behind himself again and again.

Then he stepped out onto the track.

‘Freeze,’ Jericho called. ‘I want to see his face.’

There was no doubt about it, Grand Cherokee’s face was frozen in a mask of panic. Jericho felt a mixture of fascination and horror.

‘Where does he want to go?’

‘He’s put some thought into it,’ Tu said in a low voice, as though talking out loud would make the terrified man on the tracks fall off. Meanwhile, the Silver Dragon left the platform and passed from one camera view to the next. ‘There are connections between the track and the building on the way round. With a little luck, he’ll reach one.’

‘He won’t though,’ said Jericho.

Tu shook his head silently. Horrified, they watched Grand Cherokee die. For a while neither said a word, until Jericho cleared his throat.

‘The time stamps,’ he said. ‘Once you compare them there’s no doubt that it was our friend who started the Silver Dragon. And something else strikes me. We only saw his face twice, and it wasn’t clear either time. He knew how to keep his back to the camera as well.’

‘And what conclusions do you draw from that?’ Tu asked hoarsely.

Jericho looked at him.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘But you and Chen – you’ll have to get used to the idea that Yoyo has a professional killer after her.’

No, he thought, wrong. Not just Yoyo.

Me too.

Tu Technologies was one of the few companies in Shanghai with its own private fleet of skymobiles. In 2016 the World Financial Center had been retro-fitted with a hangar for skycars above the offices on the seventy-eighth floor. It had room for two dozen vehicles, half belonging to the company that owned the building, most of these being huge VTOL craft for evacuation. Since Islamist terrorists had steered two passenger jets into the twin towers of the New York World Trade Center not even a quarter-century ago, there had been growing interest in skymobiles with every passing year, leading to the development of various models. By now nearly every newly built super-high-rise in China had flight decks. Seven of the vehicles belonged to the Hyatt: four elegant shuttles with steerable jets, two skybikes and a gyrocopter. Tu’s fleet consisted of two of the helicopter-like gyros and the Silver Surfer, a gleaming ultra-slim VTOL. Last year Jericho had had the treat of piloting it for a few hours: a reward for a job instead of him billing them. It was a wickedly expensive piece of technology. Now Tu was sitting in the pilot seat. He wanted to visit Chen Hongbing, and then had to meet some people for business in Dongtan City, a satellite city of Shanghai on Chongming Island in the Yangtze, which held the record as the world’s most environmentally friendly city. Tu Technologies had developed a virtual canal for the city, which was already threaded with dozens of real canals; their glass tunnel would create the illusion of gliding along through a town in the age of the Three Kingdoms, that beloved cradle of so many stories between the Han and the Jin dynasties.

‘We’ve become the world number-one polluters,’ Tu explained apropos of Dongtan. ‘Nobody poisons the planet as chronically as China does, not even the United States of America. On the other hand, you won’t find anyone else as thorough in applying alternative sustainable designs. Whatever we do, we seem to do it to the limit. That’s what we understand by yin and yang these days: pushing the very boundaries.’

The huge hangar was brightly lit. The in-house VTOLs rested one next to the other like stranded whales. As Tu steered his manta-flat vehicle over to the starting strip, the glass doors at the front of the hangar slid aside. He swung the machine’s four jets to horizontal and accelerated. A howling roar filled the hall, then the Silver Surfer shot out over the edge of the building and fell down towards the Huangpu. Two hundred metres above ground, Hu lifted the machine’s nose and steered it over the river in a wide curve.

‘I’ll give Hongbing a toned-down version,’ he said. ‘I’ll tell him that the police aren’t after Yoyo, but that she might believe they are. And that she’s still in Quyu.’

‘If she’s still in Quyu,’ Jericho threw in.

‘Whatever. What will you do next?’

‘Sift the net, hoping that Yoyo might have left another message. Take a good close look at a fast food chain called Wong’s World.’

‘Never heard of it.’

‘Probably only exists in Quyu. Yoyo’s waste-paper basket was spilling over with Wong’s World wrappers. Thirdly, I need information on the Guardians’ current projects. Meaning the full picture,’ he said with a sideways glance. ‘No cosmetic alterations, no cards up your sleeve.’

Tu looked like a deflated balloon. For the first time since Jericho had known him, he looked helpless. The glasses hung uselessly on his nose.

‘I’ll tell you what I know,’ he said penitently.

‘That’s good.’ Jericho pointed to the bridge of his nose. ‘Tell me, can you actually see anything with those things?’

Without a word, Tu opened a box in the middle of the instrument panel, took out a completely identical pair of glasses, put them on and threw the old ones behind him. Jericho spent a moment wondering whether his eyes had been playing tricks on him. Were there really a dozen more pairs stored there?

‘Why do you repair your glasses with sticky-tape if you’ve got so many you could just throw them away?’ he asked.

‘Why not? That pair was all right.’

‘It was a long way from – oh, never mind. As far as Hongbing is concerned, I think that sooner or later he’ll have to learn the whole truth. What do you say? In the end, he’s Yoyo’s father. He has a right to know.’

‘But not yet.’ Tu flew over the Bund, brought the Silver Surfer lower and turned south. ‘You have to treat Hongbing with kid gloves – be very careful what you say to him. And something else: this business with Grand Rococo’s mortal remains, or whatever the guy was called – well, I reckon there’s no chance of getting at his effects, but I’ll think a little more about it. You’re mostly interested in his phone, is that right?’

‘I want to know who he telephoned ever since Yoyo disappeared.’

‘Good, I’ll do what I can. Where should I drop you?’

‘At home.’

Tu bled off some speed and steered towards Luwan Skyport, only a few minutes from Xintiandi on foot. As far as the eye could see, the traffic was jammed solid in the streets, only the cabin cars on the COD track sped along. His fingers manipulated the holographic field with the navigation instruments, and the jets swung down to the vertical. They sank gently down as though in a lift. Jericho looked through the side window. Two city gyrocopters were parked at the edge of the strip, both painted with the markings that identified them as ambulances. Another was just taking off, lifted terrifyingly close to them and roared off towards Huangpu at full power. Jericho felt something in his hip pocket vibrate, took out his phone and saw that somebody was trying to reach him. He picked up the call.

‘Hey, little Jericho.’

‘Zhao Bide.’ Jericho clicked his tongue. ‘My new friend and confidant. What can I do for you?’

‘Don’t you miss Quyu?’

‘Give me a reason to miss the place.’

‘The crab baozi in Wong’s World is excellent.’

‘You found the shop, then.’

‘I even knew the place. I’d just forgotten what it was called. It’s in what you might call the civilised part of Xaxu. You must have driven this way when you came. It’s a sort of covered street market. Great big place.’

‘Good. I’ll have a look at it.’

‘Not so fast, Mr Detective. There are two markets. The branches are one block apart.’

‘There isn’t a third?’

‘Just these two.’

The Silver Surfer settled to a halt. Tu shut down the engines.

‘I’ll be needed in the Andromeda until seven,’ Zhao said. ‘At least until the Pink Asses have made it onstage, which isn’t always so straightforward. After that I’m free.’

Jericho considered. ‘Good. Let’s take up our posts. One of us watching each branch. Could be that Yoyo and her friends come by.’

‘And what’s that worth to me?’

‘But Zhao, little Zhao!’ Jericho expostulated. ‘Are those the words of a worried lover?’

‘They’re the words of a Quyu lover, you hopeless idealist. What about it? Do you want my help or don’t you?’

‘How much?’

Zhao named a price. Jericho haggled him down to half that, for form’s sake.

‘And where shall we meet?’ he asked.

He gave him directions. ‘Half past seven.’

‘I hope you understand that this is the most boring job in the world,’ Jericho said. ‘Sitting still and keeping your eyes peeled without nodding off to sleep.’

