The Machine

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 him. 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.

Carslake looked at the tiny screen on the data collection set, and as soon as it was finished, went back to staring, looking out over the crater. This was his Nirvana. Stone was glad of the quiet. He made a note to come back in the light, handed Carslake the data unit to carry, and led on through the trees to find the forest track back toward the monastery.

By the time they’d walked the seven kilometres back to Shanglan, there was a sign of dawn, perhaps an hour away in the East. The gathering blue light was beginning to dim the stars in the impossibly clear sky above. The band of the Milky Way was fading, but Venus stood laser bright on the horizon.

Perhaps Carslake had never heard of the words “stealthy” or “careful”. He strode along in the undergrowth, thrashing at the spring flowers with a branch. Stone breathed in the cool night air, soughing over from the Great Snow Mountains and the Himalaya. By the time they came in sight of the temple’s gold and red portal, Carslake was talking wildly again. Stone had to virtually gag the man as they made for the living quarters.

Early prayers had already begun. The smell of incense had met them hundreds of metres from the temple, and Stone could hear the soft chanting from the monks within. The eerie calm of the blue night air above the crater was still with him. He walked around to the temple and stood in silence to drink in the quiet chanting of the older monks, all inside the warm glow of the temple. Giyenchen was in their midst, shaven-headed and ecstatic, eyes closed to the world and cleansing his mind with nothingness. The solitary monk stayed without on the steps of the temple, the old guy with the lined face, spinning scripture reel in hand, humming his omm noises.

No sign of Panchen. That guy was going to need double helpings of cymbals and chanting to cleanse himself after what he’d done.

Stone stood tall and walked through shadow, as if from the front of the temple, and then straight inside the sleeping block at the back of the temple. Carslake pushed ahead of him. The blackened, wooden floor creaked, and a single oil lamp burned at the end of the corridor. Silent, undisturbed.

Then there was another creak in the floor ahead of them. Carslake’s tall figure shoved back past him, scrambling to get out. Idiot.

Stone span round like a top. It was all over. In the lamplight, the muzzle of an assault rifle peered malignantly round the door where he had just come in with Carslake. There was a determined Chinese eye looking at them over the barrel. Carslake changed tack. He walked straight up on impulse, as if oblivious of the gun. He certainly had some nerve. Or was it stupidity?

It could have been worse. The soldier smashed the butt of the rifle into Carslake’s solar plexus. He went down gasping in pain, like he couldn’t breathe.

Stone walked up slowly, and the gun was turned on him. Let’s see what he’s made of. Stone made eye contact with the soldier, and held it. Didn’t raise his arms. The soldier glanced down, and stepped nimbly over Carslake, keeping his weapon on Stone. He was tall, as tall as Stone. He didn’t break the stare, just advanced steadily, till the muzzle of the gun was a few centimetres in front of Stone’s cool, grey eyes. See you and raise you.

It’s difficult to stare down a bullet. Stone put his hands up.

Chapter 48 — 3:11am 10 April — Shanglan Monastery, Garze Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan, China

Ying Ning came in view with her arms bound tight and high behind her, like a wild animal. She was kicked and force-marched across in front of Stone and Carslake, who were kneeling on the ground outside the accommodation block, cuffed, with their hands on their heads. One guy held the arms high behind Ying Ning’s shoulders, on the point of dislocation, and another was pulling her head back by the hair. A strip of her black T-shirt was tied in a vicious ligature across her mouth. Lips pulled back, red and bleeding at the side. Her teeth protruded around the tight gag, preternaturally white and vulpine despite the darkness. They were ordering her to kneel, pulling the spiky hair back in their fists and shoving her shoulders down. She looked suddenly small and slight with the soldiers towering over her, but still refused to kneel for them. Finally an officer came round and kicked her knees viciously at the back until her legs buckled and her kneecaps thumped into the ground. Stone turned his eyes to her slowly. She stared ahead, a bloody contusion above her left eye. She looked tiny, a thin, bloodied wraith. But undiminished.

One of Ying Ning’s captors walked in front. He looked shaken. Blood on his face and a long fleck of saliva on the shiny, black webbing across his chest. Ying Ning’s eyes followed him, burning. Behind the gag, she was smiling. She was actually trying to taunt him.

An engine revved harshly and a dark green jeep pulled round in front. Then with another whine of the gearbox, it lurched back towards them and stopped, rear tow bar a metre from their faces, exhaust fumes belching at them. Carslake closed his eyes and coughed fastidiously. There was a bark of command from within and the Gong An officers hauled first Stone, then Carslake in through the tailgate of the jeep. Ying Ning struggled again, trying to kick out, until they lifted her bound shoulders to breaking point and she uttered an animal scream from behind the gag. An officer removed his shiny black belt, tied it hard around her knees, then threw her in. The back door slammed and they were away, bumping and bouncing over the rough ground and then away onto the road.

Not one of them spoke, but the questions passed through Stone’s mind like a funeral procession. How many monks arrested? Was it possible they’d all escaped through the woods? Possible. Also very unlikely. And what would become of Giyenchen and the others, who were completely blameless?

The mystery of what was happening in the crater behind that fence, the gravity anomaly, the darkened, unmanned factory in Shanghai for that matter — it was all so fanciful, a world away from the harsh reality of the back of a Chinese truck. They could hardly even complain. Stone had tried to stop Panchen when he killed that truck