The Machine (An Ethan Stone Thriller) (19 page)

‘One, five, twenty-five…  The amount was not important.   The important thing was that it was all he had.  And he was forbidden to leave China.  That was the second condition that China imposed.’

‘It must have been a hell of a discovery they’d made to tempt him here,’ said Stone.  ‘So what is this thing – the Machine?’ asked Stone.

‘I do not know.  Like you, I would like to know,’ he said.  ‘But let me tell you something, Stone.   Semyonov said none of this would be possible without the Machine.  That is why it matters so much.  Especially now Semyonov is dead.  We have to find it.’

It was like Oyang wanted to unburden himself.  He’d already said that the Machine was extraordinarily powerful, and that the Americans and Russians and Chinese would fight to get it.  But the Machine was already here in China.  The Chinese leadership knew that, and that made it an extremely dangerous topic of discussion for Oyang, or anyone else.

Now, with the information he’d given to Stone back at his house, Oyang had just handed Stone the job of finding the Machine.  A job which, rightly or wrongly, he thought was too dangerous to take on himself.

 Chapter 33 -
9:26pm 2 April - Shanghai, China

Oyang’s men dropped Stone near the Pujiang Hotel on the river.  It was the only one he could remember from his backpacking days.  He had no intention of staying there of course.  He waited till they’d gone and then made his way across the city in the darkness.  The Shanghai evening took him into its dark, humid bosom.  The warm breeze, the roar of traffic, the ambient smells of car exhaust and fried noodles from a thousand eateries open to the streets.  Like Hong Kong, Shanghai teemed with even more people after dark.

For Stone it was the best time.  He could go about as just another person in the hoards, rather than a “yellow-haired
Ouzhouren” -
a European
,
as Ying Ning termed him.  He made for Xizang Street.  The apartment block where Ying Ning had told him to stay. 

The apartment was bare – just a single room and tiny bathroom.  Stone checked it for bugs or hidden cameras as best he could.  Found nothing – not that it mattered.  He was hardly going to be chattering to anyone in there.  For Stone this kind of lonely paranoia was normal life. 

He took out Semyonov’s cryptic writings and connected his laptop to the Internet.  Stone wasn’t about to take any notice of Robert Oyang’s injunction against making Internet searches.  Especially not now. 

Ironstone Forest 328 19.2 9.8229

Field Well 15 8.3 9.8218

Silvermine Field 169 15.9 9.8229

2 Trees 3 Trees 97 6.7 9.8219

Sitong  44 0.7 9.8249

It looked easy – so easy in fact that Stone wondered why Oyang hadn’t figured it for himself. 

But it turned out it wasn’t easy.  Stone tried sections large and small, and found, amongst other things, information on the Silvermine Bay Hotel, in Hong Kong, the fossilised trees in the Isle of Wight, and the web site of an Australian rugby league player named Malcom Twotrees.  In other words, nothing.

-oO0Oo-

In the end Stone went out to eat.  He went across some grass, picked his way through the cars and scooters across a snarled-up four-track road, and made for a cluster of street traders, stir-frying under the elevated highway.  He ordered squid with chilli, noodles and beer and sat down at a trestle table.  The cook shot oil into the pan from a squeezy bottle, and flames from the wok flashed in the darkness, half shutting his eyes against the smoke. 

Stone’s watch said ten-thirty.  He took out Semyonov’s hand-written note again, and looked at it, the light of the fire flickering on the paper. Something about the numbers had been playing with his subconscious.  All the 9.8 figures on Semyonov’s scribblings.  The values were almost the same but not quite.  The differences were counted in ten thousandths of the total.  A millimetre in a metre, or less than a metre in a kilometre.  There must be significance in these tiny variations.

What was almost exactly 9.8?  And why would it be a big deal if there were tiny variations?  Stone ate the food, but found himself still looking at the figures when he’d finished.

It felt like the answer was lying just under the surface of his mind.  He knew this.  He knew the answer.  Something was distracting him from it.  It felt like someone was shouting at him from his subconscious.  Stone tried to concentrate, to let it come to the surface.  He realised he’d been staring into the darkness.  He’d finished the noodles, but his beer was untouched.

