heels, skinny in black jeans and black silk camisole.
A hot breeze soughed over from the South China Sea, fluttering the advertising banners for Patek Philippe and Louis Vuitton, and tousling Jean Luc’s hair. It was the People’s Republic of China, but it could have been a humid version of Hurlingham near London, or maybe the Hamptons. Designer sun dresses and hats, flags of all nations, the smell of ponies. Most of all the turbo-charged testosterone of eight whole teams of polo players. Super-rich men, young women and lean men in tight white jeans. The atmosphere crackled with sexuality.
Three quarters of a bottle of Mumm champagne and two hours of weapons-grade flirtation with the Chinese girl had left Jean Luc thinking of only one thing. When she offered to entertain him in her apartment in Shanghai for the weekend, Jean Luc hadn’t bothered to weigh his options. He summoned a car and they drove off, to censorious glances in the mirror from the driver.
Ying Ning gave directions in Chinese, of course. They arrived at Hongqiao airport in Shanghai.
‘You must give the driver four hundred kwai,’ she told him sexily. Stroked his bicep under his pink polo shirt for good measure.
Jean Luc was confused, but gave her the money. It didn’t seem bad. About forty euros. Then watched in frustration as she stepped out.
‘Where you going?’ he asked.
‘Sichuan!’ she shouted over her shoulder and walked off into the terminal.
Chapter 64 — 6:07pm 13 April — Balong Polo and Country Club Resort, Zhejiang Province, China
Stone looked through the translucent plastic sheeting of Semyonov’s “cleantent”. He could see blood from the sores around Semyonov’s legs and butt forming scarlet patches inside the white plastic trousers. He would have had a blood transfusion in the past few hours, followed by the Interferon infusion to damp down his immune system.
‘What about the Machine, Stone? Do your powers of imagination stretch that far? Or was Robert Oyang
‘I don’t know when you did it,’ said Stone. ‘And I don’t really know why. Maybe you did it as a gift to the human race. Maybe you did it to find a cure for your health problems. Maybe you did it just because you could. I don’t know when or how,’ said Stone. He could feel Semyonov growing in confidence behind the plastic covers, his red eyes staring, his struggling lungs laughing gently. If only his face could move, Semyonov would be laughing in Stone’s face already. Stone’s theory had better be right. ‘But I can tell you what you did,’ said Stone. ‘What you made. And why you ran away from the US and faked your death.’
‘There was nothing clever in faking my death, nothing underhand. I just wanted a little peace.’ There was quiet, but for the hum of the air receivers and the sucking half-snore of Semyonov’s asthmatic lungs. ‘Can you imagine how hard it was to do those press conferences and parties?’
Was Semyonov looking for sympathy? Stone said nothing.
‘I was also out of my mind on steroids, Professor Stone,’ Semyonov said, quietly. ‘And it nearly fucking killed me.’
Stone believed him. But there was more to it. ‘You would have been arrested if you stayed in the US,’ he said. ‘You had to flee the US, because you’d built the Machine, and you tried hard, but failed to persuade SearchIgnition to switch it on. The lawyers wouldn’t allow it, because what the Machine does is illegal in the US, isn’t it? Or maybe they found out that you’d buried another copy of the Machine deep under the mountains in China as an insurance policy? Uncle Sam was never going to be happy about that. It it’s been working for months already, hasn’t it? Where’s the other one? Snuggled up in amongst your SearchIgnition servers in Colorado? Did you ever even switch it on?’
‘Fucking lawyers wouldn’t allow me to switch it on in the US,’ said Semyonov dismissively. ‘It’s a world- changing development. Historic. Yet all those guys can think of is their “corporate liabilities”. Protecting their sorry, Harvard-educated asses.’
‘Come on, Semyonov. If you run away to China, Uncle Sam wants to know what you’ve been up to. Your government was never going to sit idly by. The FBI and SearchIgnition have over a hundred software analysts trying to figure out the code and algorithms running your search engines.’
‘They haven’t even cracked the encryption,’ said Semyonov with a sneer. ‘And when they do they’re in for a whole new world of pain trying to figure out how the programs work.’
‘Like a crossword puzzle in a language you can’t even imagine?’ said Stone.
‘Worse. Things have moved on, Stone. This isn’t the kiddie programs I wrote in prison. No more Chinese characters. This is many levels above that. They may as well try to analyse a rock.’
‘The Machine is even worse than the search engine technology, I’m guessing.’
‘Much worse,’ said Semyonov, croaking. ‘Last time I looked, it had been upgrading itself. I could barely figure it out myself, and I built it. That was weeks ago.’
‘It’s bringing itself up to sentience?’
‘Possibly,’ said Semyonov. No wonder he wanted to get his hands back on it.
‘But I still don’t get how it works,’ said Virginia, almost to herself. ‘I get that it’s a computer that comes up with these ideas.’
‘More than ideas. Breakthroughs, my dear — detailed plans and blueprints. It comes up with new devices, new chemicals, new processes to make them, new alloys, materials… It’s simply sweats great ideas. They’re coming out every few seconds. Even Oyang couldn’t use more than a fraction of them.’
‘I still don’t get it,’ said Virginia. ‘How does it know anything to start with? How is the Machine producing all this technology just by sitting there in a hole in the ground, thinking to itself? How does it even know what people want?’
Semyonov was sitting in the sterile plastic underclothes. The blood was slick and damp on the inside, the red clearly visible through the blurred sheeting. Then he began to put on light cotton shirt and trousers with the male nurse.
‘Virginia,’ said Stone. ‘Your friend Steven here pretty much invented Internet search technology. Semyonov’s search engine technology basically sucks up the whole of the Internet and indexes it, so that people can find things. Semyonov took all that information — the whole of the Internet — and packed in into the Machine. That Machine was loaded up with a copy of every page, of every web site, every research paper, every engineering textbook, every marketing blurb, idea, and sci-fi story in existence. It takes all that and munches through it, making connections. The Machine has one purpose: to take that planet-full of information and ideas, fit it all together, and come up with new ideas,’ said Stone, still staring through the plastic at Semyonov. ‘It looks like it worked pretty well.’
‘And Oyang?’ asked Virginia.
‘Oyang was on the take,’ said Stone. ‘He blew the whole thing wide open by cherry picking ideas, getting patents and selling them. Some of the weapons he manufactured in that place in Shanghai. It was never going to go unnoticed. Now thanks to Oyang, everyone who has any notion of what the Machine can do, wants to get their hands on it. China, the US, Russia…’
‘But without me, they’re wasting their time,’ said Semyonov. ‘I’m impressed, though. That you figured it out.’ Behind the curtain, he was weakly trying to clap his bleeding hands together.
Stone was impressed too. He was astonished. He wouldn’t have managed it without Carslake — he was a dark horse.
The big white man was suffering, forced to wear clothes and make-up for the trip. It was irritating, painful. He seemed buoyed nonetheless. Perhaps he felt unburdened. ‘For your information,’ said Semyonov after a while, ‘There is nothing down there in that mine that is new or special to me. Just something I want to get out. There are problems down that hole which I never suspected. But congratulations. You have just volunteered to help me go to
