Jade Dragon (17 page)

CLICK…

I don’t care what you think, Susan.

But Bill, it’s just unnatural.

Love is the most natural thing of all, damn you! And Flippy and I are
going away to the sea together and you can’t stop us! I love her!

*sob* Oh Bill, how could you–

CLICK…

Hey kids, it’s Pepe The Robomule!

CLICK…

I promise not to kill you—

CLICK…

In a statement released earlier today, British Prime Minister Peter
Mandelson said that he was “fully confident of the support of the
nation” and that he felt that challenges to his recent policy statements
by the Liberal-MetaMarxist-Democrat leader Edward Izzard were nothing
more than blatant electioneering. Izzard was unavailable for comment,
but his second-in-command William Bailey said—

CLICK…

Stay tuned to The Arthaus Channel for our retrospective on the works
of stud actor Billy Priapus, following a hypertext-enhanced screening of
his masterpiece Shaven Ravers IV—

CLICK…

And coming in at number ten on the Billboard Chart, the new single from
Bombs Not Burkas, “Jihad My Ride”—

CLICK…

Now, the fourth season finale of Firefly, only on Wave-Net, followed by
back-to-back episodes of Sundowners. Next: on a very special CSI:
Baghdad—

CLICK…

Sea of stones, sand waves. Harmony, come with me. Taste the blue—

CLICK…

This gorgeous photodiamante necklace and nose-piercing set, only
twenty left now and numbers are dropping fast. If you look here you can
see a lovely crystal colouration. Call now, the number is on the bottom
of your screen, we accept all major creditchips, indenture warrants and
PRC-certified viable transplant organs—

CLICK.

There were entire microcommunities living within the confines of Ocean
Terminal. People crammed into the spun ferrocrete dorm blocks
retrofitted to the upper decks, if they were rich enough, and beneath
the waterline if they were the poorer folks. Parts of the terminal were
turned over to maintaining the armoured corporate liners that rolled in
from the South China Sea bristling with anti-pirate hardware, or the
exclusive submersible party boats that sailed about the Golden Triangle
on endless loops of debauchery. A liner was there today—the
NeoGen
Delphi,
out of Osaka. Her decks were crammed with salarymen and their
one-partner, one-child families, forbidden from disembarking but free to
observe the city from their sealed viewing bubbles. While the NeoGen
wageslaves looked down, the people who lived and worked in Ocean
Terminal looked up. Almost everyone in the terminal was an employee of
the Chinese State Corporation, never without the subtle red bracelet on
their wrists bearing the happy face of the CSC’s Panda spokestoon Di-Di.
The smiling bear beamed down from the walls of the dorms, above the
school clutches and the clinics, inside the toilets and shared
washrooms. The Panda provided; the terminal complex was a
city-within-a-city, wrapped around the edge of Tsim Sha Tsui on Kowloon
side, extending out into the bay like a giant growth of smooth white
fungus. The Panda didn’t encourage people to quit life inside the
terminal, once they’d been born into it—after all, why venture outside
when the place you lived in had it all? It wasn’t uncommon for people to
be born, to live and work and then perish without ever having crossed
outside the boundaries of the massive mallplex. Ocean Terminal had grown
so large that it had its own microclimate, its own emerging subculture.
People living outside the ’plex in Kowloon called the residents
“termites” and made fun of them on the late night comedy vids; the
Panda’s people in turn watched the rest of Hong Kong go in and out of
the thousands of stores and entertainment centres, and laughed amongst
themselves as they took their money.

There were a lot of stories about Ocean Terminal; that it would one day
break off and become an island, or expand to smother the whole southerly
tip of the New Territories; some said there were gangcults on the lower
levels who traded in human cargo, and indeed the APRC would make vague
but unspecific comments when the question of abductions came up; others
said that the Panda salted the drinking water in there with chemicals
that made you need less sleep, so you could work more. But the story
that kept circulating on the screamsheets, the one that had recently
risen to the surface and failed to fade away, was about Juno Qwan.