Something was wrong.  It was shouting at him.  Not the number.  Something else was wrong.  The rider on the scooter with the full-face helmet.  Stone was sure it was the same bike and the same helmet he’d seen following the taxi earlier, as the taxi had raced through the tunnel.

Stone tucked Semyonov’s figures back into his pocket, his senses suddenly alert, his mind clear.  He made a few remarks to the
laoban,
and took another five minutes to finish his beer from the plastic glass, while keeping tabs on his follower.  The guy was coming and going, flitting about, but finally disappearing from view.  Stone drained his glass, paid and shook the hand of the
laoban
. 

Stone walked back to Xizang Street, talking care to stay in the shadows.  No sign of the rider now.

 Stone took care to lock up and search the apartment again.  Not much to check of course.  One room, plus bathroom and bare at that.  Not much scope for ninja-warriors to leap out from behind the sofa, but his senses were still on high alert.

He took a shower, his mind still whirring.  Old “sticketh closer than a brother” out there on the motor scooter was going to be a big problem.  Assuming it was the
Gong An
following Stone, he could be picked up at anytime.  And even if he wasn't picked up, what could he do under such tight surveillance?  It was also bad for Oyang.  Oyang had gone to great lengths to hide Stone’s visit to his place, and ensure he hadn’t been tracked.  Yet the rider must have followed that panel van up to Oyang’s place too.

Stone washed himself, wondering how he was going to shake off his tail.  The more he thought of it, the worse it was.  If it was bad news for Stone and Oyang, it was even worse for Ying Ning.  If Ying Ning made contact as planned she could end up before a people’s court in days.  After drying himself with a diminutive towel and spraying on a particularly ineffective brand of Chinese deodorant, Stone lay down and pulled the sheet over himself.

It was only then, half-waking and half-sleeping, that something flitted across Stone’s mind, something that had bubbled around his subconscious all evening.  Behind all the distractions, below the surface. 
9.8 metres per second per second.  The constant of gravity.

 Chapter 34

http://dougcarslake.blog.notfutile.com

UFOWATCH BLOG

We’d expect news outlets to be full of rumors from “friends” of billionaire genius Steven Semyonov, speculating on why his new “friends” from Beijing decided to send a coal truck to welcome him to China.  But it turns out Semyonov had no “friends”.  Boring huh?

Luckily for your correspondent, the rumor mill just cranked up big time around San Jose.  Sources calling themselves “friends of Antonio Alban” are claiming that Semyonov was isolated within SearchIgnition.  They also claim:

• Semyonov and Alban together had “irreconcilable differences” with other board members over their vision for the future of SearchIgnition.
  
• Other shareholders had already tried to oust Semyonov and Alban.  They demanded access to all Semyonov’s “Blackbox”. The Blackbox is the name given to the search algorithms at the heart of the SI system.  They demanded access to the Blackbox, and offered to buy Semyonov out.
  
• So far so good.  But according to "friends of Alban", Semyonov’s Blackbox was no longer kept secret.  Semyonov had already turned the programming source code over to the others.  Didn’t even object.  But here’s the thing: the team of programmers brought in to figure out the Blackbox is yet to decipher even
  one line
  of Semyonov’s code.  Full of weird symbols and little else.  The stories about the Blackbox being Semyonov’s jealously guarded secret are just BS.  He didn't restrict access at all.  For the new bosses at SearchIgnition Corp it's worse than that:
  no one but Semyonov could understand even one line of the programming.
  
• Semyonov may have taken the cash and left SearchIgnition, but the firm was still heavily reliant on him.  And now he’s dead.  So they’re hosed.  Shares in SearchIgnition have tanked in after-hours trading on NASDAQ.
  

The blame game at post-Semyonov SearchIgnition is only just beginning.  Keep checking this blog for more juicy gossip to come from “friends of Antonio Alban”.

BTW – Kudos to Alban, who is a board member of SearchIgnition, for leaking all this stuff for the benefit of NotFutile.com readers.  That man has cojones if nothing else.

Chapter 35 -
3:56am 3 April -
Shanghai, China

Stone was woken by an odd sensation under the bed sheet.  A light fluttering.  A breeze from an open window?  No.  There was no breeze.

