Jade Dragon (11 page)

And so the man, the Emperor, died, and the army of stone was created.
As this work went on, an act of cruelty came to pass.

A man, a swordsman, a simple fool with nothing of the Emperor’s
greatness in him, a soldier in the real army upon which the facsimile
was based, earned himself the ire of a minor warlord in the late
Emperor’s service. It is not written nor remembered, what this simple
fool’s misdeed was, but it was so grave—or perhaps, the warlord was so
cruel—that it earned him a living death. The soldier was beaten
senseless and pushed into one of the moulds used to make the terracotta
men. He suffocated in there, seared to his demise and baked into the
stone, bones and flesh buried along with thousands of identical
mannequins.

The warlord later perished in battle and sank to the Nine Hells, as he
deserved. But his cruelty extends to this day. The simple man remains
lost, his bones encased in one of thousands of stone statues. Where they
are, his spirit will never know. His peace is denied to him, forever.

This, then, is man’s cruelty. Better to be the cat’s mouse, neh?

Chinese Legend

There was a crackle of static on the wall screen, and the camera remote
lit red to show the broadcast was going live. The woman’s face faded in.
“Thank you, Shania, for that update. Now, I’m joined live by Heywood
Ropé, manager and psychic nutritionist for pop sensation Juno Qwan. As
our viewers will know, Juno’s sold-out tour came to a alarming
conclusion in the stilt-city of Newer Orleans when an apparent domestic
terror incident led to the hospitalisation of several audience members.
You’re watching ZeeBeeCee’s
Entertainment Pulse
and I’m your host,
Tammy Popeldouris.” The honey-blonde woman on the screen inclined her
head and smiled at Ropé. “Heywood, good to have you on the show.”

“Great to be here again, Tammy.” He returned the smile, matching her
tooth-for-tooth. “Juno wanted me to express her sadness at not being
able to make the interview herself, but as you can understand, the
events of the last twenty-four hours have been difficult for her.” Ropé
showed a mask of concern, dressed with a slight sadness.

The reporter mirrored him. “Indeed. And the question Juno’s fans are
asking is, how is she?”

Cue reassuring smile. “She’s resting, Tammy. Even without what happened
at the Hyperdome, a ten-city tour across NorthAm takes its toll! But
she’s fine, really. If anything, Juno is more worried about her fans,
who she loves so much. After the incident, she asked me to send a
generous donation to the NOLA Medicareplex, and with the help of our
friends at RedWhiteBlue we’re doing just that.” He gave a calculated
shake of the head, rueful and sad. “Those poor, poor people….”

Tammy spoke to her audience. “Juno is of course at the moment on her way
back to her native Hong Kong aboard her private jet—click the green spot
on your d-screens for more information or to purchase a virtual
replica.” Her expression became neutral. “Heywood, what’s your take on
this awful event? From what the local police franchises report, it seems
that a group affiliated with the America Alone Alliance Army were
responsible for the sabotage of lightshow display equipment at Juno’s
farewell concert.”

A frown. “I’m no political expert, Tammy, I’m just a guy who wants to
bring great music to the world. But we’ve all heard of the A4 and
they’ve made no secret of their dislike of foreign entertainers on their
shores… Look what happened in New York, a couple of months ago…”

Tammy nodded. “You’re referring to the so-called ‘Brown Noise’ attack on
a concert by the British opera singer Robert Williams at the Carnegie
Bowl. Viewers can hyperlink to ZeeBeeCee’s coverage of that incident by
touching red on their d-screen.”

“Frankly, I think this is a failure on the part of the American
law-enforcement community to properly police their country.” He leaned
forward to display his seriousness. “Tammy, let me tell you that some
people suggested that Juno should not come to America… But Juno did
not want to disappoint the fans, whom she cares for so very much.”

“And those fans wish her well, Heywood. Here at ZeeBeeCee we’ve been
inundated with emails asking after her. But regarding the incident at
the Hyperdome, how do you react to stories we’ve been hearing that
several audience members were attacked by…” She glanced at a
data-screen. “Here I’m quoting… ‘an angel of death’?”