‘Don’t bust my balls about it.’

‘I absolutely shan’t. See you later.’

Tu gave him a sideways look.

‘Are you sure you can trust this guy?’ he asked. ‘Perhaps he’s talking himself up. Perhaps he just wants the money.’

‘Perhaps the Pope’s a pagan.’ Jericho shrugged. ‘I can’t do much wrong with Zhao Bide. All he has to do is keep his eyes open, nothing else.’

‘You know best. Stay available just in case I can find poor Grand Sheraton’s phone. Somewhere between his spleen and his liver.’

Quyu

When Jericho travelled back to the forgotten world, the traffic was flowing thick as honey. Pretty brisk by Shanghai standards, then. It meant getting home on time, a hot dinner and children sleepy but still awake so that Mum and Dad could put them to bed together.

On the other hand, if you came from Europe, and were used to things moving a bit faster, every minute on the streets of Shanghai was among the more irksome experiences that life had to offer. Statisticians claimed that the average car-driver spent six months of his urban life sitting at red lights, but that was nothing compared with the amount of life wasted in Shanghai traffic jams. Since CODs had ceased to be appropriate for a visit to Quyu, because they would stand out there like frogs with wings and arouse Yoyo’s suspicions, Jericho had no option but to collect his own car from the underground car park. In the afternoon he had sent Diane off in search of Zhao Bide on the net, with no result. There was no one by that name on record. Quyu didn’t exist, and neither did its inhabitants.

However, there were the other five Guardians, right there as expected, in the university lists.

Yoyo herself had left no new traces after her piece on Brilliant Shit. Once again Jericho wondered who would send a professional hitman after a dissident who, while she was plainly troublesome, wasn’t exactly high risk. Leaving aside the police, State elements were certainly involved. The Party was riddled with secret agents like mould in gorgonzola. No one, probably not even the highest officials, knew the full extent of their interpenetration. Against this background there was a covert operation whose goal lay in preventing the distribution of information that Yoyo should never have been able to get hold of.

Which called for more than killing the girl.

Because if her forbidden knowledge came from the net, it was very probably stored on her computer. A circumstance that didn’t do much to improve Yoyo’s chances of survival, but made it harder to kill her. As long as the whereabouts of the device was unclear, she couldn’t simply be gunned down in the street. The killer had to get hold of the computer, and not only that, he would have to find out whom she had passed her knowledge on to. His task was that of an epidemiologist: to curb the virus, bring all the infected parties together, eliminate them and, last of all, eliminate the first carrier.

The question was where the epidemiologist was at that moment.

Jericho had expected to be pursued. That morning the killer had still been travelling in a COD. He could have swapped vehicles by now, as Jericho had done. Zhao’s description of the man matched the video recordings from the World Financial Center, but Jericho doubted that the stranger would show himself to him. On the other hand, the guy didn’t know that Jericho had seen his face, thought he was undiscovered and was perhaps becoming reckless. Whatever the truth of the matter, he would have to be careful not to be too successful in his search for Yoyo, and deliver her up for the slaughter.

When he was two kilometres from Quyu, Tu sent him the promised photographs. Apart from ‘Daxiong’ Guan Guo, they showed two girls called ‘Maggie’ Xiao Meiqi and Yin Ziyi, and the male Guardians Tony Sung and Jin Jia Wei. Along with the video stills that showed Grand Cherokee’s killer, they formed the basis of his search. The hologoggles and scanners that he brought with him would constantly be able to draw on the data, and immediately demonstrate any agreement. Unfortunately the stills were of poor quality, and left barely any hope that the computer might recognise the killer in the crowd. But Jericho was firmly determined to pull out all the stops. With the scanners alone, he and Zhao had half a dozen reliable sleuths at their disposal, who would attack as soon as Yoyo or one of her people developed a craving for Wong’s World.

He took the turning for Quyu and stopped at the edge of the road to change the colour of the car. Within seconds, magnetic fields had altered the nano-structure of the paint particles. He’d shelled out a few yuan for his Toyota to have this chameleonlike ability. As he spoke to a client on the phone, the elegant silvery blue turned into a dingy greyish-brown with matt patches. The front part looked as if it had had a rotten paint job. Dark stains defaced the driver’s door and created the illusion of dents, with the paint flaking off at the edges. A jagged scratch appeared above the rear left mudguard. By the time Jericho crossed the border separating the realm of the spirits from the world of the living, his car was in a lamentable state – just right if he didn’t want to attract attention in the streets of Xaxu.

Zhao had given him a description of the route to the larger of the Wong markets. When he got there, the place was still operating at peak rate. By now he saw this part of Xaxu with different eyes. The largely intact appearance and the busy activity disguised the fact that a fracture in society ran through here, beyond which anyone not in the network lived under the orders of rival triads, whose leaders controlled the turf. In the shadow of the closed-down steelworks to which the district originally owed its existence, the drug trade flourished, money was laundered, prostitution thrived, people dulled their senses in Cyber Planet with virtual wonder-drugs. On the other hand, the triads barely showed the slightest interest in the vast steppes of misery that Jericho had driven through that morning. So Quyu was most honest where it was poorest, and anyone who tried to be honest stayed poor.

Wong’s World covered an area the size of a block, and presented itself as a patchwork of steaming cook-shops, piles of preserves on huge walls of shelves, stacked-up cages of clucking, hissing and whining animals, ramshackle stands and curtained-off booths where you could haggle for acid-trips, gambling debts or STDs. Jericho had no doubt that guns were flogged at Wong’s as well. It was incredibly cramped in there. Scraps of words and laughter flew in raging swarms above the market, along with the hubbub of Chinese pop music from clapped-out speakers. While he was keeping an eye out for Zhao, the man himself broke away from the crowd and came strolling across the street. Jericho lowered the window and beckoned him over. Zhao wore jeans that had seen better days, and a threadbare windcheater, but he still somehow managed to look neat and tidy. His hair fell silkily as he threw his head back and drank beer from a can that pearled with condensation. He had a battered backpack hung over his shoulder. Without any great haste, he approached Jericho’s car and bent down to him.

‘Not really your world, is it?’

‘I’ve been in other hells,’ Jericho said, nodding towards the interior of the car. ‘Come on, get in. There’s something I want to show you.’

Zhao walked around the car, opened the door and slumped onto the passenger seat. For a moment his profile shone in the light of a sunbeam battling its way through the billowing brew of clouds. Jericho looked at him and wondered why someone with his looks hadn’t ended up in fashion or movies long ago. Or had he seen Zhao in the fashion world? On television? In a magazine? Suddenly it seemed more than likely. Zhao, an ex-model, washed up and unwanted in Quyu.

The first raindrops exploded on the windscreen.

‘Everything okay?’ Zhao asked.

‘You?’

‘The guys are on-stage. Horrible car you’re driving, by the way. Vario-paint?’

Jericho was surprised. ‘You know your stuff.’

‘A bit. Don’t worry. The illusion is perfect.’ Zhao bent forwards and wiped a fleck from the instrument-panel with the ball of his hand. ‘Anybody would fall for it, as long as they didn’t get in and see the gleaming inner life.’

‘Tell me about the other market.’

‘Just half the size of this one. No chickens, no chicken-heads.’

Jericho reached behind him and handed Zhao a set of hologoggles. ‘Ever worn one of these?’

‘Of course.’ Zhao nodded at the branch of Cyber Planet. ‘Everyone in there wears one of these. You know what they call those shops around here?’

‘The Cyber Planets? No.’

‘Mortuaries. Once you’re in there you’re as good as dead. I mean, you’re breathing, but your existence is reduced to fundamental bodily functions. Eventually they carry you out because you’ve actually died. People are always dying in Cyber Planet.’

