The first raindrops exploded on the windscreen.
‘Everything okay?’ Zhao asked.
‘You?’
‘The guys are on-stage. Horrible car you’re driving, by the way. Vario-paint?’
Jericho was surprised. ‘You know your stuff.’
‘A bit. Don’t worry. The illusion is perfect.’ Zhao bent forwards and wiped a fleck from the instrument-panel with the ball of his hand. ‘Anybody would fall for it, as long as they didn’t get in and see the gleaming inner life.’
‘Tell me about the other market.’
‘Just half the size of this one. No chickens, no chicken-heads.’
Jericho reached behind him and handed Zhao a set of hologoggles. ‘Ever worn one of these?’
‘Of course.’ Zhao nodded at the branch of Cyber Planet. ‘Everyone in there wears one of these. You know what they call those shops around here?’
‘The Cyber Planets? No.’
‘Mortuaries. Once you’re in there you’re as good as dead. I mean, you’re breathing, but your existence is reduced to fundamental bodily functions. Eventually they carry you out because you’ve actually died. People are always dying in Cyber Planet.’
‘How many times have you been in there?’
‘A few.’
‘You don’t look that dead to me.’
Zhao looked at him from under lowered eyelids. ‘I’m above any kind of addiction, little Jericho. Explain these silly glasses to me.’
‘They make a biometric comparison. A hundred-and-eighty-degree panoramic scan. I’ve loaded photographs of Yoyo and five other Guardians onto the hard drive. If any one of the six comes within range, the goggles turn him red and send you a little beep. Loud enough to wake you up if you’ve drifted off under the weight of all that responsibility. The control on the left arm of the glasses also makes the outer surface reflective, if you want.’ Jericho dropped the goggles in Zhao’s lap and held one of the scanners up under his nose. ‘I’ve synchronised three of these things with your specs. You can take them wherever you like, but if possible try to put them somewhere you can’t actually see. Here’s the focus button, that’s how you activate the capture mechanism. They broadcast direct to your specs, and the scanner recordings appear at the bottom of your field of vision.’
‘I’m impressed,’ said Zhao, and looked as if he really was. ‘And how will we communicate?’
‘By mobile. Do you know where you’re going to be posting yourself?’
‘Opposite my branch there’s a Cyber Planet. Nice big windows to look out of.’
Jericho’s eye wandered to the Cyber Planet on the corner.
‘Good idea,’ he murmured.
‘Of course. Settle yourself in, pay for twenty-four hours, it’s more comfortable than sitting in a car. If you sit with the specs on your nose by the window, everyone’s going to think you’re shagging a hooker from Mars with four tits. There are snacks and drinks, only moderately palatable. You should really try these crab baozis, man. The food in Wong’s World is good and cheap.’
‘Do you have relatives in there?’ Jericho asked derisively.
‘No, but I do have taste buds. Would you mind driving me to my stake-out?’
Jericho started the car and had Zhao direct him to his Wong branch. On the way they passed tea-rooms and a Japanese noodle-bar, where the men were playing cards and Chinese chess, or gesticulating wildly as they talked at each other, many of them naked to the waist and with their heads close shaven.
‘These gentlemen are the Xaxus,’ Zhao said disparagingly. ‘They divide the day up between them.’
‘No ambition to saw a bit off for yourself?’
‘What makes you say that?’
‘What’s left for someone like you after they’ve divided the day up among themselves?’
‘It doesn’t matter.’ Zhao shrugged. ‘I help stoned idiots onto the stage and back down again. That’s a job too.’
‘Don’t get it.’
‘What’s not to get?’
‘I don’t understand what someone like you is doing in Quyu. You could live anywhere else.’
‘You think so?’ Zhao shook his head. ‘No one here can live anywhere else. No one wants us to live anywhere else.’
‘Quyu isn’t a prison.’
‘Quyu is a concept, Jericho. Two-thirds of humanity now lives in cities, the countryside’s been depopulated. Eventually all the cities will merge into one. They’re like carcinomas, sick, proliferating tissue, only the nuclei are healthy, nestling in deserts of despair. The nuclei are sanctuaries, temples of superior development. Human beings live there, real human beings. Guys like you. The rest are cattle, talking animals. Take a look around you. The people here are vegetating at the level of tree-dwellers, they procreate, demolish the planet’s resources, kill each other or die of various illnesses. They’re the rejects of creation. The failed part of the experiment.’
‘And you’re part of it too, aren’t you? Or have I misunderstood something?’
‘Oh, Jericho.’ Zhao smiled smugly. ‘The universe has its brightly lit centres, and why? Because darkness prevails in between. Have you ever heard that we must shed light on the darkness of the universe? It’s impossible. Any attempt to provide wealth for humanity as a whole is doomed to failure, it just means that everyone’s worse off. The superior can’t become like the inferior, it must separate itself off if it is to shine. There is no humanity, Jericho, not in the sense of a homogeneous species. There are winners and losers, the ones in the loop and the ones out of it, some on the bright side and most on the dark. The split is complete. No one wants to integrate the Xaxus of this world, break down their boundaries. Oh, and you’ve got to turn left here.’
Jericho said nothing. The Toyota clattered along a wide, badly paved road, lined with workshops and dirty brick houses. Where Wong’s World and the branch of Cyber Planet stood face to face, it opened up into a dusty square and revealed the grounds of the steelworks behind it. The huge blast furnace loomed up above the building.
‘You’re a mystery to me, Zhao. Who are you really?’
‘What do you think?’
‘I haven’t a clue.’ Jericho looked at him. ‘You seem to have a weakness for Yoyo, but when it comes to finding her, you let me pay you as if you were some kind of pimp. You live here and despise your own people. Somehow you don’t fit with Quyu.’
‘Very comforting,’ Zhao sneered. ‘Like telling a haemorrhoid it’s doing a power of good to the arsehole it’s grown in.’
‘Were you born in Quyu, or did you end up here?’
‘The latter.’
‘Which means you can leave again.’
‘Where to?’
‘Hmm.’ Jericho thought for a moment. ‘There are possibilities. Let’s see how our short-term partnership develops.’
Zhao tilted his head and raised an eyebrow.
‘Did I understand you correctly? Are you offering me a job?’
‘I don’t take on any regular employees, but I put teams together as the job requires. You’re definitely intelligent, Zhao. I was very impressed by your surprise attack in the Andromeda, you’re in good physical condition. I can’t exactly claim that I like you, but we don’t have to walk down the aisle together. It could be that I need you from time to time.’
Zhao’s eyes narrowed.
Then he smiled.
At that moment Jericho had a sudden déjà vu. He saw the familiar in the alien. It spread like a drop of dark ink in a clear liquid, quickly and in all directions, so that a moment later he couldn’t have said what the impression related to. Everything around him seemed to be striving for resolution, as in a film he’d once seen, although he couldn’t remember the ending. No, not a film, more of a dream, an illusion. A reflection in the water that you destroyed as you tried to capture it.