The Machine

expectancy measured in weeks.

So Stone was impressed by Ying Ning, coming and going, travelling around China like a will-o-the-wisp. Ying Ning had long since discarded her real name and ran with a bunch of false identities. That was her real achievement and she wouldn’t tell anyone how she’d done it. No one knew her real name. In a country of over a billion, the ID card number is the bedrock of control. In China you can’t fart without an ID card number, but she had cheated that. She’d turned up all over China in the last two years, making her blogs and videos about billionaires and plutocrats, confronting corrupt officials online, and holding up China’s new class of super-rich to ridicule. Her campaign about the suicide rates amongst the workers at ShinComm had even made it through to the New York Times.

It wasn’t just satire, either. There was a hard edge to what Ying Ning did. A number of people had been arrested on the back of her anti-corruption campaigns. One had been shot.

Yet it was the Fox Girl name that created the Ying Ning aura more than anything. She was her own woman, a force of one — similar to Stone in the way she operated — and she liked to keep people guessing.

Why she might want to have Stone on her side was anyone’s guess. Ying Ning must think he was “useful”. She would have researched Stone since she met him in the Snake Market. Even before that. She must think he would be useful to her, just like Junko Terashima had been useful to her. She might want to use him and the NotFutile.com site for publicity. After all she had no chance whatsoever of putting up web pages in China that weren’t liable to be taken down just hours after they’d gone live. Then there was the weapons aspect. Through NotFutile.com, Stone himself showed a macabre level of understanding of weapons systems. It took an oddly perverted mindset to understand the people who had dreamed these weapons up, and Stone had that. Perhaps that’s why she needed him.

Stone’s cool rational core knew he’d have to be wary of Ying Ning. Stone always worked better alone, relying on himself, shunning the limelight. But Stone couldn’t fail to be impressed by Ying Ning. All she’d done and the way she’d done it. She was like an opposite version of him. Female and Chinese, where he was European and male. And where Stone used Western laws on openness and free speech to evade his enemies, Ying Ning did her stuff in spite of the laws in China.

Stone’s rational mind urged caution, but he wanted to learn more.

— oO0Oo-

Stone had been surprised that Ying Ning had arranged to meet in her own apartment — and of course she hadn’t. Ying Ning had Stone walk separately to another tower block ten minutes away, no doubt having him followed as she did so. It was broiling mid-morning in Kowloon, and it ought to be quiet. Nonetheless there must be two hundred Chinese people on each hundred metre stretch of sidewalk. More on the backstreets in the shade. Street vendors, awnings, hawkers, desultory market stalls. There was no chance of Stone spotting his follower here, and he gave up the effort. Stone made it to the tower block as arranged and walked up an airless stairwell for eight stories.

Ying Ning opened the door. This must be her real place, entirely different from the place where they’d met. The apartment was empty, save some bare sticks of furniture and two of Ying Ning’s comrades from China21. There were introduced as Bao An, the tall biker in the shades, and Lin Xiaohong, shorter, with a shaven head. There really was nothing in that place. Kept that way no doubt so that Ying Ning could move on and there would be no evidence of what she was up to.

The room stank of stale smoke, and the two men had on the usual Hong Kong garb of trouser-legs turned up from the ankle, flip-flops and undershirts. They sat around looking at the ceiling. It smelt like a surfeit of Chinese- brand whiskey the night before had dulled their senses.

Ying Ning had wasted no time setting up a laptop to do whatever it was she was going to do. It looked like some kind of presentation.

So this was it? China21? Four people to protest the exploitation the Chinese workers, the illegal sale weapons and “Semyonov’s capitalist dogs”. Ying Ning stood in the middle, hand on hip. She pulled another cigarette from her bag, and a lighter decorated with an image of Mao Zedong. Then she got on with it, referring occasionally to the laptop and to a file marked “ShinComm” on the table. Stone was barely listening to her at first. He was checking out his situation.