‘How many times have you been in there?’

‘A few.’

‘You don’t look that dead to me.’

Zhao looked at him from under lowered eyelids. ‘I’m above any kind of addiction, little Jericho. Explain these silly glasses to me.’

‘They make a biometric comparison. A hundred-and-eighty-degree panoramic scan. I’ve loaded photographs of Yoyo and five other Guardians onto the hard drive. If any one of the six comes within range, the goggles turn him red and send you a little beep. Loud enough to wake you up if you’ve drifted off under the weight of all that responsibility. The control on the left arm of the glasses also makes the outer surface reflective, if you want.’ Jericho dropped the goggles in Zhao’s lap and held one of the scanners up under his nose. ‘I’ve synchronised three of these things with your specs. You can take them wherever you like, but if possible try to put them somewhere you can’t actually see. Here’s the focus button, that’s how you activate the capture mechanism. They broadcast direct to your specs, and the scanner recordings appear at the bottom of your field of vision.’

‘I’m impressed,’ said Zhao, and looked as if he really was. ‘And how will we communicate?’

‘By mobile. Do you know where you’re going to be posting yourself?’

‘Opposite my branch there’s a Cyber Planet. Nice big windows to look out of.’

Jericho’s eye wandered to the Cyber Planet on the corner.

‘Good idea,’ he murmured.

‘Of course. Settle yourself in, pay for twenty-four hours, it’s more comfortable than sitting in a car. If you sit with the specs on your nose by the window, everyone’s going to think you’re shagging a hooker from Mars with four tits. There are snacks and drinks, only moderately palatable. You should really try these crab baozis, man. The food in Wong’s World is good and cheap.’

‘Do you have relatives in there?’ Jericho asked derisively.

‘No, but I do have taste buds. Would you mind driving me to my stake-out?’

Jericho started the car and had Zhao direct him to his Wong branch. On the way they passed tea-rooms and a Japanese noodle-bar, where the men were playing cards and Chinese chess, or gesticulating wildly as they talked at each other, many of them naked to the waist and with their heads close shaven.

‘These gentlemen are the Xaxus,’ Zhao said disparagingly. ‘They divide the day up between them.’

‘No ambition to saw a bit off for yourself?’

‘What makes you say that?’

‘What’s left for someone like you after they’ve divided the day up among themselves?’

‘It doesn’t matter.’ Zhao shrugged. ‘I help stoned idiots onto the stage and back down again. That’s a job too.’

‘Don’t get it.’

‘What’s not to get?’

‘I don’t understand what someone like you is doing in Quyu. You could live anywhere else.’

‘You think so?’ Zhao shook his head. ‘No one here can live anywhere else. No one wants us to live anywhere else.’

‘Quyu isn’t a prison.’

‘Quyu is a concept, Jericho. Two-thirds of humanity now lives in cities, the countryside’s been depopulated. Eventually all the cities will merge into one. They’re like carcinomas, sick, proliferating tissue, only the nuclei are healthy, nestling in deserts of despair. The nuclei are sanctuaries, temples of superior development. Human beings live there, real human beings. Guys like you. The rest are cattle, talking animals. Take a look around you. The people here are vegetating at the level of tree-dwellers, they procreate, demolish the planet’s resources, kill each other or die of various illnesses. They’re the rejects of creation. The failed part of the experiment.’

‘And you’re part of it too, aren’t you? Or have I misunderstood something?’

‘Oh, Jericho.’ Zhao smiled smugly. ‘The universe has its brightly lit centres, and why? Because darkness prevails in between. Have you ever heard that we must shed light on the darkness of the universe? It’s impossible. Any attempt to provide wealth for humanity as a whole is doomed to failure, it just means that everyone’s worse off. The superior can’t become like the inferior, it must separate itself off if it is to shine. There is no humanity, Jericho, not in the sense of a homogeneous species. There are winners and losers, the ones in the loop and the ones out of it, some on the bright side and most on the dark. The split is complete. No one wants to integrate the Xaxus of this world, break down their boundaries. Oh, and you’ve got to turn left here.’

Jericho said nothing. The Toyota clattered along a wide, badly paved road, lined with workshops and dirty brick houses. Where Wong’s World and the branch of Cyber Planet stood face to face, it opened up into a dusty square and revealed the grounds of the steelworks behind it. The huge blast furnace loomed up above the building.

‘You’re a mystery to me, Zhao. Who are you really?’

‘What do you think?’

‘I haven’t a clue.’ Jericho looked at him. ‘You seem to have a weakness for Yoyo, but when it comes to finding her, you let me pay you as if you were some kind of pimp. You live here and despise your own people. Somehow you don’t fit with Quyu.’

‘Very comforting,’ Zhao sneered. ‘Like telling a haemorrhoid it’s doing a power of good to the arsehole it’s grown in.’

‘Were you born in Quyu, or did you end up here?’

‘The latter.’

‘Which means you can leave again.’

‘Where to?’

‘Hmm.’ Jericho thought for a moment. ‘There are possibilities. Let’s see how our short-term partnership develops.’

Zhao tilted his head and raised an eyebrow.

‘Did I understand you correctly? Are you offering me a job?’

‘I don’t take on any regular employees, but I put teams together as the job requires. You’re definitely intelligent, Zhao. I was very impressed by your surprise attack in the Andromeda, you’re in good physical condition. I can’t exactly claim that I like you, but we don’t have to walk down the aisle together. It could be that I need you from time to time.’

Zhao’s eyes narrowed.

Then he smiled.

At that moment Jericho had a sudden déjà vu. He saw the familiar in the alien. It spread like a drop of dark ink in a clear liquid, quickly and in all directions, so that a moment later he couldn’t have said what the impression related to. Everything around him seemed to be striving for resolution, as in a film he’d once seen, although he couldn’t remember the ending. No, not a film, more of a dream, an illusion. A reflection in the water that you destroyed as you tried to capture it.

Quyu. The market. Zhao by his side.

‘Everything okay?’ Zhao asked again.

‘Yes.’ Jericho rubbed his eyes. ‘We shouldn’t waste any time. Let’s get started.’

‘Why don’t you do the job with one of your teams?’

‘Because the job consists in protecting a dissident whose identity no one knows, apart from a handful of initiates. The fewer people get involved with Yoyo, the better.’

‘Does that mean you haven’t talked about the girl to anyone but me?’

‘No. I’ve met her flatmates.’

‘And?’

‘They don’t give much away. Do you know them?’

‘I’ve seen them. Yoyo says they know nothing about her double life. One of them isn’t interested in her, the other’s pissed off that she isn’t interested in him. He’s inclined to throw his weight about.’

‘You mean Grand Cherokee Wang?’

‘I think that’s what he calls himself. Ludicrous name. Windbag. What have they told you?’

‘Nothing. Wang’s not in a position to tell anybody anything. He’s dead.’

‘Really?’ Zhao frowned. ‘Last time I saw him he looked very much alive. He was boasting about some kind of roller-coaster he owns.’

‘He didn’t own anything.’ Jericho stared out across the crowded market. ‘I won’t try to fool you, Zhao. What we’re doing here can get dangerous. For everyone involved. Yoyo seems to have crossed some people who walk over corpses. That was why Wang had to die. I thought you should know that.’

‘Hmm. Okay.’

‘Are you still up for it?’

Zhao let a moment pass. He suddenly looked embarrassed.

‘Listen, about the money—’

‘It’s fine.’

‘No, I don’t want you to get the wrong impression. I’d help you even if there was nothing in it for me. It’s just – I need the money, that’s all. I mean, you saw those guys at the edge of the street, right?’

‘Dividing up the day?’

‘It would be easy to join in with that. Something is always coming up. Most people live by licking those guys’ boots. You get me?’

