The Gravity Engine (5 page)

‘
Five years ago, you agreed to her spending a week with me in exchange for information. I replaced her with a copy all that time ago and I’ve been holding her ever since.’

‘
My mother passed through the Courts of Hell. Judge Pao told me that she wasn’t found Worthy, and he’s the one who judged her.’

‘
They lied to you, they didn’t want you to know that everybody had been fooled by a copy.’ The King stopped at the bottom of the stairs and gazed at the garden. ‘Second: well, you can judge for yourself.’ He gestured towards the blonde woman sitting on a park bench.

It was his mother, Rhonda. She leap
ed to her feet when she saw them.

‘Michael!’
she shrieked, and ran to him. She pulled him into a huge hug and kissed him on both cheeks, then pulled back to wipe tears from her eyes. ‘It is you. The King promised you’d come and I didn’t believe him, but here you are.’ She embraced him again. ‘Thank you, George, thank you so much.’ She noticed that Michael wasn’t returning her affection and moved back to talk to him. ‘It’s me, Mikey, it really is. I spent a week with the King to prove to everybody that I was confident about marrying your father, and he never let me go. George has been holding me prisoner —’

‘I prefer the term “guest”,
my Lady,’ the Demon King said.

‘Prisoner,’ Rhonda continued. ‘But it was okay once
—’

‘Michael!’

Michael’s heart leapt. It was Clarissa. Clarissa, unhurt, undamaged, bursting with life and energy. She ran – almost floated – through the gardens to him and threw herself into his arms and he held her close and kissed her hair. It was her: her fragrance, her feel; the soft sound of her sweet voice. It was
her
.

‘You are breaking my heart, George,’ he said over the top of her head.

‘No, Michael, this is your real fiancée. We replaced her ages ago. The copy was in the lab being experimented on and didn’t take it well at all; much too fragile. This is your real mother and your real fiancée and you can take them home with you.’

‘We can go home?’ Rhonda said, full of hope.

‘Michael needs to do a simple job for me, then you can all go home unharmed.’

‘I won’t betray the Celestial. Not for anything,’ Michael said.

‘You don’t need to. Spend some time with your mother and girlfriend, and I’ll come back tomorrow and we can talk about the job you need to do. It doesn’t involve any betrayal of the Celestial, violence or killing. We just want the secret of the gravity, and we’re hoping that as a half-European demigod, the spirit of the city will talk to you and explain how it’s done.’ The King linked his hands behind his back. ‘Settle in. Spend time with your family. Enjoy the citadel, and I’ll be back tomorrow to discuss terms for the release of all three of you.’ He turned and headed back towards the parliament building.

Rhonda and Clarissa took one of Michael’s arms
each and led him into the mansion. It was constructed of glass and silver, the same as the rest of the city. The doors opened into a hall that swept two storeys up to the clear glass roof that showed the darkening sky above them. The walls on either side were decorated with huge portraits of noble-looking men and women in embroidered robes similar to what Rhonda and Clarissa were wearing; rulers of the past. Stairs in front of them led to a landing that sat around three sides of the hall.

‘It’s a shame that the European Shen aren’t here
any more,’ Clarissa said. ‘They look kind.’

‘How long have you two been here?’ Michael said.

‘We’ll tell you over dinner,’ Rhonda said, dragging him to a set of double doors. The doors led through to a long dining hall with a large rectangular table set Western-style with silver candelabras and fine china along its length. ‘The demons have been looking after us, but we’ve still been prisoners. I hope you can sort something out with the Demon King to take us home.’

He followed them to the end of the table, still dazed and delighted to be back with them. He knew damn well they weren’t real, but they were there and that was enough for him. They sat on either side
at the end of the table and gestured for him to take a seat between them. It was like one of the dreams he’d had for many years, where all the horrible things hadn’t really happened and he was back with them; but this was reality. They were warm and real – and demon copies. The pain in his chest was like a knife through his heart and he needed to run and hide and weep for hours.