Four people? And that was including Stone. In truth, Ying Ning was China21. The two guys were her lapdogs, in it for whatever reasons. Idealistic or more likely bewitched by Ying Ning.

Ying Ning looked every inch an arrogant, opinionated, intellectual bitch, in her tight-fitted top and her black jeans. Stone let his eyes flit over her once more. A slight ripple of muscle in her legs. She sensed him looking, but made no reaction at all.

Ying Ning talked on, but Stone interrupted. ‘We need to talk about the weapons production at ShinComm,’ he said bluntly. ‘ShinComm is a maker of Western products, yes? Mostly designed in USA and Japan. Smartphones, notebook computers, MP3, electronics, semi-conductor. ShinComm has quarter of a million workers in a city called Dongguan in the South, and as many at a place called Factory City in Shanghai. Work is hard, the pay not bad… now.’

That last remark was for Ying Ning. It had been her campaign that had embarrassed ShinComm in the Western media and forced a forty percent pay increase.

She was immune to flattery however. ‘You miss the point,’ said Ying Ning. ‘ShinComm is not typical Chinese factory. Chinese factory works to plans. Chinese factory does not have ideas. ShinComm was founded only five years ago, and subsidiary New Machine Technology only one year ago. Already New Machine makes its own products. In one year, it made applications for thirty-five patents in the United States. Also other technology come from ShinComm and New Machine, without even bother to patent. Including many weapon technology. This is real mystery about ShinComm.’

Stone picked up the file. Ying Ning was talking up the weapons angle — and that was probably why she wanted Stone’s help. But already it was plain to Stone that Ying Ning was right. ShinComm was a lot more interesting than just the weapons angle. It was no ordinary Chinese firm. In fact it was no ordinary firm at all. Ying Ning’s file detailed one amazing technology after another. New Machine and ShinComm were a conveyor belt of new technology. And Chinese firms just weren’t like that.

Another odd thing in the file was the randomness of it all. Innovations in so many different areas. Some stuff went to patent, some didn’t. The SmoothVision video software, with its seemingly limitless resolution — there was no patent, no copyright for that. It had practically been given away. Yet Virginia Carlisle’s man had said it was based on fractal mathematics, with no similarities whatever to any other software. A fundamental innovation.

‘Take this example,’ Ying Ning went on, and she produced a baggie containing what appeared to be about fifty grams of sugar. She poured a little pile out onto the table. She licked the tip of her finger, dipped it in the sugar, then tasted it. ‘Go ahead. Try,’ she said.

Stone tasted it. Sure enough, the sweet, bland taste of refined sugar.

Bao An appeared with a spoon. Ying Ning crushed the little pile of sugar granules with the back of the spoon, turning them into a thin white powder, then licked her finger once more, looking at Stone in an oddly provocative way. She gestured him to taste it again.

‘Cocaine?’ said Stone. Stone licked his finger and tasted once more. ‘I got a bitter aftertaste on my teeth back there, after the sugar. But no odour or taste. Cocaine, yes?’

‘Not bad, Rockhead.’ Ying Ning was impressed ‘Yes. Cocaine — high quality too. Another ShinComm idea. But how do they do it?’

‘The real question is why,’ said Stone interrupting. ‘Why do they do it? This technology is used to smuggle cocaine to China,’ he said. ‘It says here in the file they use a nanotech system to coat the drug with a layer of sugar only one molecule thick.’ The significance was just sinking in with Stone as he spoke. This was an incredible process, and light years ahead of the big food companies. Worth billions. Food companies could coat healthy food in a nanotech layer of sugar, and they would have the perfect low calorie foods. But here it was, and not even patented. All that work to disguise cocaine for smugglers? Made no sense. This technology was being given away, just like the SmoothVision digital video.

Stone flipped though the file on the table. Full of this stuff. His favourite was the car — like the one he had seen driven by Semyonov, gliding past with preternatural acceleration as Semyonov left the party. Another piece of outrageous technology. The news clipping made out that Semyonov had driven from Beijing to Shanghai in that