But such feelings pass, when you’re stuck in cage hundreds of metres into the rock. He tried to take refuge in analysis again,
Rationally, there were two things which could come next: either they would continue upwards, or the cage would go into freefall, and they would have a mercifully quick death as the cage hit the bottom. If the cage went upwards, it would probably stop again and again, to torment them.
Sure enough, after who knows how many minutes, the cage began to move slowly upward once more, resuming its painful crawl. Ying Ning’s eyes screwed even tighter. She wriggled imperceptibly for space. It was getting to her. There was a danger one of them was going to freak out in there and it could be her. Stone was almost glad of the exquisite pain in his ankle to take his mind off it.
The cage stopped again. Not for as long this time, but at least a few minutes. Ekstrom must find it less satisfying — he’d done it once, and anyway he couldn’t see what was happening. The cage started up again, and they climbed much quicker. Stone actually shook his head at the crass, twisted feelings which must be driving Ekstrom’s sadism. He actually knew what was going to happen next — not that it would help him or Ying Ning. Ekstrom actually wanted the pleasure of seeing them stuck in that cage. What that it? He wanted them to beg or something? The cage, after progressing so slowly, was now going up the tube like a rifle bullet, spinning and rattling. Ekstrom couldn’t wait for his fix of sadism. He was interested only in indulging his crude, atavistic urges.
Then, as Stone expected, the cage slowed up to a stop a few metres below the surface. Maybe ten metres. So it was still very dark. Both Stone and Ying Ning stared upwards through the three-way frame of the cage at the small disc of light ten metres above them, Stone full of anger and Ying Ning with her little pointed face: cute but expressionless, supplicating, like a fox staring upwards out of a snare. Ekstrom’s face was there in the distance, laughing wildly, his tongue sticking out and swirling lasciviously over his lips. Stone imagined the man might masturbate over such things.
Then Ekstrom’s face disappeared.
‘Go!’ rasped Stone.
Ying Ning slithered upwards in the cage, angled her shoulders between the bars of the frame and she was off. Fast. Out through the gap and climbing up the wire in the narrow shaft. Shit, she was fast, feet on the side of the tunnel and hands pistoning up on the wire.
There was a sudden sound of sawing, resonating deeply in the wire and the cage. What the fuck? Ekstrom was making to saw off the wire! It was pure theatre. He’d never cut through that steel wire. The grating continued, but Ying Ning was still climbing. She was going to get out.
Abruptly the sawing stopped and seconds later, the cage jerked upwards, accelerating up the shaft and out into the air. Still going. Stone’s cage shot up out of the shaft. It slammed into the winding wheel and swung Stone wildly round in the air, like a demented fairground ride, five metres above the ground. Stone scrabbled for the door latch of the cage, but was thrown back and forth. A loud, single gun shot below him.
Below him, Ying Ning had jumped aside as she came out of the shaft. She was on the ground making for the controls, where Semyonov was slumped lifeless. The Great Man had somehow made it to the control desk while Ekstrom was playing his sadistic games, and brought the cage sharply out of the hole. Saving Stone’s life.
Ekstrom had turned and shot Semyonov through the forehead for his troubles, using only one bullet to snuff out all two hundred IQ points. Now the Swede was lounging there, half-sitting on the control desk next to Semyonov’s inert bulk, smiling pityingly over his shoulder at Ying Ning. Unable to credit that the little woman would take him on, but happy to kill her anyway. Ekstrom leveled the gun at Ying Ning, grinning, just as he had done with Hooper.
Stone’s fingers groped blindly for the door latch down the outside of the swinging cage.
‘Up here,’ Stone yelled, five metres above them. He meant to distract, but Ekstrom was too sharp. The Swede kept his eyes on Ying Ning. Cocked the handgun. Stone still couldn’t get his fingers on the latch.
Ying Ning ducked and scampered forward at Ekstrom. Stone’s fingers hit the latch and his body hurled itself from the cage. He landed on Ekstrom’s shoulder, putting him down. But the killer still had the gun. Ekstrom rose to one knee, swinging the weapon round at Stone.
