The Machine

by Tom Aston

  Inside her room, Stone went straight for her MacBook — super-slim, ultra lightweight. Like its owner? He uploaded a password-hack program from a memory stick, and used it to copy her docs and emails for the last seven days. Then skimmed through her schedule for the day. Also lightweight. She was a canny operator, Carlisle. Saved herself for those ten minutes of airtime.

  Then there was the sheer weight of luggage in that room. She’d divided her clothes into work and non-work. The fatigues, jeans and rugged shirts she used for her GNN reports on TV were on one side, together with appropriately battered running shoes and hiking boots, discreet makeup and sunglasses. These clothes were replicated, to make it look as if she was wearing only a couple of items again and again. These were “work” clothes. The wardrobe of a performer. On the other side of the large closet was a kaleidoscope of designer clothing, suited to an upper class woman of leisure, with copious jewelry and twenty-odd pairs of shoes. She had a couple of power-dressing business suits, which occupied the leisure side of the closet.

  To read there were the usual “professional” magazines — Forbes, The Economist and Harvard Business Review looked unread. China Quarterly still in a cellophane wrapper. Vogue and Cosmopolitan, by contrast, creased and well-thumbed by the bed. The books were pure chicklit and there was a plastic wallet containing DVDs. Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Sleepless in Seattle, Meet Joe Black, The Devil Wears Prada. You could say a pattern was emerging. A good thing Ying Ning wasn’t there to give her strictures on this woman.

  Some reporters in Virginia Carlisle’s position are driven. Committed, humourless newshounds with PhD’s in International Relations, who collect their visits to the benighted troublespots of the world like so many picture postcards, reeling off stats about infant mortality and female circumcision as they go. Not our Virginia. She talked like a hard-nosed investigator, but she was a true professional — a professional actress.

  Stone wondered for a second who would do better at changing the world — hard-as-nails Ying Ning with her Tang dynasty war poetry and her stats on ShinComm suicide rates? Or Virginia Carlisle, with her Vogue magazine and an audience in the hundreds of millions?

  Stone checked his battered LCD watch. Three forty-seven pm. She’d be back any minute. He lounged back with his boots on the sofa and opened up the MacBook once more. He made a search with the words “Steven Semyonov Life Story”.

  There are no results for this search string. Please try another search.

  Typo? Stone tried the search again.

  Again no result. This time he typed the words “Steven Semyonov Search Ignition”

  There are no results for this search string. Please try another search.

  Finally he tried simply typing the words “Steven Semyonov”. Same result. The same thing happened on two other search engines. No wonder the news outlets weren’t discussing Semyonov’s motives and background. They were flying blind without the Internet. SearchIgnition’s technology was used by all the major news archives too.

  Semyonov hadn’t been erased from history, but he may as well have been. He’d been erased from the world’s search engines. In an age of instant access to information, no one would bother to discover anything about him. No wonder there was no talk of motives and background for the man.

  And who would be able to manipulate the world’s search engines to do this? Only one person, and that was Semyonov himself, before he died. Stone was reminded of the note Semyonov had given him. “Odi profanum vulgum.” I hate the ignorant masses. Semyonov’s scorn for the world had extended to forbidding research into himself.

  Stone looked again at the watch and took at look at the recent web site in Virginia Carlisle’s history. One caught his eye. It confirmed his theory as to why Virginia Carlisle had come to Sichuan. The page was just coming up on the screen as the door handle clicked and the door opened.

  Carlisle didn’t handle it too badly in the circumstances. After a few seconds of shock and some harsh Anglo-Saxon language, the actress in her took over again. Her eyes looked at the open closet doors, then at her books and magazines on the table, then ran along Stone’s long legs, stretched out on the sofa on the other side of the room. Stone glanced up and then back down at the screen of her MacBook. That was a delightfully complex look she’d come up with after the initial shock. Anger, contempt, and a subtext of sexual interest all at the same time.

  ‘Now. I know you’re pleased to see me, Virginia,’ said Stone looking at the laptop. ‘But aren’t you supposed to know a man better before you use words like that with him?’

  ‘This CANNOT be happening!’ she hissed, grabbing at the telephone by the door. ‘This is Miss Carlisle. GNN. Give me hotel security!’ The hotel’s Chinese receptionist was going to need a few minutes to get to grips with Virginia in this mood. There was stammering on the other end of the phone. ‘SECURITY!’ she sang down the phone, then covered the receiver and turned on Stone. ‘Who the hell do you think you are?’ she yelled, her anger ramping up now she knew she wasn’t in danger. Stone had taken a tiny peek behind her facade. An unforgivable crime to actress Virginia. ‘You arrogant son of a…’

  Stone got up from the sofa and walked over the walnut-covered floor of the suite, smiling. ‘Put down the phone, Virginia. If that security guy comes up here, I might have to deal with him. Neither he nor I would feel good about ourselves afterwards.’ He took her hand and moved it calmly to hang up the receiver.