Instinct told him to lie perfectly still.

It stopped again.  No fluttering.  Then there was a barely-audible click somewhere by his knee.  Was he hearing things?  He lay motionless in the darkness. 

There it was again, the fluttering.  Definitely beneath the bed sheet.  It stopped again.  Stone felt something on his thigh.   Then another click, soft, metallic like before.  His subconscious already knew, well before he was awake.  The image of the colourful metal bug which Zhang had shown him, stole across his mind.  The fine shell in poisonous yellow, black and red, seven centimeters long.  The spiked, black mandibles like miniature antlers.  And the two stainless steel injector needles, which must now be millimeters from his thigh.

The creature was light and noiseless.   It was moving, feeling its way - a tickling sensation moving up the inside of his left thigh towards his groin.  Were its sensors seeking the heat of his body?   Or following his pulse?  Or the scent of his sweat? 
Shit.
  The aerosol from the bogus deodorant, sprayed liberally under his arms. 

His mind raced ahead.  If it worked by smell, and it had found him, it must know it was near its target.  Almost certainly it would attack if he tried to grab or brush it off.  It would latch onto his hand with the spiked mandibles, shoot in venom through the needles. 

It reached the top of his thigh and stopped.  Possibly confused by the hair.  Was it detecting his pulse, seeking blood below the skin?  It had stopped above the femoral artery in his groin.  Stone made his breathing shallow to reduce his pulse strength.  He willed his skin to be cold and inert.  Not an easy thing in sweltering Shanghai. 

The sharp mandibles grazed the hair of his groin.  Where were the bug’s sensors housed?  In the feet?  The bug’s feet were warm and slightly tacky, six insect feet sticking lightly to his body hair as it moved, like lightly drumming fingers.  It must have detected the bogus deodorant he had sprayed under his arms.  It could have chemical sensors in those mandibles, seeking his under-arms.  If he hadn’t been covered by the sheet he would be dead by now.

It stuck for an eternity near his groin.  How long could Stone lie perfectly still like this?

The six feet moved off again.  The tiny rhythmic crawling reached his abdomen, fluttering past his navel.  Stone stilled his breathing again so as not to move his diaphragm.  He held his stomach flat and hard.  Maybe it had sensed his heart from the pulsing of the blood.  It had felt the deep pulse from within his femoral artery, now it was following it, seeking the heart.  Was it possible in that dark little world, that the device carried a knowledge of human anatomy?  Stone knew that it was.  It would be a trivial thing next to all the other programming which went into this thing.  Even now those padded feet were feeling their way to the pulsing aorta and his heart.  If it stopped near his heart he would have to make a grab for it.  No other way.

The creature wandered diagonally across his chest, stopping for a few seconds to graze his nipple, as if to smell it with the mandibles.  Was it confused? It could have jabbed in its death venom by now.  He held his nerve.

Much good it did him.  The bug was still on his chest, confused by the aerosol scent under his arms, to either side of it.  It didn’t know which way to go.  It backtracked slower than ever over to the left side of his chest and if it stayed there…

He had only one idea.  He had to try it now.  The was no time…

Stone threw back the sheet.  The click.  The shell flipped open and the gossamer wings sprang out momentarily, hovering.  Stone’s body jackknifed.  He caught the bug in the sheet and threw it to the floor, looking around for something to kill it with.  Stone heard the door to the apartment slam. 

Pulling on his jeans and boots, he stamped hard onto the fluttering device beneath the sheet, felt it crack open beneath his heel, then flipped on the light and scanned the place for more insects as he made for the door.   

Stone slipped out of the apartment door and down the corridor and looked up.  The elevator was descending past the fourth floor.  Stone took the stairway, leaping down a flight at a time. 

He’d missed the elevator by a few seconds.  Darted outside, looking left and right.  A figure walking away, fifty metres from him.  Stone began to jog.  The man glanced round and broke into a run, making for the shadows underneath the elevated highway again.  He was fast, this guy, but Stone was faster.  He was gaining.  He could have him by the time they went under the highway – possibly sooner.