The Machine

by Tom Aston

  Stone stayed quiet while Carslake talked with Giyenchen. He wanted to observe this Panchen guy at dinner. He acted like he was some kind of unofficial leader of the younger monks. He moved around calmly and slowly, and kind of held court. He also showed a particular arrogance around Ying Ning. Having her next to him give him kudos with the other monks.

  The community of monks here had the same dynamic as any human group of males. Stone saw a relaxed, older leader, and then young, thrusting pretenders to the throne. The scene at dinner just dripped with testosterone, but there was more to it than that. Giyenchen and the older monks were Tibetan monks in the sense that people in the West might imagine. Careful, intellectual, spiritual, determined — but above all spiritual.

  Panchen, it seemed, had taken up the religion of his forefathers as political rebellion. He was a Tibetan Nationalist who hated the Chinese. That was his thing. The Buddhism, prayers and contemplation must bore him rigid. He’d probably seen the arrival of three visitors with an interest in the Death Hole as an opportunity to cause trouble.

  All of which meant Panchen was a dangerous individual. Liable to get all three of them in hot water.

  ‘At least you know what kind of guy Ying goes for,’ Stone muttered to Carslake, watching how Ying Ning behaved around the young Tibetan.

  ‘Fuck him,’ said Carslake. ‘And fuck her. What’s she hanging out with an ape like that for?’

  Ying Ning could handle Panchen. She could handle most people. Stone was expecting a spitting episode sooner or later, but was for now it was OK. She was sitting with Panchen at dinner with a little smile which Stone knew was as insincere as any harlot’s. What was she up to now?

  Panchen resembled the young lion, gathering support, getting ready to challenge the king of the pride — the calm, lazy old lion, Giyenchen. Panchen was using Ying Ning to enhance his image. Ying Ning would see that and exploit it ruthlessly. The only question was how.

  Was Stone the only man who could see this with Ying Ning?

  Stone’s suspicion was confirmed way sooner than he expected. ‘Let’s go and check on Ying Ning,’ said Carslake as they returned to the dormitory cells after dinner.

  ‘Don’t do it, Doug,’ called Stone as Carslake strode off. Stone should have stopped him. But what the hell? Carslake had to know what he was dealing with.

  Carslake knocked on Ying Ning’s door. No reply. He knocked again. No answer. Stone leant forward from behind Carslake and gently pushed the door open.

  Carslake’s eyes told the story. ‘Oh man,’ he said. ‘You have got to be kidding me.’ Stone could just make out the naked form of Ying Ning’s legs stretched out on the floor. ‘You have got to be fucking kidding me.’

  Stone pulled the door closed. Not even he had expected that. Not so soon anyway. Ying Ning’s naked body lay on a sheet on the floor. Beside her, the muscular form of Panchen, looking somehow even more naked with his shaven head beside the spiky red-black hair of the Fox Girl.

  A man can befriend a fox. She will let herself be touched and stroked and treated for a time. But a fox’s nature is wild. She cannot be tamed.

  Chapter 46 — 9:54am 9 April — Garze Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan, China

  The next morning Ying Ning introduced Stone and Carslake to Panchen. To Stone, Panchen looked like typical peacock alpha male in some nightclub in London or Portsmouth, who took harsh satisfaction from his night’s work of despoiling a Chinese woman.

  Carslake looked at Panchen with mute loathing. They were in a clearing a few hundred metres from the monastery.

  ‘Panchen can find a way to the Death Hole,’ said Ying Ning. ‘He go there before.’

  It sounded dubious to Stone. He turned to Panchen, speaking slowly. ‘It is forbidden to the monks. But you’ve been there?’

  Panchen held Stone’s eye at first then glanced away as he nodded. He was bullshitting. Ying Ning had made a mistake with this guy. He was all talk.

  ‘Whatever. You can count me out,’ said Stone.

  ‘Fuck you, brother. If this guy knows how to get there, I’m in,’ said Carslake.

  Stone rolled his eyes. The idea of getting into a real UFO site had just trumped sexual jealousy for Carslake. Carslake would be there, whatever crazy idea the Tibetan had.

  ‘You too?’ asked Stone, looking at Ying Ning.

  Panchen shook his head.