  Carlisle stood open-mouthed at her own acquiescence for a few seconds, but then got a hold of herself and turned up the volume again. ‘How dare you break into my room and go through my things? The closet, the computer…’

  ‘Does that mean there’s something interesting I missed?’ he said. ‘Tush, Virginia. I’m too much of a gentleman.’

  ‘You lousy…’ she repeated. ‘I got you out of that hole of a jail in Hong Kong so you could find out some stuff. You’ve done nothing but follow me to Sichuan. Pathetic.’

  This was more like it — goading him to say what he’d been up to.

  ‘What brings you to Chengdu, Virginia? I didn’t see any sign of a brutal civil war breaking out on my way to the hotel,’ said Stone. ‘Or will you just use some old footage of carnage and mayhem in the background? That’s the way it’s done, isn’t it? Your news reports sound like they were made a week ago in a job lot.’

  ‘You’ve got nothing.’ She glowered at him.

  ‘Oh, hold on! I forgot. You’ve been looking at the Internet.’ He picked up the MacBook and showed her the web page he’d seen she’d been looking at. ‘Perhaps this explains what brought you to Sichuan.’

  http://dougcarslake.blog.Notfutile.com

  UFOWATCH BLOG

  Could this be the reason everyone’s favorite extraterrestrial, AKA Steven Semyonov, suddenly found a taste for the Orient? Looks like it wasn’t Semyonov’s love of braised camel’s hump that gave him those generous proportions after all. Something lies deep under the mountains of Western China which reminded him of home.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  ‘You’re here because you want to be.’

  ‘Er… I guess that makes sense.’

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

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

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

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

  ‘Maybe,’ she said.

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

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

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

  ‘That’s good, isn’t it?’ she said.

  ‘It’s good.’

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

  — o0°0o-

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

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

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

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

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

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

  Chapter 40 — 3:55pm 6 April Chengdu, China

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

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

  At first she’d thought it might be Stone tracking her through the streets, given his height, but now she could turn and peer at a distance through the trees, she could see it was not. It was a white Western man, but if anything taller still than Stone. He loped through the forest like the yeti, with long brown hair in a ponytail and a scruffy red bandana around his head.

  Ying Ning walked off down one of the forest paths and stopped once more, checking behind her. He was coming the same way for sure. What did he want? Ying Ning was used to the attentions of the Gong An. It was sufficient with the Gong An just to get away. In China there were plenty of crowds to blend into, plenty of scooters and bikes to “borrow” if she needed to. This was different, because she needed to know what this guy behind her was up to. She needed to ID him as Stone had asked her. She retraced her steps while he was out of view for a few seconds, then cut off into the trees, her staccato tip-toe steps making barely a rustle in the undergrowth. She crouched on her haunches, still on tiptoe, then rose to pass silently out onto the tiled path only twenty metres behind the man.

  Now she could see him. Five centimeters taller than Stone, she guessed, and bigger in the shoulders, just as Stone had said he would be. He was wearing heavy boots, which scraped on the path as he ambled along untidily. He also had on a heavy leather jacket, like he was some kind of b
iker. It must be killing him in this humidity. She followed him with silent, velvet steps for another fifty metres, before the big lunk realised he’d lost her. He stood there, his long arms dangling in simian fashion, and looked around him, peering obviously through the trees for Ying Ning’s spiky hair and fox-like face.

  Inevitably he turned, and when he did, Ying Ning was standing behind him in her skinny black jeans and black T-shirt, a hand placed questioningly on an angular hip. She was looking directly into his Aviator sunglasses.

  Chapter 41 — 5:35pm 6 April Chengdu, China

  Carslake, he was called. Stone had told him to meet up with Ying Ning, and finally he’d found her. She’d brought him back to her place. Stone had never met Carslake in person, but he’d met men like him. He’d suggested Carslake grab a flight to China to be on the spot when he discovered the location of the Machine. He knew the American wouldn’t pass up chance to find a real UFO. Carslake might look like a nutjob — a madcap UFO blogger — but Stone knew people like Carslake can be useful.

  Big, clumsy, slightly dirty looking: everything about Carslake said lazy. He took long loping strides, and somehow still dragged his boots on the ground. He spoke with a slow drawl, as if he couldn’t be bothered to speak any faster. The unkempt stubble on his face was because he couldn’t be bothered shaving rather than any fashion statement. And that black leather jacket — well, Stone liked the jacket. It was a cool jacket. Heavy, old, very good quality. But in the sauna of Chengdu? And Carslake wore it all the time. As in all the time. Probably wore it bed.

  ‘Being in China is kinda like camping,’ said Carslake, conspiratorially to Stone. ‘You never get properly clean. You take a shower, but as soon as you put your clothes on, you feel dirty again.’