Far too expensive for someone from Quyu.
So what was Zhao doing sitting on that thing?
Zhao Bide, who was staring over at the blast furnace, watching Jin and Maggie climb the steps, without noticing Jericho in the shade of the building. Who hadn’t called in, in spite of everything they’d agreed, even though he was hot on the heels of two Guardians who would in all likelihood lead him to Yoyo. Whose number Grand Cherokee Wang had dialled the evening before he died, to talk to him for one minute, as Tu’s data revealed.
Wang had called Zhao.
Why?
Uneasy and electrified, Jericho was heading across to confront Zhao, who was leaning over right at that moment and wiping something from the dashboard – just as he had polished the display in Jericho’s car.
It all fitted.
Cherokee Wang’s murderer, just before he fled from the World Financial Center: in an elegant made-to-measure suit, with tinted glasses, a false moustache and wig, which temporarily transformed his even features into the face of Ryuichi Sakamoto, he leaned forward and wiped the controls of the Silver Dragon. But Jericho hadn’t been looking carefully enough, because suddenly he reminds him not of a Japanese pop star or a model, but all the time of—
Zhao Bide.
He’s the one who’s set the hitman on Yoyo’s trail.
Just as he puts his foot down on the accelerator, Zhao starts his airbike. A sound of turbines sweeps across the square. The machine swivels its jets into the upright position, balances for a moment on the tips of its fins and shoots steeply upwards, and Jericho realises that there is now hardly a chance of saving Yoyo.
How ridiculously easy everything had been.
And at the same time how excruciating.
Although he had barely been able to conquer his dread over the past few hours when fate had decreed that he go to Quyu, once more having the proof before his eyes that the superiority of the human race was the fevered hallucination of religiously infected Darwinists, a tragic error that called for correction. Sheer revulsion had driven him to speak to Jericho about the failure of creation, the unsuccessful part of the experiment – rashness! What Zhao had by the skin of his teeth managed to turn into sarcasm, now reflected Kenny Xin’s genuine outrage. The bulk of his species was a seething parasitic mass, a scandal for any creator, if there had ever been one. Only a few people who felt similarly had taken their insight to its conclusion, like that Roman who had burned his city down, even if he was said to have ruined the moment by singing. But Xin wished he could have seen the purifying fire in which the face of poverty blistered and charred; or even more than that:
He wished he could be the fire!
Objectively speaking, an eyesore like Quyu deserved to be reduced to ashes. Worldwide, one and a half billion people lived in slums. One and a half billion upon whom life had been squandered, who breathed in precious air and used up valuable resources, without producing anything but more poverty, still more hunger, still more progeny. One and a half billion who were suffocating the world. Still, Quyu would be a start.
But Xin had learned to rein in his feelings. To declare his independence of the dictates of the emotions. He had furiously set about re-creating, immunising and cleansing himself. So deeply that he would never again be forced to rub his skin off to rid himself of the dirt, the wire-pulling circumstances of his birth, the damp and sticky leavings of daily assaults, the scabs of despair. He had known that he would inevitably perish if he didn’t succeed in cleansing himself, and that his own death, the piss-stench of capitulation, would not bring redemption.
So he had acted.
Sometimes, at night, he experienced the day again, over and over. The tribunal of flames. He felt the heat on his cheeks, witnessed the burial of his own sticky corpse, felt the faint amazement of his wonderful, reborn body, his wild joy at the tremendous power that he would now have at his disposal. He was free. Free to do what he felt like. Free to slip into any skin he wished to, such as Zhao Bide’s.
How ridiculously simple it had been to latch on to Jericho, to take the man into his service. Grand Cherokee Wang might have been an idiot, but Xin owed him mute thanks for his detective card. Jericho had taken him to Quyu, to the Andromeda, where Xin had decided to take the game to its extreme. No wig this time, no false noses and beards, just appropriate clothing, based on the standard outfit that he carried with him at all times. Perhaps he hadn’t looked scruffy enough, he didn’t wear appliqués of any kind, but the roadies hadn’t minded, they’d just been grateful for someone to help them with the bulky Portakabins, and within a few minutes they’d given him all the information he needed in order to trick Jericho: Ass Metal. The Pink Asses. What could the detective have done but take Xin for one of them?
Jericho had been the mouse, he was the cat. He had come up with his own makeshift plan. Assault, ceasefire, two beers, a pact. Provided by Hydra with sufficient knowledge about the girl to impress the detective. There were some answers he hadn’t been able to give. Jericho’s question, for example, about whether he was a City Demon had been a complete curve-ball. He had known nothing about any organisation by that name. There was so much he hadn’t known that the unsuspecting detective had kindly told him, like where Yoyo and her Guardians liked to go shopping. It had taken him a quarter of an hour to find out the location of the Wong markets. Zhao Bide was a loyal partner, he made every effort to help, which also involved alerting Jericho’s attention to his pursuer – Zhao himself.
He had spent the afternoon in the Hyatt, where he had had a long and thorough shower to get rid of the stench of Xaxu at least for a few hours. There had been a message to the effect that the experts had arrived, and that three airbikes were ready, just as he had demanded. He had sent the two men on ahead, and had followed them at a leisurely pace, back into the dirt where he was to meet Jericho.
Owen Jericho and he had been a good team.
Meanwhile, since the scanners had revealed the reappearance of Maggie Xiao Meiqi and Jin Jia Wei, it was time to give up that partnership. Jericho might waste away in Cyber Planet. The airbike rose into the air until Kenny could see the steelworks in all its massive dereliction. Only a few scattered people were in evidence, homeless people and gangs who had found refuge in the factory halls. A little group of bikers crossed the savannahs of the slag-fields, came closer. Meanwhile Xiao Meiqi and Jin Jia Wei had worked their way up the system of steps and climbed the platform on which the former control room of the blast furnace rested. The girl disappeared inside, while Jia Wei turned round and looked out onto the square.
His gaze wandered to the sky.
Kenny spoke into the microphone, issued instructions. Then he swivelled the jets of the airbike to horizontal.
Jin Jia Wei had a reputation for being lazy and truculent, and showed little interest in his studies. On the other hand he was a gifted hacker. No more and no less. He didn’t share Yoyo’s lofty plans but neither did he challenge them, because they actually didn’t interest him. She wanted to improve the world? Fine. More fun, at any rate, than mouldering away in lecture halls, and anyway Jia Wei was head over heels in love with her, as was everybody, in fact. As ideologist in chief, Yoyo found nicely idiotic reasons to break into alien networks, preferably those of the Party, and besides, she supplied the equipment too. For Jia Wei she was a magic toyshop owner, with him as the lucky boy who was allowed to try out all the lovely things she brought along. She had the ideas, and he had the ploys up his sleeve. What did you call that kind of relationship? Symbiosis?
Something like that.