‘I think so.’

‘And they don’t do any of that for nothing, do they?’

‘Listen, Zhao, you don’t have to apol—’

‘I’m not apologising. I’m just setting you straight on a few things.’ Zhao stuffed the specs and scanner in his rucksack. ‘How long do you plan to keep this stake-out going?’

‘As long as necessary. I once spent three weeks outside a single front door.’

‘What, and she didn’t invite you in?’ Zhao opened the car door. ‘Well, somehow that fits.’

‘What do you mean?’

Zhao shrugged. ‘Has anyone ever told you you look like the loneliest man in the world? They haven’t? Take care of yourself, first-born!’

A thousand answers collected on the tip of Jericho’s tongue, but unfortunately not one that would have made him look as if he was in charge. He watched Zhao strolling unhurriedly across to Wong’s World, then turned round and drove back to his branch, where he parked the Toyota so that the scanner below the rear-view mirror captured part of the market. Then he got out, walked around the square and decided on two houses whose positions struck him as right. Each one had plenty of possible locations for the additional scanners. He fixed one under a crumbling window ledge, another in a crack in a wall. The devices, black, gleaming, pea-sized spheres, automatically probed their surroundings, and extended tiny telescopic legs to wedge themselves into the stone.

Wong’s World was covered.

A gust of wind ran through the clapped-out canyons of the triad city, tugging at awnings, clothes and nerves. By now it was unbearably sultry, the sky looked like a shroud. A few single, fat drops fell, harbingers of the deluge announced by the far-away rumble. Canopies flapped. Jericho put on his specs and stepped into the foyer of Cyber Planet.

In principle all the branches of the chain looked the same. You were welcomed by standardised machines lined up like terraced houses, with slits for cash and electronic interfaces for remote withdrawals. Two guards chatted behind a counter, never glancing at the monitors. A lot of the guests were regulars, or so it seemed. They didn’t spend long at the machines, but looked into eye-scanners, waited till the armoured glass doors opened, and stepped into the area behind with the hesitant gait of the newly blind.

Inside, games consoles and transparent couches were lined up side by side, each fitted with hologoggles. There was a shelf with room for two dozen full-motion suits, rings three metres in diameter, within which you could dangle in a sensor suit, in order to enjoy complete freedom of movement. Far at the back there were lockable cabins, toilets, showers and sleeping-capsules. The rear wall of the huge space was occupied by a kind of supermarket with a bar. Floor-to-ceiling glass windows gave a view of the street and the market. Apart from the guards in the foyer, there was no staff. Everything was automated. Theoretically, you need never leave the Cyber Planet, as long as you were prepared to be satisfied with fast food and soft drinks for the rest of your life. The chain drew you in with special offers of up to a year in which you had to do nothing other than wander through the virtual world wearing a pair of goggles, whether as a passive onlooker or an active designer. You had dreams and nightmares, lived and died.

Jericho paid for twenty-four hours. About half of the couches were occupied when he entered the room, most of them along the big display window. For impenetrable reasons, most of the visitors wanted to be close to the street, even though they were completely cut off from the outside world by goggles and headphones. Jericho spotted an empty berth from which he had a view of Wong’s World and the crossroads near where his car was parked, stretched out and tapped the arm of his goggles. The outside glass of the lenses turned into a mirror. He jammed the remote receiver of his phone in his ear and got ready for a long night.

Or several.

It was possible that Yoyo was miles away by now, leaving him and Zhao sitting like idiots in a nightmare delivery station.

He yawned.

All of a sudden it was as if all the light had been sucked from the streets. The storm front drew over Quyu, releasing streams of pitch-black water. Within seconds rubbish was floating down the road, people were running wildly in all directions, shoulders hunched, as if that were any protection against being completely drenched. The onslaught of a quick succession of violent thunder crashes edged closer. Jericho looked into a sky split by electricity.

A foretaste of destruction.

After an hour in which the street turned into a miniature version of the Yangtze and banked-up garbage formed a dinky little model of the Three Gorges Dam, it had passed. As quickly as it had come, the storm moved on. The murky broth drained away, leaving a vista of rubbish and drowned rats against a theatrical background of rising steam. Another hour later a glowing magenta ball had won its battle with the clouds and wasted its fire on streets that were free of tourists. Wong’s World welcomed a throng of pale figures, women peeped from tents and shacks, the stale promise of the night, or positioned themselves, scantily dressed, at the crossroads.

At around eleven o’clock a young man on the couch next to Jericho groaned, pulled the goggles from his eyes, sat up and vomited a stream of watery puke between his legs. The couch’s self-cleaning systems hummed immediately into action, sucked the stuff away and flooded the surface with disinfectant.

Jericho asked if he could do anything.

The boy, who could hardly have been more than sixteen, considered him with a mumbled curse and staggered to the bar. His body was emaciated, his eyes no longer focused on the presence of things. After a while he came back, chewing something, probably barely aware of what exactly it was. Jericho felt compelled to point out that he was dehydrated, and buy him a bottle of water, which the boy would presumably chuck in his face by way of thanks. If anything at all was left in his eyes, it was the smouldering aggression of those who fear the loss of their last illusions.

The scanners were silent.

Montes Alpes, The Moon

South-east of the basin that marked the start of the Vallis Alpina, a row of striking peaks stretched down to the Promontorium Agassiz, a mountainous cape on the edge of the Mare Imbrium. Overall, the formation looked more like the crusts thrown up by terrestrial subduction zones than the ring range normally found on the Moon. It was only from a great altitude that the weird reality was revealed, that the Mare Imbrium, like all maria, was itself a crater of enormous size, produced in the early days of the satellite more than three billion years ago, when its mantle had still been liquid under its hardening surface. Cataclysmic impacts had torn the young crust open. Lava had risen from the interior, flowed into the basins and created those dark basalt plains which led astronomers like Riccioli to conclude the presence of lunar seas. In reality the complete, 250-kilometre alpine chain marked the tenth part of one of those circular ramparts so colossal that giant craters in the format of a Clavius, Copernicus or Ptolemy shrank to mere pockmarks in comparison.

The mightiest of all these alpine accumulations was Mons Blanc. At a height of three and a half thousand metres, it fell short of its terrestrial counterpart, but that did not detract from its titanic nature. Not only could you see the vast expanse of the south-western Mare Imbrium from its slopes, but once you were up here you felt a bit closer to the stars, almost as if they could suddenly spot you, and greet you appropriately.

And greet you they did. In fact when Julian, in the sudden and inexplicable hope of seeing the glowing trail of a shooting star, raised his eyes to Cassiopeia, billions of indifferent eyes momentarily switched places to unite in cosmic reproach, forming a single, clearly legible word: IDIOT! Subtext: you don’t get shooting stars without an atmosphere, if anything just asteroids briefly illuminated by sunlight, so please try to think precisely next time!

Julian paused. Of course the sky formed the word only very briefly, so that it was not noticed by Mimi Parker, Marc Edwards, Eva Borelius or Karla Kramp; nor by Nina Hedegaard, who was leading her little community of mountain-climbers – in so far as the conquest of a few hundred metres of gently sloping terrain justified the term mountain-climbing. Resting not far away was the Callisto, which had brought them the forty kilometres from the hotel to here, just below the peak: a clumsy jet shuttle reminiscent of a vastly inflated bumblebee. Julian knew that generations of future tourists would be disappointed by the design of the moon vehicles. But there was no reason for aerodynamics in a vacuum, unless—

Unless you decided to design them aerodynamically anyway, for purely aesthetic reasons.

