The Marriage of the Living Dark

The rasp of Chen’s breath was like the sound of an iron bar

grating against a rock

“Where are we?”

The words boomed at Karr.

“I don’t...” Karr stopped abruptly, his eyes focusing on what lay on the bed.

“Aiya” he groaned.

Chen turned, then gave a cry of pain. “Oh, gods ...” Kim lay on the bed, naked and unmoving. His eyes were open, but they saw nothing. His hands and feet were bound with wire, his flesh so white and waxen that it seemed to glow, but in the middle of his forehead was a single bright red hole, like the hole a worm might have made in an apple. Chen dropped his gun and fell to his knees, beginning to retch. Karr stared a moment, mesmerised - horrified - by the sight, then turned. Where was K.? Where ...?

He took two steps then saw him, hanging from the light-fitting in the tiny bathroom. A piece of wire had been tightened round his throat. His eyes bulged, but like Kim’s they saw nothing.

The sight emptied him; took away his courage. Thinking of Jelka, he groaned, wondering how he would ever break the news to her.

Oh, he had seen men die before, and broken the news to more widows than he cared to remember, but this ...

This was the death of hope.

His head swam. Something was wrong here. It felt like he’d been drugged. Behind him Chen retched and retched, the sound and the smell of it so awful it made him gag himself.

Dreaming ... he had to be dreaming. Forcing himself he walked across and touched the limp hand that dangled at K.’s side. It was cold; colder than anything he had ever touched, but real.

He shivered. Out He had to get out.

Karr stumbled back, almost falling over his friend, then turned. He took a step towards the hoop, then stopped dead, realising with a start that it had gone. He whirled about, turning full circle, staring wildly at the walls, certain that there must have been a mistake, but the air was empty, the gateway closed. “Kuan Yin preserve us!”

Chen looked up, wide-eyed. “Gregor?”

“The gate ...”

Chen turned to look, then gave a whimper of fear. Karr stared at his friend, astonished, then understood. Kao Chen’s worst fear had just come to pass, and the poor man was petrified. The thought of it dispelled Karr’s own fears. It was up to him now.

“Kao Chen,” he said, speaking as a commander speaks to one of his foot-soldiers, “stand up!”

Chen struggled up onto his feet, then glanced at Karr uncertainly. But Karr was staring back at him sternly.

“Good. Now pick up your gun, Major Kao. We’ve work to do.”

As DeVore’s glide touched down on the southern edge of Tientsin spaceport, his assistant, Gemma, patched through to him again. “Well?” he asked unceremoniously, raising a hand to ensure that Wyatt, who sat beside him on the long, luxurious seat, kept silent. “Do we know what’s happening?”

She smiled confidently. “It looks like there’s been a concerted effort to stabilise the markets, sir. A lot of buying at highly inflated prices. Companies taking massive losses with no thought to their own economic survival. Eco-altruism, as one of our brokers has termed it” “And do we know who owns these companies?”

She hesitated, then, frowning, shook her head. “No, sir. As far as we can tell, they’re subsidiaries. But who owns them...”

“Get someone on it Jenner, maybe. Or King, he’s good at burrowing into other peoples’ databases. I want to know who’s behind this. I want a name, you got me?”

“Sir!”

As the screen blanked, he turned and looked to Wyatt “What do you think?”

But Wyatt seemed as nonplussed as the woman. “I don’t know. I can’t see why anyone should do it Why, looking at those figures, I’d say that whoever it was must have sustained massive losses. Twenty, thirty billion, maybe more.” He paused, then shook his head. “I don’t know about you, Howard, but I can’t think of a single financier in the market who could take that kind of beating and survive. So why do it?”

“To beat me, thaf s why.”

Wyatt laughed. “But no one knows. ..” He stopped, seeing the look on DeVore’s face. “You don’t think ...?”

“Think what, Edmund? That you betrayed me, perhaps? That you’ve been feeding insider information to one of my enemies?”

Wyatt laughed, but he was clearly uncomfortable. “You can’t be serious, Howard. How long have we known each other? Forty years? And you think I’d do something like that to you?”

“I don’t know,” DeVore said coldly. “But I’m going to fucking well find out. And when I do ...”

The screen clicked on again. DeVore turned back, finding himself looking at his Head of Security, Hart. The man looked troubled. “What is it, Don?”

“Those men you wanted sent to the apartment building in Beijing...” “What of them?”