Ropé’s expression remained unchanged. “People under stress see many
strange things, Tammy, and while our security do the best they can to
screen out any attendees under the influence of illicit substances, some
do sneak through…”

A nod. “An interesting point, Heywood. Only recently, I believe that the
Mothers For Meddling attempted to bring a civil suit against Juno’s
publisher, RedWhiteBlue, for what they alleged was ‘pro-drug use’
symbology in her songs.”

He allowed himself a moment of irritation. “Tammy, really. Those women
are a group of middle-class busybodies with too much time on their
hands, looking for scapegoats to blame for their poor parenting skills.”
He swayed as the jet bumped an air pocket. “Let’s not forget their
unfounded smear campaign against Senator Michael J Fox.”

She smirked, content at having been able to raise a flicker of anger
from him. “Back to the fans, then. The other question on their minds—and
on ours, of course—is the truth behind the rumours that Juno will
headline the so-called WyldSky concert on Hong Kong’s Victoria Peak.
What can you tell us, Heywood? True or false?”

Ropé waited for a count of three before answering. “Tammy, Juno is a
very private person, as you know, and she certainly has a lot of respect
for the independent positive-future groups involved in WyldSky. But I
couldn’t possibly comment as to her intentions on this matter.”

“Here at ZeeBeeCee we’ve heard that Juno’s publishers are actively
trying to dissuade her from having any connection to WyldSky given the
markedly anti-corporate stance of the event—”

He held up a hand to interrupt. “Tammy, Juno is a strong-willed and very
intelligent young woman. She isn’t going to let some suits tell her
where and when she can’t sing. ”

“So you’re saying she’s going to be there?”

A broad smile. “I’m saying anything is possible, Tammy. That’s what I
love about my job… I get to see the impossible happen. ”

The interviewer laughed. “Cryptic as ever, Heywood. Well, that’s all we
have time for…” The woman turned away and the screen stuttered into
blackness. The remote’s red eye dimmed, and Ropé saw one of the techs
make a throat-cutting gesture. He stood, resisting the urge to spit.

“Are we done?”

The tech nodded. “Good job, Mr Ropé—”

“Don’t natter me,” he growled, the face he’d worn during the interview
shifting into something cold and immobile. “Where’s our diva?”

“Still in her cabin. Her telemetry is a little wavy but it’s inside
normal tolerances.”

Ropé bent to take a look out of the nearest window. Through the oval he
could see glimpses of a black glass ocean and the steady blink of a red
running light on the tip of the jet’s delta wing. He turned away and
made for the compartment where his mobile office was located. “Don’t
disturb me for anything less than the end of the world, understand?”

The bed enveloped her with coils of warm rope, sweat-hot sheets finding
places for themselves to knot about her pale skin and torso. Juno tried
very hard to remember how to make herself scream, but the method of it
was lost to her. In a broken, detached way she saw the component parts
of her thought process fall out of her mouth in coloured blocks of
sound. They broke into pieces that smelled like dark.

Eyes where her mouth should be, words for tastes and noises for colours.
Everywhere there were mirrors. Talking mirrors that screamed and cried
or made sounds that could have been songs. She carefully recited the
lyrics to “Halo Kisses” but discovered she could only remember them
backwards.

Juno dragged herself off the bed and her bare feet touched the floor.
She felt the singing of the wings through the fuselage, and imagined the
footless depths of sky around her. She giggled and opened her arms wide.
Closed her eyes and drifted over a mirror sea. Mirror see. See mirror.
Mirror.
Mirror—

She was on the floor in the corner of the room.

Flash/blink/change.

Coiled up like a foetus, shivering and afraid. Clothes ripped. Air heavy
with fear. Juno’s breath came in bolts, she forced it through her
throat. There were invisible hands at her neck, twisting.

The girl pulled at her own hair and felt the way the flesh on her face
moved. She felt wrong in this skin, the shape too tight, hung wrongly
across angular bones. Juno watched the worms gather in the shadowed
corners of the room. They didn’t know she could see them. In the dark
places they were piecing together the mirrors she had broken, fixing
them when her back was turned. They left the little pieces on the floor
where she could stand on them. The fragments would slip beneath her
skin, work their way to her heart.

Blood taste on her tongue. She remembered being inside the egg floating
in the dark waters. She remembered the screaming people who loved her.
There were the angels of pain overhead—and there was the dark-skinned
man. Dark like blood. Dark like sky. She would never see him again.