  Ying Ning spoke for him. ‘I’m a woman,’ she said with a straight face. ‘You should go, not me.’

  There was a pause. Stone caught Carslake’s eye to stop him laughing. This was getting silly. Ying Ning had far too much savvy to go along with this guy, Panchen. She’d let him get in her pants, but following him to the Death Hole? Well. A girl has her limits. Yet she was happy to manoeuvre Stone into going along with Panchen.

  Perhaps she’d seen through Panchen’s braggadocio — only a few hours too late. The reason hardly mattered.

  ‘Why you looking at me?’ said Carslake, looking at Stone with mock sincerity. ‘I can see the guy’s point. Going into a mine with a woman, that is some seriously bad-shit samsara.’

  Panchen disappeared, his new best friend Carslake with him, clapping him on the back in bogus solidarity. Stone looked at Ying Ning and raised an eyebrow.

  ‘Did you have to? Seriously?’

  ‘You need to go. You have to go with Carslake,’ she said. ‘He bound to do something stupid. And anyhow — you come all this way to find the Machine, no?’ A wry smile was finally playing on her lips. ‘And you shouldn’t worry of Panchen.’ She came up and pinched Stone’s butt hard. ‘He fucks like a gorilla.’

  Stone was unconcerned about Panchen’s sexual technique. However, he realised he did care about finding the Machine. When the opportunity arose to use the ground penetrating radar, he was going to take it. Hopefully without Panchen in the vicinity.

  The best Carslake could say of Panchen’s plan to get inside the Death Hole was that, “it’s so stupid it might work”. That was optimistic. Ying Ning was not exactly “risk averse” as a person, but even she was avoiding the action this time.

  ‘Rockhead,’ she said. ‘You should go to drag Carslake and the monks out of there if there’s big trouble.’ Her bogus “concern” reminded Stone of Virginia Carlisle. It was a poor reason to get involved, but depressingly, a valid one. Stone would have to go.

  And just how many people was Ying Ning manipulating at this point?

  The monks knew their way through the forest well enough at night. The route to the old mine workings was evidently well known. Panchen led on in determined silence, ready to do battle with the might of the Chinese State, but the gaggle of teenage monks following him resembled a Sunday afternoon picnic. Mercifully, they were carrying nothing more than a wooden stick or club each and a couple of ten litre drums of oil. Carslake, on whose credit card the radar set was still secured, sensibly lagged behind with the equipment. Stone walked with him, trying to enjoy the cold spring air and another night under the stunning Tibetan starscape. Shooting stars flitted thick and fast above the tree-line and the pale, white banner of the Milky Way was as clear as he’d ever seen it, clearer even than those nights in the high Pamirs. At least it felt that way.

  It took an hour and a half for them to reach the end of the track. Which might have been a pleasant walk, without Carslake talking constantly.

  ‘I asked Ying Ning about this Lin Biao guy the monk was talking about, and the other one…’

  ‘Zhou Enlai,’ said Stone. ‘Zhou Enlai was Chairman Mao’s righthand man, his faithful deputy. One of the good guys.’

  ‘That’s what she said,’ said Carslake. ‘How did you know? Anyhow, Lin Biao is the guy who opened this mine up and started digging into what was going on here after all the monks were kicked out,’ said Carslake. ‘The thing is, not long after, Lin Biao had gone from nowhere to be the biggest man in China, taking over from Mao. Remind you of anyone?’

  Carslake was speculating wildly here, but Stone let him talk.

 
‘Someone who came from obscurity to become the cleverest guy in his country? But Mao and his men had this Lin Biao dude figured, and got him rubbed out. So — when Semyonov turns up in China, the top guys know the score, and they rub him out too.’

  ‘For what it’s worth, Doug, no, I don’t see a similarity between Semyonov and a 1960’s Chinese politician,’ said Stone.

  Ahead of then, the monks had finally halted, and were beckoning to them. The moon stood big and copper above the horizon as they reached the main highway up to the mine workings. It wasn’t looking too good. If the site had been left since the Seventies it would surely be overgrown by now.

  By way of Panchen’s halting English and Stone’s poor Chinese, Panchen explained his plan again. A truck came up most nights at this time. They would hi-jack the truck at send it down the road to crash into the fence which apparently surrounded the whole site. Stone and Carslake could go through in the confusion, he said. There. Simple.