“They’re dead, thaf s what. They stumbled across a couple of assassins in the lobby. The local police have the place surrounded. I thought. ..” “Don’t think,” DeVore said, interrupting him, “just get on to the Head of Police... his name’s Ch’ang San... and tell him not to precipitate anything until I get back I don’t want any of his men going in there, guns blazing, you understand? Containment” “But what if he says no?” “Then that big fat cheque he gets every month isn’t going to arrive anymore. You understand?” Hart grinned. “I understand, sir.” “Then see to it” DeVore sat back, sighing deeply. “Just what the fuck is going on?” he glanced sideways at Wyatt, but Wyatt was brooding, chewing on a thumbnail thoughtfully. “I said,” DeVore repeated, raising his voice, “just what the fuck is going on?” “A player,” Wyatt said after a moment “Someone you pissed off years ago, but who’s kept a low profile all this time. Someone who’s been waiting to pay you back.” “Are you talking about yourself now, Edmund?” Wyatt looked to him and glared. “Leave it Howard. Okay?” DeVore raised a hand. “Okay. I believe you. But fuck it someone must have let slip, and who knows more than you?” Wyatf s eyes narrowed suddenly, as if he suddenly saw it “Your AI. Your so-called discreet system.”

“Bollocks! Why, I’m more likely to have given the game away than the computer’s DS. It’s programmed to self-destruct before anyone can tamper with it” “Then what if someone hacked into it and re-programmed it?” DeVore gave a laugh of disbelief. “No. They’d have to be some kind of super-genius to do that!” “Right! The kind of super-genius who’d not worry about losing thirty billion in an hour just to stop you.”

“And the rest? Are you saying that he’s behind it all? The bungled assassinations? The mistimed bombs?” Wyatt smiled. “Thaf d be my guess.” “Then who the fuck is he? And why don’t we know him?” “Maybe we do. Maybe he was one of those guys you killed in the apartment building.”

“No. They were just messengers. Hackers. Else they’d have covered their tracks a damn sight better than they did.”

“You should have kept one of them alive. Then you could have tortured him. Found out what he knew.” “Maybe. But I didn’t have time.” “Thaf s not like you, Howard.”

DeVore shrugged, then said casually, “No ...” But he was thinking, No. But I won’t make the same mistake twice. I’tt make sure I take my time over you, my erstwhile friend. Ill make sure I rack you well and good. He laughed. “Do you recall that fat Chink I introduced you to ... Wang Sau Leyan?”

Wyatt turned, a faint amusement in his eyes. “The one who liked fucking Western women two at a time?”

“Thafs him. I had him tortured. He owed me money. Arrogant bastard wouldn’t pay me. Said I’d have to wring it from him. So I did. His brothers were furious - wanted me dead. So I racked them, too. All four of the fuckers in one room. Sang like a choir.” “And the money?”

“Oh, fuck the money. I had more fun than I’d had for a long time. Had to dump them when I’d finished, mind. Couldn’t let them loose to tell the tale, could P” “No,” Wyatt said, looking away thoughtfully. “No.” There was a knock on the partition between them and the driver’s seat. DeVore opaqued it “News from the tower, sir. It seems the shuttle’s due down any moment.”

They felt the rumble. As DeVore opaqued the outer windows of the glide, they saw - far off to their right, almost a mile away - the shuttle descending on a point of flame.

“There,” DeVore said, grinning suddenly. “There he is.”

“Who?” Wyatt asked, intrigued.

But DeVore merely smiled. “Just wait and see.”

THE MARRIAGE OF THE LIVING DARK

Joseph stepped out from the lobby of the Tung Chan Building and stepped into his glide, which hovered five centimetres above the surface of the transit pad. It was a fairly modest machine; enough to confirm his status as a top financier, but not grand enough to mark him as a player.

Which was exactly how he wanted it, for the idea was to blend in, not to stand out That was how he’d evaded notice all these years. As the glide lifted and he relaxed back into his seat, Joseph recalled his first sight of DeVore.

He had not gone there to see DeVore, but to get a glimpse of his genetic father, Wyatt To try and discover just what kind of man Wyatt was. And there, standing right next to Wyatt, talking to a group of leading businessmen, was DeVore. He had sensed at once that there was something wrong. The man was charming - he went out of his way to be charming - but Joseph could see the brutality that lay beneath every gesture.

Certain that he was imagining it, he had wandered away. But later in the evening he had come across DeVore in one of the corridors leading off the central hall, speaking quietly to one of his minions, such casual threat in his voice that Joseph had felt a small ripple of fear run up his spine. He had said nothing. He had not even let on that he’d seen a thing. But that brief glimpse of DeVore had intrigued him enough to want to know a little more about this man who was his father’s constant companion. Alarm bells had rung almost instantly. One could not make a computer query without triggering counter-queries of the “Who wants to know?” variety. Which was when he began to get devious, and to use those skills he had been born with: the ability to take a system - any system - and turn it inside out DeVore had never known. He hadn’t even guessed. Until tonight But now he would be looking for him.

