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‘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.

Quyu. The market. Zhao by his side.

‘Everything okay?’ Zhao asked again.

‘Yes.’ Jericho rubbed his eyes. ‘We shouldn’t waste any time. Let’s get started.’

‘Why don’t you do the job with one of your teams?’

‘Because the job consists in protecting a dissident whose identity no one knows, apart from a handful of initiates. The fewer people get involved with Yoyo, the better.’

‘Does that mean you haven’t talked about the girl to anyone but me?’

‘No. I’ve met her flatmates.’

‘And?’

‘They don’t give much away. Do you know them?’

‘I’ve seen them. Yoyo says they know nothing about her double life. One of them isn’t interested in her, the other’s pissed off that she isn’t interested in him. He’s inclined to throw his weight about.’

‘You mean Grand Cherokee Wang?’

‘I think that’s what he calls himself. Ludicrous name. Windbag. What have they told you?’

‘Nothing. Wang’s not in a position to tell anybody anything. He’s dead.’

‘Really?’ Zhao frowned. ‘Last time I saw him he looked very much alive. He was boasting about some kind of roller-coaster he owns.’

‘He didn’t own anything.’ Jericho stared out across the crowded market. ‘I won’t try to fool you, Zhao. What we’re doing here can get dangerous. For everyone involved. Yoyo seems to have crossed some people who walk over corpses. That was why Wang had to die. I thought you should know that.’

‘Hmm. Okay.’

‘Are you still up for it?’

Zhao let a moment pass. He suddenly looked embarrassed.

‘Listen, about the money—’

‘It’s fine.’

‘No, I don’t want you to get the wrong impression. I’d help you even if there was nothing in it for me. It’s just – I need the money, that’s all. I mean, you saw those guys at the edge of the street, right?’

‘Dividing up the day?’

‘It would be easy to join in with that. Something is always coming up. Most people live by licking those guys’ boots. You get me?’

‘I think so.’

‘And they don’t do any of that for nothing, do they?’

‘Listen, Zhao, you don’t have to apol—’

‘I’m not apologising. I’m just setting you straight on a few things.’ Zhao stuffed the specs and scanner in his rucksack. ‘How long do you plan to keep this stake-out going?’

‘As long as necessary. I once spent three weeks outside a single front door.’

‘What, and she didn’t invite you in?’ Zhao opened the car door. ‘Well, somehow that fits.’

‘What do you mean?’

Zhao shrugged. ‘Has anyone ever told you you look like the loneliest man in the world? They haven’t? Take care of yourself, first-born!’

A thousand answers collected on the tip of Jericho’s tongue, but unfortunately not one that would have made him look as if he was in charge. He watched Zhao strolling unhurriedly across to Wong’s World, then turned round and drove back to his branch, where he parked the Toyota so that the scanner below the rear-view mirror captured part of the market. Then he got out, walked around the square and decided on two houses whose positions struck him as right. Each one had plenty of possible locations for the additional scanners. He fixed one under a crumbling window ledge, another in a crack in a wall. The devices, black, gleaming, pea-sized spheres, automatically probed their surroundings, and extended tiny telescopic legs to wedge themselves into the stone.

Wong’s World was covered.

A gust of wind ran through the clapped-out canyons of the triad city, tugging at awnings, clothes and nerves. By now it was unbearably sultry, the sky looked like a shroud. A few single, fat drops fell, harbingers of the deluge announced by the far-away rumble. Canopies flapped. Jericho put on his specs and stepped into the foyer of Cyber Planet.

In principle all the branches of the chain looked the same. You were welcomed by standardised machines lined up like terraced houses, with slits for cash and electronic interfaces for remote withdrawals. Two guards chatted behind a counter, never glancing at the monitors. A lot of the guests were regulars, or so it seemed. They didn’t spend long at the machines, but looked into eye-scanners, waited till the armoured glass doors opened, and stepped into the area behind with the hesitant gait of the newly blind.

Inside, games consoles and transparent couches were lined up side by side, each fitted with hologoggles. There was a shelf with room for two dozen full-motion suits, rings three metres in diameter, within which you could dangle in a sensor suit, in order to enjoy complete freedom of movement. Far at the back there were lockable cabins, toilets, showers and sleeping-capsules. The rear wall of the huge space was occupied by a kind of supermarket with a bar. Floor-to-ceiling glass windows gave a view of the street and the market. Apart from the guards in the foyer, there was no staff. Everything was automated. Theoretically, you need never leave the Cyber Planet, as long as you were prepared to be satisfied with fast food and soft drinks for the rest of your life. The chain drew you in with special offers of up to a year in which you had to do nothing other than wander through the virtual world wearing a pair of goggles, whether as a passive onlooker or an active designer. You had dreams and nightmares, lived and died.

Jericho paid for twenty-four hours. About half of the couches were occupied when he entered the room, most of them along the big display window. For impenetrable reasons, most of the visitors wanted to be close to the street, even though they were completely cut off from the outside world by goggles and headphones. Jericho spotted an empty berth from which he had a view of Wong’s World and the crossroads near where his car was parked, stretched out and tapped the arm of his goggles. The outside glass of the lenses turned into a mirror. He jammed the remote receiver of his phone in his ear and got ready for a long night.

Or several.

It was possible that Yoyo was miles away by now, leaving him and Zhao sitting like idiots in a nightmare delivery station.

He yawned.

All of a sudden it was as if all the light had been sucked from the streets. The storm front drew over Quyu, releasing streams of pitch-black water. Within seconds rubbish was floating down the road, people were running wildly in all directions, shoulders hunched, as if that were any protection against being completely drenched. The onslaught of a quick succession of violent thunder crashes edged closer. Jericho looked into a sky split by electricity.

A foretaste of destruction.

After an hour in which the street turned into a miniature version of the Yangtze and banked-up garbage formed a dinky little model of the Three Gorges Dam, it had passed. As quickly as it had come, the storm moved on. The murky broth drained away, leaving a vista of rubbish and drowned rats against a theatrical background of rising steam. Another hour later a glowing magenta ball had won its battle with the clouds and wasted its fire on streets that were free of tourists. Wong’s World welcomed a throng of pale figures, women peeped from tents and shacks, the stale promise of the night, or positioned themselves, scantily dressed, at the crossroads.

At around eleven o’clock a young man on the couch next to Jericho groaned, pulled the goggles from his eyes, sat up and vomited a stream of watery puke between his legs. The couch’s self-cleaning systems hummed immediately into action, sucked the stuff away and flooded the surface with disinfectant.

Jericho asked if he could do anything.