The thought was enticing, but Julian wasn’t in a mood to be seduced. His thought processes were obstructed by shooting stars, even though he wasn’t really interested in the stupid things. What had made him think of them? Had he thought of them, in fact, or had he been thinking about transient light phenomena in general? Darting through his brain, leaping from the constant particle-flow of his thoughts, expression of a more complex whole. He tracked down the image, pursued it back through the course of the day to the early hours of the morning, condensed it, forced it into certain coordinates, gave it a place in space and time: very early morning, just before leaving his suite, a glimpse, a flash—

All of a sudden he remembered.

A flash on the outside left edge of the window that took up the wall of the living room facing the gorge. Something darting from right to left, like a shooting star, but perhaps you just had to be very tired and sleep-deprived not to work out what it really was. And God knows, he had been tired! But Julian’s mind was like a film archive, not a scene went missing. In retrospect he saw that the phenomenon was neither virtual in nature nor a product of his imagination, but was extremely real in origin, which meant that he actually had seen something, on the far side of the valley, level with the magnetic rail tracks, even more or less at the height of the rails, where the tracks curved northwards—

He had seen the Lunar Express.

He stopped, dumbfounded.

‘—much weirder shapes than we’re used to on Earth,’ Nina Hedegaard was explaining, as she walked towards a basalt structure that looked like a Cubist statue. ‘The reason is that there is no wind to wear away the rock, so nothing erodes. Consequently what is produced—’

He had seen the train! More of an after-image, but it couldn’t have been anything else, and it had been on the way to Gaia.

To the hotel.

‘Interesting, what every culture has seen in the Moon,’ Eva was saying. ‘Did you know that many Pacific tribes still worship this great lump of rock as a fertility god?’

‘A fertility god?’ Hedegaard laughed. ‘The tiniest protozoon wouldn’t survive up here.’

‘I’d have put my money on the Sun,’ said Mimi Parker. Her tone contained a certain contempt for all native cultures because their representatives hadn’t come into the world as respectable Christians. ‘The Sun as a giver of life, I mean.’

‘In tropical regions it’s hard to see it that way,’ Eva replied. ‘Or in the desert. The sun beats down ruthlessly upon you, twelve months without a break; it scorches harvests, dries up rivers, kills people and animals. But the Moon brings coolness and freshness. The fleeting moisture of the day condenses into dew, you can rest and sleep—’

‘With each other,’ Karla finished her sentence.

‘Exactly. Amongst the Maoris, for example, the man only had the job of holding the woman’s vagina open with his penis long enough for the moonbeams to penetrate it. It wasn’t the man who got the woman pregnant, it was the Moon.’

‘Take a look. The old whore.’

‘My God, Karla, how churlish,’ Edwards laughed. ‘I think that’s not incompatible with the idea of immaculate conception.’

‘Oh, please!’ Mimi fumed. ‘Perhaps a primitive version of it.’

‘Why primitive?’ asked Kramp, waiting to pounce.

‘Don’t you think that’s primitive?’

‘That the Moon gets women pregnant? Yeah. As primitive as the idea that some unholy spirit is poking around on Earth and selling the result as an immaculate conception.’

‘There’s no comparison!’

‘Why not?’

‘Because – well, because there just isn’t. One’s a primitive superstition, the other is—’

‘I just want to understand.’

‘With all due respect, are you seriously doubting—?’

Hang on. The Lunar Express? Was that the one they’d arrived on? There was a second one, after all, parked at the Pole, which was only to be used if tourist numbers exceeded the capacity of the first. Had somebody arrived on the replacement train, at a quarter past five in the morning?

And why didn’t he know anything about it?

Had Hanna seen anything?

‘Plato must be behind that somewhere,’ said Edwards, trying to calm things down. ‘Is the curvature too big?’

‘It’s not that,’ said Nina. ‘You’d be able to make out the top edge of the crater from here, except that the flank facing us is in shadow at the moment. Black against black. But if you turn round, you can make out the Vallis Alpina to the north-east.’

‘Oh, yes! Fantastic.’

‘It’s pretty long,’ said Mimi.

‘A hundred and thirty-four kilometres. Half a Grand Canyon. Come over this way a bit. Up here. Take a look.’

‘Where to?’

‘Follow my outstretched finger. That bright dot.’

‘Hey! That couldn’t possibly be—?’

‘Certainly is,’ cried Marc. ‘Our hotel!’

‘What? Where?’

‘There.’

‘To be perfectly honest, I can see nothing but sun and shade.’

‘No, there’s something there!’

A babble of words, a confusion of thoughts. It could only have been the second train. On closer reflection, hardly surprising. Lynn and Dana Lawrence were taking care of everything. The hotel was their domain. What did he know? Food, oxygen and fuel had arrived during the night. He was a guest like all the others, he could consider himself lucky that everything was working so smoothly. Be proud! Be proud of Lynn, whatever dire predictions Tim had been gloomily coming up with. Ridiculous, that boy! Did someone stressed build hotels like Gaia?

Or was Lynn another reflection on his retina, whose true nature escaped him?

Unbelievable! Now he was starting to do the same thing himself.

‘Julian?’

‘What?’

‘I suggested that we fly back.’ Nina’s sweet conspiratorial smile behind her helmet could be heard in every word. ‘Marc and Mimi want to get to the tennis court before dinner, and apart from that we’ll have plenty of time to freshen up.’

Freshen up. Cute code-words. His right hand rose mechanically to stroke his beard, and instead rubbed against the bottom edge of his visor.

‘Yes, of course. Let’s go.’

‘Maybe you’ve seen me in more spectacular settings before. And thought they were real, even though your rational mind told you it couldn’t all be real. But then that’s the illusionist’s job, tricking your reason. And believe me, modern technology can produce any kind of illusion.’

Finn O’Keefe spread his arms as he walked slowly on.

‘But illusions can’t produce emotions of the kind that I’m feeling right now. Because what you’re seeing here isn’t a trick! It’s by some way the most exciting place I’ve ever been, far more spectacular than any film.’

He stopped and turned towards the camera, with the radiant Gaia in the background.

‘Before, when you wanted to fly to the Moon, you had to sit in a cinema seat. Today you can experience what I’m experiencing. You can see the Earth, set in such a wonderful starry sky, as if you were seeing all the way to the edge of the universe. I could spend hours trying to describe my feelings to you, but I,’ he smiled, ‘am only Perry Rhodan. So let me express myself in the words of Edgar Mitchell, the sixth man to set foot on the satellite, in February 1971: Suddenly, from behind the rim of the Moon, in long, slow-motion moments of immense majesty, there emerges a sparkling blue and white jewel, a light, delicate sky-blue sphere laced with slowly swirling veils of white, rising gradually like a small pearl in a thick sea of black mystery. It takes more than a moment to fully realise this is Earth… home. A sight that changed me for ever.’

‘Thanks,’ Lynn exclaimed. ‘That was great!’

‘I don’t know.’ Finn shook his head. The banal realisation dawned on him that shaking your head in a spacesuit doesn’t communicate anything to anybody, because your helmet doesn’t shake with it. Peter Black checked the result on the display of his film camera. O’Keefe’s face was clearly recognisable through his closed visor. He had taken off the gold metallised UV filter, as the surroundings would otherwise have been reflected in it. In spite of his layered contact lenses he wouldn’t be able to walk around in the open for very long. And it certainly wasn’t a good idea to look into the Sun.

‘No, it’s great,’ Black agreed.

‘I think the quote’s too long,’ said Finn. ‘Far too long. A real sermon – I nearly dozed off.’

‘It’s sacred.’

‘No, it’s just too long, that’s all.’

‘We’ll cut in shots of the Earth,’ said Lynn. ‘But if you like we’ll do an alternative shot. There’s another quote from James Lovell: People on Earth don’t understand what they have. Maybe because not many of them have the opportunity to leave it and then come back.’

‘Lovell won’t do,’ said Black. ‘He never set foot on the Moon.’