She began to cry as the walls grew teeth and the worms marshalled their
forces. At her feet there was the needle, shiny and long and
candy-bright. It ended in a bulb of perfect blue, beckoning and
glistening, calling to her. With shiver-tremble hands she probed to it
and gathered it up. It almost fell into the sky, she could barely keep
it in her clammy fingers. “Buh-bubble inna stream,”

Juno discharged the injector into her eye and went into quiet shock.

The cabin door sealed behind him and in the gloom Ropé crossed to the
desk and took his seat. The window blinds were open slightly,
slow-lidded eyes peeking a faint sky glow into the compartment. He
licked his lips and touched a hidden control in the desk; obediently, a
silent panel yawned open to present him with a drawer lined in rich
purple velvet. Nestled inside was a book made of rusted steel. As they
always did, the edges of the pages cut him when he removed it. Ropé
clasped it in both hands and felt the thin streams of his blood pooling
in the pockmarks and scored channels in the tome’s cover. His thumb was
ripped gently as he stroked the meat of it over the spine of the book.
Where the blood marked out the age-worn letters it was possible to see
something of the title:
The Path of Joseph.

Ropé very much wanted to open the book, but that would have taken more
of him than he wanted to give at this moment. There would be time,
later. Time enough. A device in the desk chimed, and he bared his teeth.
“I said not to disturb—”

Already a screen was erecting itself out of the desk’s featureless top,
and blinking in the corner of the display was the oval logo of RWB. This
was an incoming call, a live feed overriding all his personal lockouts.
There were only a few people who could do that.

He had the book concealed and his hands knotting beneath a towel when
Phoebe Hi’s face blinked into life before him. Ropé always thought she
resembled a misassembled Darbie doll, a perfect It-Girl head wrongly
attached to a tubby little body. This he kept to himself, showing the
required degree of deference to his superior.

“You spun that Popeldouris bitch well. The political opinion we could
have done without, though.”

He shrugged. “It seemed right for the moment. It also allows
RedWhiteBlue to distance itself from me. You know, ‘these views are the
personal opinions of Mr Ropé and not those of RWB, et cetera, et
cetera.’ I’m providing plausible deniability.”

Hi shook her head. “Don’t build up your part, Heywood. Your job was to
ensure that the consumers will accept the talent’s appearance at the
Victoria Peak event as spontaneous on her part, an expression of free
will.”

“I doubt she even understands the meaning of those words.”

“We want the consumers to feel unfettered, Heywood. You understand how
important that is to the work.” She paused. “How have things progressed
since we spoke last? Any improvement?”

Ropé gave a dry chuckle. “If anything, she’s grown worse. I’d like to
remind you that I was against the idea of an American excursion. Too far
from safety, too many distractions, too much input too soon—”

“Those choices were not yours to make,” she broke in. “You would do well
to remember that.”

“Of course,” he allowed. “Fix the problem, not the blame, neh?”

“Exactly.” Hi leaned into the screen, filling it with her face. “We have
the remote feed here, Heywood, and Tang’s people concur with you. The
instability you brought to our attention is of great concern, and I
think at this stage we cannot proceed without instigating the more
serious of options.”

Ropé considered this for a moment. “You’re quite sure?”

“Quite,” repeated Hi. “A liability is not what we look for in our
talent, Heywood. Can I trust you to deal with it personally?”

“And the… ?”

“Preparations are being made,” she said, silencing the question before
he asked it. “We’ve leaked the party to the press. Expect a significant
presence there.”

“All right.”

Hi cut the link and left him in the dimness. Faint shafts of light
crossed the walls as the aircraft began a languid turn toward the
distant city.

Ropé studied the ruins of his hands, watching the blood clot and scab
over.

At SkyHarbour there was an advance guard of machines waiting to capture
the first images of Juno Qwan’s triumphant return to the city of her
birth. In the car park outside Chek Lap Kok, news mobiles from a dozen
different networks sat in a ring, like circled wagons from the Old West.
Troopers from the APRC, reluctant to look lazy on international
television, patrolled around them. The go-gangers knew better than to
show up tonight.