Instead he took a sip of the water from the crystal goblet in front of him
, his hand shaking. The glass shimmered in the light from the floor-to-ceiling windows and he studied it, trying to pull himself together. Pine sprigs and pine cones were etched into its surface in such meticulous detail that it was a work of art. Every item on the table was intricately adorned, from the pine motif on the porcelain to the silver pine needles and pine cones decorating the candelabras. The candle-holders had no candles in them; instead long, six-sided natural crystals  provided a warm and welcoming glow, enough light for everything to be clearly visible. More crystals sat in stands on the sides of the room.

He raised his hands, one to each woman. ‘Take my hands.’

They took his hands. He lowered his head and concentrated.

Nothing happened.

‘Did you just try to teleport us out?’ Clarissa said.

Michael released their hands and nodded.

‘It was worth a try, Mikey,’ Rhonda said with compassion. ‘Can you go by yourself?’

‘I won’t leave you,’ he said.

Demon servants came out from a side door and placed plates in front of them. They held traditional Western-style appetisers: smoked fish with a white sauce he didn’t recognise. He stuck his fork into it and held it in front of his eyes, suspicious.

Rhonda and Clarissa weren’t as hesitant; they cut into the fish and tasted it with obvious enjoyment. He took a small bite from his fork and nearly choked on the smoky, intense flavour. It was excellent. He had a couple more bites then turned to Rhonda and studied her. She appeared
about five years older, which matched the time since she’d agreed to be the guest of the King; the Demon King’s other copies hadn’t aged, so there was a slight, maddening, chance that she was real. Clarissa seemed the same as she always had. The two women he loved most in the world, alive and real and sitting beside him. Rhonda’s fair complexion and blonde hair contrasted against Clarissa’s Chinese black hair and perfect skin, and seeing the two of them together was more joy than his heart could hold.

If the Demon King’s task wasn’t too difficult
, he could complete it, take them home, and sort it all out later. Back in the Asian Heavens, he could find out for sure whether they were copies or not. He just needed to try not to get too attached to them in the meantime. Clarissa smiled and his heart ached with love for her.

‘So tell me how you came to be here, and how long you’ve been here,’ he said,
trying to push the feeling aside.

They opened their mouths together, then both smiled and shared a look. Clarissa gestured towards Rhonda, and Rhonda nodded and spoke.

‘The Demon King was a perfect gentleman for the week I stayed with him. He never did more than try to talk me out of remarrying your father. The days seemed to blur past, and I wasn’t really aware of time, but I was sure the week had finished and he kept saying the last day would be “tomorrow”. I gave him two days and then demanded to be taken home, and that’s when he moved me from the guest house to another villa that was effectively a prison. He hasn’t hurt me – in fact he’s treated me well, and promised, over and over for years now, that one day you would come to take me home.’ She reached out to squeeze his hand. ‘And here you are, finally.’ She brushed tears out of her eyes. ‘It’s been breaking my heart to think about leaving you all alone.’

‘Yes, have you been all right?’ Clarissa said, her voice soft with sympathy. ‘Both of us left you.’ She smiled. ‘But we’re back together now and after you do this little job for the King we can go home.’

Michael opened his mouth to tell them that they were probably demon copies – and couldn’t do it. ‘Well, I was really angry when you turned up alive after the Dark Lord told me you were dead,’ he said to Clarissa. ‘I left the job in his household and took the position as my father’s Number One Son.’

‘You’re the Tiger’s Number One now?’ Rhonda said sharply.

Michael nodded.

‘Good,’ she said. ‘About time you two finally sorted out your differences. I’ll have a proper family to return to, a husband and a son.’

‘With more than a hundred other wives as competition,’ Michael said.

Rhonda waved it away. ‘Nobody
will question my fitness to hold the position of Empress of the West, and there are a few things around the Western Palace that could do with a definite update. I cannot wait to go home and start working with you and the Tiger to bring the entire complex into the twenty-first century. You can help if you like, Clarissa, after you’ve married Michael.’