She kept her private life private, and in interviews Juno would often
give a coy smile and ask people to respect her wishes. That did nothing
to deter the armies of stringers and newsnets eager to fill vid-time and
fax pages with every iota of data they could unearth about the pop star.
The rumour was that Juno was a former Panda Girl, a termite chick
spotted by a talento hunter from RedWhiteBlue during a shopping
expedition. The young Qwan, bussing tables at a Burger König and singing
in that crystal clear voice, had been plucked from obscurity and thrust
into the global spotlight.

It made for great copy and it played big with the natives in Hong Kong,
that whole “local girl does good” angle. The odd thing was, there were
forty-three Burger König franchises within the mallplex, but none of the
managers had ever admitted to having the pre-famous Juno on their
waitstaff. Reporters who tried to track down the fast food joint she
worked at got dissimilar answers, conflicting shots of different yellow
and blue storefronts for their webcasts; and if you scratched the
surface, dug a little deeper, it was hard to find anything about the
girl before her explosive debut at the top of the charts. But then the
termites were terrible that way, weren’t they? Not very talkative to
outsiders, a bit slow. They trusted in the Panda, and like everyone else
who cheered Juno’s limobus as it slid to a halt on Canton Road, they had
short memories. They didn’t remember the other performers that had
topped the charts two, three, four years ago. Lisle Yep;
TriniTriniTrini; Cressida; the Lovely Angels. Musichips bearing the
names of these idols didn’t even appear in the bargain bins anymore;
they’d been crushed and used for landfill.

Juno stepped out into a chattering swarm of camera drones and
photographers, beaming her smile and casting out handfuls of kisses to
the crowds. Heywood Ropé hovered at her side, the careful look on his
face never changing, the distance from Juno’s shoulder never
lengthening. Every gallery and balcony was packed, and below
piezoplastic barriers corralled the fans that had been there since the
night before, hands clasping the rails, on tiptoe, desperate for any
breath of her. A CSC agent from the terminal manager’s office presented
her with a bunch of flowers and a plush toy version of Di-Di. Juno gave
it a coquettish hug and twirled it around in her arms. Her audience ate
it up.

No one thought of the others who had gone before her, who had played the
same kinds of songs and offered the same kind of hopeful distraction to
the same kind of people. They loved Juno today, and in that moment it
seemed like they would love her forever.

Fixx had a sour taste in his mouth, and his lip twisted. It wasn’t the
mud-coloured slurry that Burger König called coffee. There was a taint
on the air like rancid meat. He pushed the half-finished drink away from
him across the cracked plastic table, suppressing a shiver even though
the interior of Ocean Terminal was always a summery thirty-five degrees.
For a moment, the ghost of the sensation he’d felt at the Hyperdome was
about him, there and then gone. He glanced around at the laughing,
clapping people. Their faces were the same as the fans in Newer Orleans,
they shared the distant look in their eyes, desperate to capture some
tiny fragment of Juno Qwan.

On this level, the view of the singer was decent. She was talking into a
handheld microphone and waving. The crowds called to her, and even the
cocky cluster of go-gangers drifting near the open patio couldn’t help
but crack smiles. Fixx shifted to get a better angle and adjusted the
gain on his espex. He took a breath, one hand dipping into his pocket to
finger the bones, collapsing his view of the world down to the space
between him and her. Fixx let Juno’s aura find its way to him, gentle
and slow. He forced away the ill scents in the air, concentrating on the
woman.

He’d had one of the waking dreams again. It came as he took the tunnel
beneath the bay, the car dipping into the red-lit corridor, torrents of
colour streaming over him. In there he’d seen webs come from nowhere,
the reaching arms of things distant and older than space. They were
gossamer, vanishing when he put his full attention to them; in among the
ghosts he heard a woman screaming, tasted the bitter scent of things
dark and alien.

“Juno,” he rumbled. It kept coming back to her.