‘Is that so important?’ asked O’Keefe.

‘Yes, and there’s another reason why not. He was the commander of Apollo 13. Anybody remember? Houston, we have a problem. Lovell and his people nearly snuffed it.’

‘Didn’t Cernan say something clever?’ Lynn asked. ‘He was a pretty good talker.’

‘Nothing comes to mind.’

‘Armstrong?’

‘It’s one small step for—’

‘Forget it. Aldrin?’

Black thought for a moment. ‘Yeah, something short too. He who has been to the Moon has no more goals on Earth.’

‘That sounds a bit fatalistic,’ Finn complained.

‘What happened to the monkeys?’ Heidrun’s voice joined in. O’Keefe saw her coming down the hill in front of Shepard’s Green. Even faceless and armoured her elfin figure was unmistakable.

‘What monkeys?’ Lynn’s laugh was slightly too shrill.

‘Didn’t you send monkeys up at some point? What did they say?’

‘I think they spoke Russian,’ said Black.

‘What are you doing here?’ O’Keefe grinned. ‘Don’t you fancy golf?’

‘I’ve never fancied golf,’ Heidrun announced. ‘I just wanted to watch Walo falling in the dirt as he took his swing.’

‘I’ll tell him.’

‘He knows. Didn’t you boast about beating me at swimming, big-mouth? You’d have the opportunity.’

‘What, now?’

Instead of answering, she waved to him and skipped away on her gazelle-like legs.

‘We’ve got filming to do,’ he called after her; it was as superfluous as his head-shaking, since radio contact remained constant only while visual contact was maintained.

‘Dinner’s on me if you win,’ she whispered, a small, white snake in his ear. ‘Schnitzel and röstis.’

‘Hey, Finn?’ said Lynn.

‘Mm-hm?’

‘I think that’s a wrap.’ Was he wrong, or did she sound nervous? Throughout the whole shoot she’d had a tense expression on her face. ‘I think the Mitchell quote is fine.’

O’Keefe saw Heidrun setting off along the other side of the gorge.

‘Yes,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘Me too, as a matter of fact.’

Nina Hedegaard was freshening herself up, and freshening Julian up as well. He lay on his back as she guided him like a joystick. He didn’t have to do much more than put his arms around her buttocks and contract his own from time to time, to establish counter-pressure – at least that was normally how things worked, but at the moment her soft, tanned, golden body weighed only nine and a half kilos, and threatened to bounce away whenever he thrust too enthusiastically. On the Moon, taking possession of strategically crucial millimetres called for basic knowledge of applied mechanics: where exactly to grip, what contribution the muscles had to make – biceps, triceps, pectoralis major – holding the hip bones like a hinge, drawing them to him, pushing them away at a precisely calculated angle, then bringing them back down… It was all frustratingly complicated. They managed to crack the problem at one point, but Julian didn’t feel entirely comfortable. As Hedegaard slowly writhed her way towards a G-spot tornado measuring 5 on the Fujita scale, he was lost in idiotic thoughts, like the consequences of sex on the Moon if a few meddlesome beams in New Zealand had been enough to make little Maoris. Could they expect decuplets? Would Nina squat like a termite queen in the rocky seclusion of the Gaia Hotel, her abdomen monstrously swollen, popping out a human child every four seconds, or would she simply burst?

He stared at her glimmering, carefully trimmed, downy thicket and saw tiny trains driving through it, glittering reflections on spun gold, while his own Lunar Express valiantly stoked the engine. Hedegaard started moaning in Danish, usually a good sign, except that today it sounded somehow cryptic to his ears, as if he were to be sacrificed on the altar of her desire, to bring a Julian or a Juliana into the world as quickly as possible, a future Master or Miss Orley, and he started feeling uneasy. She was twenty-eight years younger than him. He hadn’t asked her for ages what she expected from all this, not least because in the few private moments that they enjoyed together he hadn’t had time to ask any questions, so quickly had they leapt out of their clothes, but eventually he would have to ask her. Above all he would have to ask himself. Which was much worse, because he already knew the answer, and it wasn’t that of a sixty-year-old man.

He tried to hold out, then he reached his orgasm.

The climax peaked in a brief erasure of all thoughts, swept clean the convolutions of his brain and reinforced the certainty that old was still twenty years older than he was. For a moment he felt immersed in the pure, delicious moment. Nina snuggled up to him, and his suspicion immediately welled up again. As if sex were merely the pleasurable preamble to a stack of small print, a magnificent portal leading inevitably to the nursery, the most perfidious kind of ambush. He looked helplessly at the blonde shock of hair on his chest. Not that he wanted rid of her. He actually didn’t want her to go. It would have been enough for her simply to turn back into the astronaut whose job it was to entertain his guests without that moist promise in her eyes that she would never leave him, that henceforth she would always be there for him, for a whole lifetime! He ran his pointed fingers through the down on the back of her neck, embarrassed by his own reaction.

‘I ought to get back to the control room,’ he murmured.

His suggestion met with harsh, muted sounds.

‘Okay, in ten minutes,’ he agreed. ‘Shall we shower?’

In the bathroom the general luxury of the equipment continued. Tropically warm rain sprang from a generously curved shower-head, droplets so light that they floated down rather than falling. Hedegaard insisted on soaping him, and concentrated an excess of foam on a small if expanding area. His concern about her excessive demands made way for fresh arousal; the shower cabin was spacious and resplendent with all kinds of handy grips, Hedegaard pressed herself against him and he into her and – bang! – another thirty minutes had passed.

‘I’ve really got to go now,’ he said into his fluffy towel.

‘Will we meet up again later?’ she asked. ‘After dinner?’

He had towel in his eyes, towel in his ears. He didn’t hear her, or at least not loudly enough, and when he was about to ask what she’d said she was on the phone to Peter Black about something technical. He slipped quickly into jeans and T-shirt, kissed her quickly on the cheek and disappeared before she could end the call.

Seconds later he stepped into the control room and found Lynn in a hushed conversation with Dana Lawrence. Ashwini Anand was planning routes for the coming day on a three-dimensional map. Half the room was dominated by a holographic wall, whose windows showed the public areas of the hotel from the perspective of surveillance cameras. Only the suites were unobserved. In the pool, Heidrun, Finn and Miranda were having a diving competition, watched by Olympiada Rogacheva, whose husband was having a weight-lifting contest with Evelyn Chambers in the gym. The outside cameras showed Marc Edwards and Mimi Parker playing tennis, or at least Julian assumed that it was Marc and Mimi, while the golf-players on the far side of the gorge were just setting off for home.

‘Everything okay with you guys?’ he asked in a pointedly cheerful voice.

‘Great.’ Lynn smiled. Julian noticed that she looked somehow chalky, as if she were the only person in the room being illuminated by a different light source. ‘How was your trip?’

‘Argumentative. Mimi and Karla were discussing the copulative habits of higher beings. We need a telescope on Mons Blanc.’

‘So you can spy on them?’ Lawrence asked without a hint of amusement.

‘Hell no, just to get a better view of the hotel. God! I thought everyone would be so awestruck up here that they’d be falling into each other’s arms, and instead they’re banging on about the Holy Ghost.’ His eye wandered to the window that showed the station. ‘Has the train left again?’ he asked casually.

‘Which train?’

‘The Lunar Express. The LE-2, I mean, the one that came in last night. Has it set off again already?’

Dana stared at him as if he had thrown a pile of syllables at her feet and demanded that she cobble a sentence together.

‘The LE-2 hasn’t arrived.’

‘It hasn’t?’

Anand turned round and smiled. ‘No, that was the LE-1, the one you arrived on yesterday.’

‘I know. And where has it been? In the meantime?’

‘In the meantime?’