‘I’d love to,’ Clarissa said. ‘I’m sure the finances could do with a serious overhaul.’

‘You have no idea,’ Michael said.

‘
There’s a wedding we need to plan as well,’ Rhonda said, bright with pleasure. ‘And this time nothing will go wrong.’

‘We still have to get home first
,’ Michael said. He turned to Clarissa. ‘What happened to you? What’s the last thing you remember?’

The demons cleared their plates and brought the main course. It appeared to be roast beef with a side of traditional Western vegetables
– potatoes and carrots.

‘Oh
, not the beef
again
,’ Clarissa said with dismay.

‘Apologies, ma’am,
’ the demon said. ‘It’s all we have in stock at the moment. We are expecting a new delivery soon.’

‘The demons are angels looking after us,’ Rhonda said as the
servants left. ‘But apparently their resources are very limited. There’s no electricity, no refrigeration, no modern conveniences. Everything has to be brought up from – what do you call it? – the Earthly Plane.’

‘It’s a pain,’ Clarissa said. ‘Even if the King
let me have a laptop, I would have nothing to plug it into.’

‘
So what is the last thing you remember?’ Michael said.

‘Laptop!’ Clarissa said. ‘I need to contact my parents. Do you have your phone?’

‘No,’ Michael said. ‘They took it all away from me before they brought me up here.’

‘Well damn,’ she said with the amused exasperation he had always found particularly charming.

‘Tell me about the last thing you remember,’ he said again, beginning to wonder if she was deliberately avoiding the question.

‘Oh, of course,’ she said. ‘We were shopping in Horizon Plaza on
Ap Lei Chau, we were looking at gorgeous coffee tables made out of longhouse doors, and I went to the ladies’, and they grabbed me then.’

‘I remember that,’ Michael said, nodding confirmation. It matched what the sentient stone in her engagement ring had said. ‘They replaced you with a copy and I never knew.’

She fingered her cutlery, her expression stricken. ‘That’s awful. I thought you’d come and find me, I didn’t know they’d replaced me. I was mad at you for a long time.’

‘I know. I’m sorry. I was deceived; first I thought the copy was you, then I thought you were dead. I was misled by people I trusted.’

‘What gave the copy away?’

‘Some of the copies are programmed to explode.’

‘Good god, that’s awful,’ Rhonda said. She lowered her voice. ‘Michael, Clarissa and I …’ Her voice petered out. ‘I mean, it’s obvious that the Demon King is using us as a tool to make you do what he wants. Are you sure we’re the real us?’

Michael hesitated.
The Dark Lord had said that the broken and miserable Clarissa in the wheelchair back home was the real one. His mother had died, been Judged in Hell, and reattached to the wheel of rebirth. These two women had to be copies.

‘But we’d
know if we were copies. Surely we’d know?’ Clarissa said before he could reply.

‘M
ost of the copies were unaware,’ Michael said.

‘Is that why you’re
…’ Clarissa gestured helplessly towards him. ‘Is that why …’

He nodded silently.

‘Do we look like copies?’ Rhonda said.

‘No,’ Michael said, and she relaxed. ‘But I’ve been fooled by copies of Clarissa before.’

Clarissa put her elbows on the table and her face in her hands. ‘What if I am? What if I explode?’ Her shoulders shook. ‘What … what —’

‘Clarissa.’ Michael rose and went to her and pulled her
up out of her chair and into a hug, but she pushed him away. He stood next to her without touching her and spoke intensely to her. ‘It’s okay. Don’t worry about it for now; we’ll sort it out later. I’ll do this job for the King and we’ll take you home and even if you are a copy, you’re still my Clarissa and the Dark Lord will know what to do.’

‘And if he says we’re demons? And I’m a copy? And there’s a real Clarissa out there, who isn’t me?’