The thought of that ought to have chilled him, for he knew exactly what DeVore was capable of, but sitting there he felt a strange confidence in his own abilities. Besides, he had his “coat”.”Daniel. .. turn on the news for me, will you? Channel 96.” At once the wavering light of the screen filled the back of the glide.

First up was the latest on the business at the Eight Dragons Hotel. The Americans, it seemed, were vigorously denying reports that President Newell had been shot, but the President himself hadn’t been seen now for almost four hours. The dead woman had now been identified as Susan Callaghan, an “escort”, while reports from Washington revealed intense activity there, with Vice President Wetton arriving at the White House for an unscheduled meeting with senior aides. Bad, Joseph thought, yet without his intervention it could have been so much worse. Wetton would have been dead, yes, and half his cabinet. And then the Generals would have been in charge and war would have been a certainty. A war that, on top of the economic collapse DeVore had triggered, would have wiped out ninety-five per cent of humanity.

It was hard to imagine any man wanting that. Which was why Joseph had developed his pet theory. That DeVore was not, in fact, a man. A fact he could not prove, yet which seemed to be borne out by the record. For he could find no trace that DeVore had ever been born. Oh, there were strong indications that the man was in his forties, but no specific date was given for his birth. Not only that, but the man seemed to have been in his forties now for well on forty years.

Stranger yet was something he had stumbled upon one rainy afternoon three years back.

Idly trawling the web for new information, Joseph had come upon the file of a man - one of DeVore’s employees - who seemed familiar to him. It was some facial characteristic that had made him sit forward and frown at the screen. It wasn’t, of course, who he thought it was, but the idea that one might perhaps trawl the historical record for a specific face -DeVore’s face - occurred to him in that instant Over the following week he had written a programme that would do just that And then he’d let it run.

The results were astonishing. Not one or two, but hundreds of sightings, going back over not eighty years, but close on eight hundred, the oldest of them a figure in Piero della Francesca’s painting, The Recognition of the True Cross, which was painted no later than 1460.

It was possible, of course, that these faces were simply similar. Were the natural result of genetics. Until one started to place them side by side and saw the unchanging nature of them. They were never young, never old. And always - always - there was that look in the eyes: that cold brutality that contradicted the smiling lips.

Which raised the question: could a man live eight hundred years and never age? On the screen the news ran on. Joseph blinked then sat forward slightly, suddenly attentive again.

“... have confirmed that the starship is of human construction and manned by a human crew, but as yet no one has claimed ownership of the craft...” Joseph cut in, speaking to his AI. “When did this happen?” “An hour back,” the computer answered him. “If s currently in geostationary orbit immediately above Beijing. A shuttle from the craft touched down at Tientsin spaceport two minutes back” Joseph nodded thoughtfully. “When you know anything more, let me know.” He raised a hand. At once the sound from the news screen began again.

“... leaving two dead and one seriously injured. The two men are still holed up

in the lobby of the apartment block, which has been surrounded by armed police

...”

As the camera zoomed in on one of the men inside the lobby, Joseph gave a strange laugh of recognition. “But thaf s impossible ...” The face on the screen had been that of Kao Chen, one of his men. But right now Chen was in Washington, along with Karr. It was they who had saved Wetton’s life. Again he spoke to the air. “Where are Karr and Chen?” “Washington,” came the immediate reply. “You want me to patch them through?” “No.” Joseph shivered. What was going on? Starships ... and now this. “Where is that building?” “Central Beijing. If s called the Tang Li Building.” “Buy it.”

There was no argument, just a pause, then. “We now own the Tang Li Building.”

“Good. Now lef s divert there. And get security there at once. Two dozen of our best men. And make sure the police don’t do anything stupid.” A pause, then. “Done.”

Joseph let out a breath, then sat back agaia Something was happening. Something he didn’t yet understand. But he would. He had only to fit the pieces together and it would all come clear.

On the screen, the camera panned across until it came to rest on the face of Gregor Karr, who squatted behind a barrier, a huge gun clutched to his chest That’s you, Gregor, he thought, narrowing his eyes. That’s unmistakably you. Yet if, at this moment, you’re in Washington, how can it be? Unless ... Joseph spoke to the air. “Emily? What have we got on multidimensional physics?”