  ‘What about you?’ said Stone to Panchen.

  ‘I take guns from this truck. Send them to Lhasa for rebellion against Chinese,’ said Panchen.

  ‘Great,’ said Stone. At least Panchen had come clean finally. It really was a mad scheme. ‘That should mean a few more deaths for the Western newspapers to report on then.’

  ‘What say?’

  ‘Never mind.’ A good thing those bleeding hearts Stone knew back at the university weren’t here to witness this particular version of Tibetan Buddhism. Tibetans were regarded back home as uniform clones of the Dalai Lama — or Giyenchen for that matter. The truth was somewhat different.

  Panchen stopped them on an asphalt road, a couple of hundred metres below a rise where the road entered the crater. They could see the glow of the moonlight fading up to the black velvet and the stars above. Before them was a wide patch of mud and stones where a stream crossed the road. The monks poured oil over the mud and water. Some kind of cunning trap for the truck when it appeared.

  Stone was almost relieved. It really was a mad scheme. The truck would likely drive on through without noticing the monks at all. At which point they could all go home and no harm done. No guns, no riots in Lhasa.

  Panchen tested the mud and oil with his foot. Incredibly, he was still wearing the sandals. Was it slippery? Stone tried it himself. Possibly, but surely it wouldn’t work.

  Even Carslake was dubious. ‘Of all the dumb-assed things…’ He stood with Stone, the ridiculous bandana still round his head. Stone wondered if the more impressionable monks would be sporting bandanas before long.

  Presently, the distant noise of a diesel engine was heard. An orgy 0f shhh noises, and finally silence. Panchen addressed the youngsters, his voice deliberately deep and masculine, before they all shrank back into the trees.

  The truck engine was high-pitched, struggling up the hill in low gear, the differential whining through the corners. The monks were back in the trees, Stone and Carslake with them. Stone moved up to be near Panchen. In case he did anything really stupid. The truck struggled into view, over a rise, whereupon the driver threw it into neutral to coast down the hundred metres into the dip where the stream crossed. A standard practice. Chinese learn their road craft on bicycles and habitually freewheel downhill. The truck would roll over Panchen’s mud patch and engage the gears at the bottom, right on the patch of mud and oil. Panchen smiled. He shouted at a kid next to him, and gave the lad a kick forward. The novice ran into the headlights, robes flowing, just metres in front of the truck.

  It worked. The driver stood on the brake, shouted a volley of abuse through the window, then stuck it into first gear, and the engine howled as the rear wheels spun satisfyingly in the oil and mud.

  Panchen gripped his club. Bad things were about to happen. Stone found himself willing the tyres to grip again on the asphalt. Panchen took a couple of others and jogged up to the side of the truck. The driver wasn’t looking. A smash to the side window. Panchen grabbed the door, hauling the driver out. The engine had stalled. The driver’s mate made a lunge for the club of a monk at the other side, but Panchen went round there too. Dragged him through the broken glass of the window, lacerating his cheek and half pulling his ear off.

  It was getting serious. Stone flew forward, but Panchen had swung his club twice at the man’s head. Stone was on Panchen, pulling him back, but the driver’s mate had gone down like a felled animal. Panchen bellowed in rage and smashed another completely pointless blow into the back of the man’s skull. Stone bent to the Chinese man, trying to cradle his head, but his fingers slipped into the bone at the back. Blood flowed into the mud, litres of it.

  Jesus, what was he doing here? Stone stood back.

  Carslake’s bandana appeared beside him. ‘I can see the fence from here, in the headlights. I’m going up there.’

  ‘Don’t do it, Carslake. After this they’ll shoot you.’

  Stone was appalled that Panchen’s plan looked like it would work after all. The big Tibetan was up in the cab, ready to drive the truck away. The engine started up and screamed as Panchen struggled with the shift stick. Finally a crunching noise as Panchen found first gear, and there was another roar of the diesel motor as the monk stood on the accelerator. The rear wheels spun, drifting to the right. Panchen was shouting through the windows, but still had his foot jammed down. Stone was waving both arms at him. Panchen had evidently never driven before.