But Stone had bought enough time. Ying Ning skipped side-on toward them and made a perfect, iron-hard heel kick to the side of Ekstrom’s head. A neck-breaker. Ekstrom toppled over like a sickening horse, blood coming from his mouth and ears.
Stone hobbled to his feet, and hopped over to where Semyonov’s high-tech wheelchair was on its side, and the smooth, white bulk of the alien intelligence was lying over the control desk. Stone checked his pulse, his breathing. No sign of that asthmatic wheezing anymore. But for Semyonov, Stone and Ying Ning would have died in that shaft. Semyonov had just given his life to save them. It was the final, human act of an alien intelligence.
Stone looked round to see Ying Ning, the hundred-twenty pound Chinese woman, hauling an insensible Ekstrom across the dust to the small, round hole in the ground. She tied the Swede’s hands behind his back with his belt, then shoved him head first down the shaft. Unceremoniously, like a sack of coal down a chute.
Stone sat with Virginia Carlisle in the incense-heavy room where he’d taken tea with Giyenchen a few days before.
It turned out Ekstrom had been inserted into Semyonov’s medical team by Zhang, and offered to help Semyonov by going down the shaft. Ekstrom had gone down there unseen, while Stone and Virginia were still wondering what to do with Carslake.
‘I recognised Ekstrom when he came back up, as soon as he stepped back out of the cage at the surface,’ said Virginia.
‘When he’d left us down there for dead?’
‘I guess,’ said Virginia. ‘Semyonov asked him where you were, and Ekstrom said you’d been trapped in a rock fall underground. Steven believed it, but I thought he’d killed you. That’s when I ran.’
‘You ran?’
‘When it comes to “fight or flight”, I’m a flight girl every time,’ said Virginia. ‘You should try it. Good for your health.’ She was a smart woman. She’d known when to run from an impossible situation and regroup. A skill Stone had yet to master.
‘But what about Semyonov?’ asked Stone. ‘After all you’ve done for him. You just abandoned him.’
‘Come on, Stone. Steven had lost it, even I could see that. He wanted to believe Ekstrom’s story,’ said Virginia. ‘He didn’t even try to get away from him. Steven wanted to believe anyone who said they could get the Machine out of there. Semyonov knew it was Ekstrom coming up that shaft, even though he’d told me it was you. He didn’t care about you. He didn’t even care about me. He would happily have seen me killed. Steven knew he was dying and all he cared about was his Machine. He stayed there at the top of the shaft. At the controls — ready to help anyone who could bring it out. You, me, Ekstrom, Ying Ning — it didn’t matter who,’ said Virginia.
‘It might have worked out for him too,’ said Stone. ‘Only Semyonov weakened. He took pity on us and pulled us up out of the shaft. He struggled from his wheelchair and got to the controls when Ekstrom wasn’t looking, and pulled us out. Cost him his life. He could have let Ekstrom kill us, then go back down and get the Machine’
‘I guess.’
‘Semyonov must have already had second thoughts, though, Virginia,’ said Stone. ‘Probably when he realised you’d walked out on him. Semyonov started bringing us up, remember.’
‘Probably Ekstrom had a gun to his head,’ said Virginia.
‘No wonder he sounded weird,’ said Stone. ‘He would have been thinking how he could get out of there.’
It was all academic now. Stone looked out of the window again at the deep blue mountain sky, then looked back at Carlisle. ‘Where were you, Virginia? How did you know to come up here to the monastery?’
‘I didn’t. I had no idea where I was, but one of the monks was there,’ said Virginia. ‘Up by the fence. A guy called Panchen. He led me back through the forest to the monastery. What was I going to do? There was nothing else around, nothing at all. The head guy, the head monk…’
‘Giyenchen.’
‘Yes. He told me that a Chinese woman had persuaded Panchen to bring her to the crater and get her
