Herrick laughed. "You think in such crude terms, Shih Tong. The implant isn't a physical thing, not in the sense that you mean. It's not like the card. That's only storage—a permanent record. No, the implant was the drug. A highly complex drug made up of a whole series of chemicals with different reaction times, designed to fire particular synapses in the brain itself—to create, if you like, a false landscape of experience. An animated landscape, complete with a predetermined sequence of events."
Chen shook his head. "I don't see how."
Herrick looked away past him, his eyes staring off into some imaginary distance. "That's because you don't understand the function of the brain. It's all chemicals and electronics, in essence. The whole of experience. It comes in at the nerve ends and is translated into chemical and electrical reactions. I merely bypass those nerve ends. What I create is a dream. But a dream more real, more vivid, than reality!"
Chen stared at him, momentarily frightened by the power of the man, then looked back at the screen. He didn't want to see the girl get killed. Instinctively, he reached across, ejecting the card, and slipped it into his pocket.
Herrick started forward. "What the fuck—?"
Chen grabbed Herrick by the neck, then drew the knife from his boot and held it against his throat.
"I've heard enough, Shih Herrick. More than enough, if you must know. But now I've got what I came for, so I'll be going."
Herrick swallowed uncomfortably. "You won't get out of here. I've a dozen guards—"
Chen pulled the knife toward him sharply, scoring the flesh beneath Herrick's chin. Herrick cried out and began to struggle, but Chen tightened his grip.
"You'd better do as I say, Shih Herrick and get me out of here. Or you're dead. And not pretend dead. Really dead. One more shit comment from you and I'll implant this knife in the back of your throat."
Herrick's eyes searched the room, then looked back at Chen. "All right. But you'll have to let me give instructions to my men."
Chen laughed. "Just tell them to open the doors and get out of the way." He raised his voice, looking up at one of the security cameras. "You hear me, Shih Ling? If you want to see your boss again, do as I say. Any tricks and he's dead, and where will you be then? Runner to some gang boss, dead in a year."
He waited a moment, searching the walls for sign of some technological trickery. Then there was a hiss and a door on the far side of the room slid open.
He pressed harder with the knife. "Tell them I want to go out the way I came in, Shih Herrick. Tell them quickly, or you're dead."
Herrick swallowed, then made a tiny movement of his head. "Do as he says."
They moved out slowly into the corridor, Chen looking about him, prepared at any moment to thrust the knife deep into Herrick's throat.
"Who are you working for?"
Chen laughed. "Why should I be working for anyone?"
"Then I don't understand . . ."
No, thought Chen. You wouldn't, would you?
They came to the second door. It hissed open. Beyond it stood four guards, their knives drawn.
"No further," said Ling, coming from behind them.
Chen met Ling's eyes, tightening his grip on Herrick's throat. "Didn't you hear me, Ling? You want your master to die?"
Ling smiled. "You won't kill him, Tong. You can't. Because you can't get out without him."
Chen answered Ling's smile with his own, then pulled Herrick closer to him, his knife hand tensed.
"This is for my friend, Axel. And for all those others whose lives you have destroyed."
He heard the cry and looked back, seeing how the blood had drained from Ling's face, then let the body fall from him.
"Now," he said, crouching, holding the knife out before him. "Come, Shih Ling. Let's see what you can do against a kwai."
CHAPTER TEN
Islands
JELKA LEANED out over the side of the boat, straining against the safety harness as she watched the rise and fall of the waves through which they plowed, the old thirty-footer rolling and shuddering beneath her, the wind tugging at her hair, taking her breath, the salt spray bitingly cold against her face.
The water was a turmoil of glassy green threaded with white strands of spume. She let her hand trail in the chill water then put her fingers to her mouth, the flesh strangely cold and hard, her lips almost numb. She sucked at them, the salt taste strong in her mouth, invigorating. A savage, ancient taste.
She turned, looking back at the mainland. Tall fingers of ash-gray rock thrust up from the water, like the sunken bones of giants. Beyond them lay the City, its high, smooth, clifflike walls dazzling in the morning light—a ribbon of whiteness stretching from north to south. She turned back, conscious suddenly of the swaying of the boat, the creak and groan of the wood, the high-pitched howl of the wind contesting with the noise of the engine—a dull, repetitive churring that sounded in her bones—and the constant slap and spray of water against the boat's sides.
She looked up. The open sky was vast. Great fists of cloud sailed overhead, their whiteness laced with sunlight and shadow; while up ahead the sea stretched away, endless it seemed, its rutted surface shimmering with light.
Sea birds followed in their wake, wheeling and calling, like souls in torment. She laughed, the first laughter she had enjoyed in weeks, and squinted forward, looking out across the sun-dazzled water, trying to make out the island.
At first she could see nothing. Ahead, the sea seemed relatively flat, unbroken. And then she saw it, tiny at first, a vague shape of green and gray melding and merging with the surrounding sea as if overrun. Then, slowly, it grew, rising out of the sea to meet her, growing more definite by the moment, its basalt cliffs looming up, waves swelling and washing against their base.
Jelka looked across at her father. He sat there stiffly, one hand clenched and covered by the other, his neck muscles tensed; yet there was a vague, almost dreamy expression in his eyes. He was facing the island, but his eyes looked inward. Jelka watched him a moment, then looked away, knowing he was thinking of her mother.
As the boat slowed, drifting in toward the jetty, she looked past the harbor at the land beyond. A scattering of old stone houses surrounded the quayside, low, gray-green buildings with slate roofs of a dull orange. To the far right of the jetty a white crescent of shingle ended in rocks. But her eyes were drawn upward, beyond the beach and the strange shapes of the houses, to the hillside beyond. Pines crowded the steep slope, broken here and there by huge iron-gray outcrops of rock. She shivered, looking up at it. It was all so raw, so primitive. Like nothing she had ever imagined.
She felt something wake deep within her and raised her head, sniffing the air. The strong scent of pine merged with the smell of brine and leather and engine oil, filling her senses, forming a single distinctive odor. The smell of the island.
Her father helped her up onto the stone jetty. She turned, looking back across the water at the mainland. It was hazed in a light mist, its walls of ice still visible yet somehow less impressive from this distance. It was all another world from this.
Sea birds called overhead, their cries an echoing, melancholy sound. She looked up, her eyes following their wheeling forms, then looked down again as a wave broke heavily against the beach, drawing the shingle with it as it ebbed.
"Well," her father said softly, "here we are. What do you think of it?"
She shivered. It was like coming home.
She looked across at the houses, her eyes moving from one to another, searching for signs of life.
"Which one?" she asked, looking back at him.
Her father laughed. "Oh, none of those." He turned, giving orders to the men in the boat, then looked back at her. "Come on, I'll show you."