  Stone looked round for Carslake. It was dark save for the headlights of the truck on the road, but he saw the bandana slipping away, back into the trees with the radar set. Arsehole.

  Then from behind the truck, the familiar, savage banging of an AK47. Chinese-made, of course, like the ones in Afghanistan. Its jagged muzzle flash lit the little scene like a strobe light, with freeze-frame images of the monks shifting into the trees or airborne, throwing themselves to the ground. Stone lay behind the canvas of the truck, holding a large stick. Shout, fire, shout, fire. The weapon hammered and reverberated, alternating with silence. Bark splintered away from the trees.

  What an unholy mess. The Chinese guy with that gun had no idea what he was doing either. Only he had an assault weapon, and that meant he was calling the shots for now.

  Stone kept the gun out of view, and waited for the sound. It stands to reason that a man should not run in front of a machinegun. Yet soldiers do it. Some are killed, some get away with it. Yet still they run in front of automatic weapons. Stone thought he’d learned that lesson. But he hadn’t.

  Then a pause. Silence. The forest had taken over once more. Still as a forest should be at midnight. The Milky Way arced above them and there might even have been a shooting star above the trees. Stone was ready for it. Here it came. Click. The magazine being changed. Stone stepped out, brought the club down on the guy’s hand. Broke the wrist, hopefully.

  A curtain of blue light had appeared from the direction of the mine workings, above the rise. The searchlight was dazzling all of a sudden, from over the rise, two hundred metres ahead. Game over. Panchen turned for trees with his handgun. Monks were running, scattering — out of the trees, back into the trees. And Carslake?

  Stone knew what was happening with Carslake.

  Stone crouched behind a tree for a minute or so — maybe two. The blue light was still there, eerie, washing over everything from over the rise ahead. Stone had assumed it was a searchlight, but it was not — it was just a huge eruption of milky, blue light, suffusing everything — the road, the truck on its side, and penetrating right into the trees behind him. The blue suddenly dominated the whole horizon to one side of him. He lay flat to the forest floor and made his way forward on his elbows towards the eerie blue light. It was brighter and brighter the nearer he got.

  Chapter 47–11:56pm 9 April — Garze Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan, China

  It took Stone about ten minutes edging forward on his elbows before he crested the ridge. There were no more trees, no more forest. Stone was looking over the edge of a crater, stretching away in front of h
im. One, maybe one and a half kilometres across. Bare, flat, dry earth. An unnatural barren circle in the verdant landscape.

  The road dipped down into the barren crater, and there were high gates and a fence about a hundred metres in. Exactly as depicted in Ying Ning’s photo back in Hong Kong. The one Oyang had sent them. But the fence itself was somehow superfluous. There was something so unnatural about the place that no one was stepping in there by accident.

  Stone was still lying in the last scraps of undergrowth. He needn’t have bothered. About twenty metres away, Carslake stood, staring wide-eyed into the crater. Like a conquistador looking out at the Pacific. Like he’d finally found what he’d been looking for all his life. He turned around to Stone. ‘Man, you cannot tell me that extraterrestrials have not been here.’

  Stone could tell him that. But it wouldn’t have done any good.

  People see what they want to see. In reality, there was nothing — nothing at all. The arc lights were bright — like stadium lights at night — and no doubt the alarm had been raised after the attack on the truck. But there was nothing to see, except to some tiny huts in the distance. It was the nothingness itself that was eerie. The unearthly light washing it milky blue. The silence of the crater, next to the cicadas, the bugs and the odd creak of the Sichuan pines behind.

  Carslake had put down the radar set at the edge of the trees. Stone worked quickly on it, his fingers working the dials and switches of the radar. There was a high-pitched whine as the power supply was switched on. Stone smoothed out a flat patch of earth to bed the machine in, while Carslake plugged in the data collection unit and checked the connection. No warning lights. They were in business. He set the radar to run, taking its pictures of what lay beneath.

  One thing was for sure. There may be nothing here on the surface, but if the gravity anomaly figures were correct, there was most definitely something beneath the surface.

  The scan was done in under a minute. Carslake looked pleased with himself. This piece of kit was exactly the right thing, used to take pictures of underground workings, aquifers, rock formations. The software built a 3D image of what was below.