‘What are you actually talking about?’ Lynn asked.

‘Well, about—’ Julian hesitated. The screen really did show only one train. He felt a dark premonition creeping up on him, that it was the same Lunar Express that had brought them here. Which led to the reverse conclusion that—

‘A train did pull in this morning,’ he insisted defiantly.

His daughter and Dana exchanged a swift glance.

‘Which one?’ asked Dana, as if walking on glass.

‘That one there.’ Julian pointed impatiently at the screen.

Silence.

‘Certainly not,’ Anand tried again. ‘The LE-1 hasn’t left the station since it got here.’

‘But I’ve seen it.’

‘Julian—’ Lynn began.

‘When I was looking out of the window!’

‘Dad, you can’t have seen it!’

If she had told him she’d temporarily lent the train to a dozen aliens, he would have been less concerned. Only a few hours ago he would have put it all down to a hallucination. Not any more.

‘It’s one thing after another,’ he sighed. ‘Today I met Carl Hanna, okay? At half past five in the corridor, and then—’

‘I’m sorry, but what were you doing in the corridor at half past five?’

‘Neither here nor there! Earlier, anyway—’

Hanna? Exactly, Hanna! He would have to ask Hanna. Perhaps he had seen that ominous train. After all, he had been down there before him, exactly at the same time as—

Just a moment. Hanna had come towards him from the station.

‘No,’ he said to himself. ‘No, no.’

‘No?’ Lynn tilted her head on one side. ‘What do you mean, no?’

Mad! Completely absurd. Why would Hanna be taking secret joyrides on the Lunar Express?

‘Is it possible that you’ve been dreaming?’ she continued. ‘Hallucinating?’

‘I was wide awake.’

‘Fine, you were awake. To get back to the question of what you were doing at half past five—’

‘Simple insomnia! God almighty, I went for a walk.’

His eye scoured the monitor wall. Where was the Canadian? There, in the Mama Quilla Club. Slouching, sipping cocktails, on a sofa, with the Donoghues, Nairs and Locatellis.

‘Maybe Julian’s right,’ Dana Lawrence said thoughtfully. ‘Maybe we really did miss something.’

‘Nonsense, Dana, no way.’ Lynn shook her head. ‘We both know that no train left. Ashwini knows that too.’

‘Do we really know?’

‘Nothing was delivered, no one went anywhere.’

‘Easy to check.’ Dana walked to the monitor wall and opened a menu. ‘We just have to look at the recording.’

‘Ridiculous! Absolutely ridiculous!’ Lynn was getting tense. ‘We don’t need to look at a recording.’

‘With the best will in the world, I can’t imagine why you’re so resistant to the idea,’ Julian said, amazed. ‘Let’s take a look at it. We should have done that straight away.’

‘Dad, we’ve got everything under control.’

‘As you wish,’ said Lawrence. ‘As a matter of fact it’s my job to keep everything here under control, isn’t it, Lynn? That’s why you employed me in the first place. I’m ultimately responsible for the security of your hotel and the wellbeing of your guests, and monorails that operate all by themselves are at odds with that.’

Lynn shrugged. Dana waited for a moment, then issued instructions with darting fingers. Another window opened, showed the interior of the station hall. The time-code said 27 May 2025, 05.00.

Should we go further back?’

‘No.’ Julian shook his head. ‘It was between five fifteen and five thirty.’

Dana nodded and ran quickly through the recording.

Nothing happened. The LE-1 didn’t leave the station, and the LE-2 didn’t pull in either. God in heaven, Julian thought, Lynn’s right. I’m hallucinating. He tried to catch her eye and she avoided his, visibly upset that he hadn’t simply believed her.

‘Hmm,’ he murmured. ‘Hmm, okay. Sorry.’

‘Nothing to be sorry about,’ Dana said seriously. ‘It was entirely possible.’

‘It wasn’t,’ Lynn snarled. When she looked at him at last, her pupils were flickering with fury. ‘Are you actually sure that you didn’t dream that stupid walk of yours? Maybe you weren’t in the corridor at all. Maybe you were just in bed.’

‘As I said, I’m sorry.’ Taken aback, he wondered why she was so furious with him. He’d just wanted to be doubly sure. ‘Let’s just forget it, I made a mistake.’

Instead of answering she stepped up to the monitor wall, tapped in a series of orders and opened another set of recordings. Dana watched, arms folded, while Ashwini Anand pretended she wasn’t even there. Julian recognised the underground corridor, 05.20.

‘That really isn’t necessary,’ he hissed.

‘It isn’t?’ Lynn raised her eyebrows. ‘Why not? You wanted to be doubly sure, after all.’

She launched the sequence before he could start protesting again. After a few seconds Carl Hanna appeared and climbed on one of the moving walkways. He approached the end of the corridor, looked through the window into the station concourse and disappeared into one of the gangways that led to the train, only to reappear, seconds later, and be carried back again. Almost simultaneously, Julian stepped out of the lift.

‘Congratulations,’ Lynn said frostily. ‘You were telling the truth.’

‘Lynn—’

She brushed the ash-blonde hair off her forehead and turned to face him. Behind the fury in her eyes he thought he recognised something else. Fear, Julian thought. My God, she’s frightened! Then, all of a sudden, his daughter smiled, and her smile seemed to erase her fury as completely as if she knew nothing in life but benevolence and forgiveness. With a swing of her hips she came over to him, gave him a smacking kiss on the cheek and boxed him in the ribs.

‘Let me know when a UFO lands,’ she grinned, and left headquarters.

Julian stared after her. ‘I will,’ he murmured.

And suddenly the ghostly thought came to him that his daughter was an actress.

And yet!

In an act of childish perseverance he went to the Mama Quilla Club, whose dance floor was mysteriously illuminated under the eternal light show of the starry sky. Michio Funaki was mixing cocktails behind the bar. When he saw him, Warren Locatelli shot to his feet and raised his glass to him, waving his other hand wildly.

‘Julian! That was the most brilliant day of any holiday I’ve ever had!’

‘Impressive, really.’ Aileen Donoghue laughed in her tinkling soprano. ‘Even if we’ve had to learn golf all over again.’

‘Golf, bullshit!’ Locatelli pressed Julian to his chest and pulled him over to the seated group. ‘Carl and I went charging around in those moon buggies, it was absolutely crazy! You’ve got to build a racetrack up here, a real fucking Le Mans de la Lune!’

‘And he didn’t even win,’ giggled Momoka Omura. ‘He almost flattened his buggy.’

‘More to the point, he nearly flattened me,’ said Rebecca Hsu, placing a single peanut between her lips. ‘Warren’s company is inspiring, particularly when you think about moon burials.’

‘We had a wonderful day,’ smiled Sushma Nair. ‘Do come and join us.’

‘Right away.’ Julian smiled. ‘Just for a little while. Carl, have you got a minute?’

‘Of course.’ Hanna swung his legs off his sofa.

‘Just don’t go missing on me,’ Locatelli laughed. Recently he and Hanna had been spending a lot of time together. One chatty, the other taciturn, somehow strange, but plainly a friendship was developing there. They went to the bar, where Julian ordered the most complicated cocktail on the menu, an Alpha Centauri.

‘Listen, I feel a bit silly.’ He waited till Funaki was busy, and lowered his voice. ‘But I’ve got to ask you something. When we met in the corridor this morning, you were coming from the station.’

Hanna nodded.

‘And?’ Julian asked.

‘And what?’

‘Did you take a look inside?’

‘Inside the concourse? Once. Through the window.’ Hanna thought. ‘After that I went into one of the gangways. You remember, I was a bit dozy when it came to looking for the exits.’

‘And did you – did you see anything in the concourse?’

‘What are you getting at?’

‘I mean, the train, was it there? Did it set off, did it pull in?’

