‘Very melodramatic, Mister Pei,’ Sunday said.
‘Think nothing of it. It is the very least we can do for our honoured foreign guests.’
‘It might be an idea to dig a bit faster,’ Sunday said.
A moment later she really was back in the apartment, transfixed by a bar of sunlight cutting across the coffee table. Geoffrey, Gleb and Jitendra were standing there like sleepwalkers, their minds elsewhere. The interlude lasted a second, and then she was back with Chama.
‘I dropped out for a moment there,’ she said. ‘I think they’re squeezing bandwidth again. Did anyone else feel it?’
‘For a second,’ Geoffrey said. ‘I guess we shouldn’t count—’
And then he was gone.
‘Gleb and Jitendra have disappeared as well, so it’s just you and me now,’ Chama said. ‘For as long as the quangle holds.’
‘They’re taking this more seriously than I expected. Have you hit anything yet?’
Chama didn’t answer, too preoccupied with his digging. Mister Pei looked on, shaking his head disappointedly, as if he could envisage a million more favourable ways that this sequence of events could have unfolded, if only everyone had been reasonable and prepared to bend to the iron will of state authority.
The dragon gusted overhead, a slow-motion whip-crack. Its wings were leathery and batlike and flapped too slowly for such an absurdly vast creature. It arched its neck and roared cartoon flames. Stretching out multiple claws, it landed and quickly gathered itself into a coiled python-like mass. The dragon-cloak held for a few seconds and then dissipated as a ramp lowered down from the angled front of the border-enforcement vehicle. Suited figures ducked out, each of them with a rifle-sized weapon gripped two-handed and close to the chest. They came down the ramp in perfect lock step, like a well-drilled ballet troupe.
‘I think we’ve made our point here,’ Sunday said. ‘Now might be a good time to consider surrendering.’
Chama’s spade clanged against something. Sunday felt the jolt all the way through the suit, back through the tangle of ching threads linking the sensorium to her body in the Zone.
‘My god,’ she said.
‘Why are you surprised?’
‘I just am.’
‘What is discovered on or beneath Chinese soil remains Chinese state property,’ Mister Pei said helpfully.
Chama worked feverishly. He began to uncover whatever it was the spade had hit, even as the enforcement agents bounded overland from the transporter. They were not cloaked. Their armoured suits and weapons were intimidating enough.
‘Again, I must ask you to desist,’ Mister Pei said.
Chama kept working. The object, whatever it was, was coming into view. It was a rectangular box, lying lengthwise. The drones had moved forward of Mister Pei, peering down to get a better view. Chama hauled the object out of the trench and set it on the ground, between two piles of excavated soil. It was about the size of a big shoebox, plain metal in construction. Chama’s thick-fingered gloves found an opening mechanism with surprising ease and the lid sprang wide. There was something inside the box, lying loose.
Mechanical junk, all gristle and wires.
‘I must ask you to stand up now,’ Mister Pei said as his officials gathered around Chama.
Chama looked up, taking Sunday’s point of view with him. ‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘You can arrest me now.’
‘Please relinquish the item,’ Mister Pei said. But Chama was already obeying. He pushed up from his kneeling position, leaving the box and its contents at his feet.
‘What now?’ he asked.
‘Curtail the bind, please. Until you have been debriefed.’
‘Curtail it yourself,’ Chama said.
Mister Pei beckoned to one of the enforcement guards. The faceless guard brought his rifle around with the stock facing away from his body and went behind Chama’s back. Sunday saw the guard loom on the helmet’s rear- facing head-up, saw the stock swinging in like a mallet. The blow knocked Chama to the ground, stealing the breath from his lungs.
‘I am afraid it will now prove necessary to apply administrative restraint,’ Mister Pei said.
Chama pushed back into a kneeling position. Another of the guards came forward, unclipping a device like a miniature fire extinguisher from his belt. The guard aimed the device at Chama, then lowered the muzzle slightly, correcting aim so as not to impact any vulnerable areas of his suit. A silver-white stream hosed against Chama’s chest, where the material organised itself into an obscene flattened starfish shape and began to push exploratory tentacles away from its centre of mass, searching for entry points into the suit’s inner workings.
Chama strove to paw the substance away, but it globbed itself around his fingers and quickly set about working its way up the wrist, moving with a vile amoeboid eagerness.
‘Looks like it’s going to be lights out for me in moment or two,’ Chama said. ‘You’ll all be good boys and girls until I’m back, won’t you?’
There was just time for one of Mister Pei’s guards to bend down and pick up the box. The guard took out the object that had been inside it and held it up for inspection, dangling it between two gloved fingers. Sunday had a second look at it then. She’d been wondering if her eyes had fooled her the first time.
But it still looked like junk.
And then the ching bind broke and she was back in the Zone.