‘What, the Lunar Express? No.’

‘So it was just parked there.’

‘Exactly.’

‘And you’re a hundred per cent sure about that?’

‘I didn’t see anything else. So why do you feel silly?’

‘Because – oh, this really isn’t the place.’ And he just told Hanna the whole story, simply out of a need to get rid of it.

‘Maybe it was one of those flashes we all see up here,’ said Hanna.

Julian knew what he was referring to. High-energy particles, protons and heavy atomic nuclei, occasionally broke through the armour of spaceships and space stations, reacted with atoms in the eye and caused brief flashes of light that were perceived on the retina, but only if you had your eyes shut. Over time you got used to it, until you barely noticed them. Behind the regolith plating of the bedroom they hardly ever occurred. But in the living room—

Funaki set the cocktail down in front of him. Julian stared at the glass without really seeing it.

‘Yes, perhaps.’

‘You just made a mistake,’ said Hanna. ‘If you want my advice, you should apologise to Lynn and forget the whole thing.’

But Julian couldn’t forget it. Something was wrong, something didn’t fit. He knew without question that he had seen something, just not the train. Something more subtle was bothering him, a crucial detail that proved he wasn’t fantasising. There was a second inner movie that would explain everything if he could just drag it out of his unconscious and look at it, look at it very precisely to understand what he had already seen and just hadn’t understood, whether he liked the explanation or not.

He had to remember.

Remember!

Juneau, Alaska, USA

Loreena Keowa was irritated. On the day of the boat-trip, Palstein had agreed to let the film crew come along, and had delivered a series of powerful quotes, although without giving her that sense of familiarity that she usually developed with her interviewees. By now she knew that Palstein loved the crystalline aesthetic of numbers, with which he rationalised everything and everyone, himself included, although without losing the emotional dimension in his dealings with people. He esteemed the sound-mathematics of a composer like Johann Sebastian Bach, the fractal Minimalism of Steve Reich, and he was also fascinated by the breakdown of all structures and narrative arcs in the music of György Ligeti. He had a Steinway grand, he played well if a bit mechanically, not classics, as Loreena would have expected, but the Beatles, Burt Bacharach, Billy Joel and Elvis Costello. He owned prints by Mondrian, but also an incredibly intense original by Pollock, which looked as if its creator had screamed at the canvas in paint.

Curious to meet Palstein’s wife, Loreena had finally shaken the hand of a gracious creature who commandeered her, dragged her through the Japanese garden she had designed herself for a quarter of an hour and laughed like a bell every now and again for no perceptible reason. Mrs Palstein was an architect, she learned, and had laid out most of the grounds herself. Determined to use the currency of her newly acquired training in small talk, Loreena asked her about Mies van der Rohe, receiving a mysterious smile in return. Suddenly Mrs Palstein was treating her as a co-conspirator. Van der Rohe, oh, yes! Did she want to stay to dinner? While she was considering whether or not to agree, the lady’s phone rang, and she went off in a conversation about migraine, forgetting Loreena so completely that she found her own way back to the house and, because Palstein had issued no similar invitation, left without dinner.

Afterwards, in Juneau, she had admitted to herself that she liked the oil manager, his kindness, his good manners, his melancholy expression, which made her feel strangely exposed, and at the same time made him seem a little weird – and yet she still found him very alien, for reasons she couldn’t quite explain. Instead of devoting herself to her report, she had plunged into research, had flown from Texas to Calgary, Alberta, dropping in unannounced on the police station there. With her Native-American face and her peculiar charm, she managed to get to the office of the police lieutenant, who promised to keep her informed about any progress in investigations. Loreena extended her antennae for undertones, and established that there had been no progress, thanked him, took the next flight back to Juneau and, on the way, told her editorial team she wanted them to collect all available footage about what had happened in Calgary. After she landed, she called an intern to her office and told him what they had to look for.

‘I realise,’ she said, ‘that the police have viewed and analysed all the pictures a hundred times. So let’s look at them another hundred times. Or two hundred if it helps.’

On her desk she spread out a few prints showing the square in front of Imperial Oil headquarters. At the time of the shooting, the complex of buildings opposite had lain empty for months, after the open-cast mining company based there had come to a miserable end.

‘The police conclude for a whole host of reasons that the shot was fired from the middle one of the three buildings, which are, incidentally, all interconnected. Probably from one of the upper storeys. The complex has entrances to the front, the sides and the back, so there are several possible ways of getting in and out again.’

‘You really think we’ll discover something that the cops have missed?’

‘Be optimistic,’ said Loreena. ‘Always look on the bright side.’

‘I’ve taken a look at the material, Loreena. Almost all the cameras were trained on the crowd and the podium. It was only after the shooting that some of them were clever enough to swing around to the complex, but you don’t see anyone coming out.’

‘So who says we have to concentrate on the complex? The police are doing that. I want us to concentrate on the crowd in the square.’

‘You mean the guy who did it went from there into the building?’

‘I mean that you’re a bit of a male chauvinist. It could have been a girl, couldn’t it?’

‘A killer chick, huh?’ giggled the intern.

‘Carry on like that and you’ll meet one in person. Look at every individual figure in the square. I want to know if anyone filmed the building before, during and after the attack.’

‘Oh, God! This is slave labour!’

‘Stop whining. Jump to it. I’ll take care of Youtube, Facebook, Smallworld and so on.’

After the intern had started viewing the material, she had set about compiling a list of all significant decisions that Palstein had made or advocated over the past six months. She also recorded his resistance to the interests of others. She logged on to forums and blogs, followed the internet debate about closures, acquiescence on the one hand, helpless rage on the other, along with the desire to give the oilmen a good kicking, ideally to put them up against the wall right away, but none of these entries raised a suspicion that its author was in any way connected with the attack. The people involved in open-cast mining were bitter about it, but glad that it was coming to an end, particularly in the Indian communities. It struck her that the Chinese had been taking a great interest in Canadian oil sand over the past two decades, and had put a lot of money into open-cast mining, which they were now losing, and that regardless of the helium-3 revolution they were still, albeit to a waning degree, dependent on oil and gas. On the other hand there was now so much cheap oil available that anything else seemed more sensible than extracting it in the most unprofitable way imaginable. When, in the early hours of the morning, she finally found no more press information and no more postings, she compiled a file about Orley Enterprises, or more precisely about Palstein’s attempts to become involved with Orley Energy and Orley Space.

And suddenly she had an idea.

Dog-tired, she set about backing up her newly fledged theory with arguments. They weren’t particularly new: someone was trying to undermine Palstein’s involvement with Orley. Except that she suddenly realised, clear as day, that the purpose of the attack had been to keep Palstein from travelling to the Moon.

If that was so—

But why? What would Palstein have had to discuss with Julian Orley on the Moon that they couldn’t have sorted out on Earth? Or did it have something to do with other people he was supposed to meet there?

She needed the list of participants.

Her eyes stung. Palstein wasn’t supposed to fly to the Moon. The thought stayed with her. It continued in confused dreams, the kind you get when you fall asleep in office chairs, it produced visions in her alarmingly cracked brain, of people in spacesuits shooting at each other from designer buildings, with her caught in the middle.

‘Hey, Loreena.’

‘Mies is very popular on the Moon,’ she mumbled.

‘Meeces? Love ’em to pieces.’ Someone laughed. She’d been talking nonsense. Blinking and stiff-limbed, she came to. The intern was leaning on the edge of the desk and looked as pleased as punch.

‘Shit,’ she murmured. ‘I dozed off.’

‘Yeah, you look like a slaughtered animal. All that’s missing is the knife-handle sticking out of your chest. Come on, Pocahontas, get a cup of coffee down you. We’ve got something! I think we’ve really got something!’