She was singing, dancing through a rendition of “Capsule Lover” while
overhead screens displayed directionless, watery vistas all blue and
inviting. The waves became words:
We Are Free, Break The Dark,
Unstoppable.
Fixx saw the aurora of Juno’s spirit, the faintest Kirlian
glow about the woman. It was different.

He worried the bones a little more. Wrong. That is wrong. Fixx looked
her in the eye at the Hyperdome, in that second of connection he had
known
Juno Qwan. That was the gift the loas gave him, the Sight. He
could see a man and find the colour of his soul, turn it one way to mark
a quarry or another to know a man’s intention. It had never failed him.

But the woman, the starlet down there wore a different aura from the
morose girl he had faced in the stadium. Fixx frowned. It wasn’t like
she was an impostor or someone disguised—no, he would have seen through
that. Even a twin would have been visible to him. The colours of her
were the same, but just
wrong.
Altered. Different. The experience was
so new to him he couldn’t frame it in his mind. He knew with sudden
conviction that he had never laid eyes on the girl on stage before.

“Who are you?” The words slipped from his mouth. Fixx shifted, for one
instant his attention elsewhere, and bumped into one of the go-gangers,
a skinny kid with a wired look and a wifebeater top.

The punk made a face and cocked his head. “Watch it, gwailo.”

There were three others, two who were obviously brothers. They exchanged
loaded looks and the bigger one sneered. “Never saw a ‘white ghost’ as
dark as him.”

“Break the dark,” mumbled the shorter one, tracing his fingers down to a
bulge in his jacket pocket.

Fixx was back in the moment now. There was ample room on the terrace of
the burger bar for trouble to unfold, if things went that way. He
watched the first punk carefully; he would be the one to start it.

“You like Juno, huh?” said the skinny kid. “You like looking at our
girl?” He stepped closer, looking Fixx up and down.

The sanctioned operative stayed very still. In the past, he’d seen what
happened when a man made the mistake of underestimating packrats like
these. In Mexico City, Fixx saw a rival gutted by a horde of Little
Zulus, a fellow twice his weight taken apart by children under the age
of ten. What kids lacked in experience they tended to make up for with
speed and enthusiasm.

The last of the four finally spoke. “You know what I think? I reckon
this guy doesn’t like Juno at all.”

Fixx, with slow and careful movements, stood up and smoothed the front
of his coat. There was a flicker of concern on the face of the younger
brother as he came up to his full height, but the other three were
stone-faced. This was not going to end well. Nonetheless, Fixx felt
compelled to try. “I’m a big fan,” he said. “She’s a dream come true.”

Big Brother made a flicky gesture that failed to get a reaction from
him. “Gau’s right. This hwoon dahn, I bet he’s A4.” He approached. “Am I
right, hwoon dahn? You here to mess with the gig like you did over
there?” He jerked his thumb in the direction of the ocean.

Fixx showed teeth. “I know what those words mean.”

“Yeah?” snarled the skinny one, getting into the swing of things,
pointing his finger. “Do you know what these ones mean too? Fuck off
ni—”

He moved. The troublemaker was suddenly on his knees and smothering a
scream, his index finger pointing the wrong way where Fixx had snapped
it like a twig. “Now, boys,” he said. “Let’s not say anythin’ we might
regret. ”

The brothers came at him, the one called Gau blinking in surprise. From
out of nowhere they materialised wicked balisong knives and cut high and
low. For go-gangers, they were quick.

Fixx had the SunKings on him, but it was a safe bet that Ocean
Terminal’s security would go wild at the sound of a gunshot. The mere
fact that these boys had been able to freely enter with edged weapons
told the op that the Panda probably turned a blind eye to the odd
stabbing, as long as the shoppers weren’t deterred. Similarly, the
flexsword would be too showy, would draw too much attention. He decided
to remain barehanded. It would be good practice.

The big brother’s knife was one of those ostentatious toys with the
faux-tribal laser etching on it, a blade with candy-colour anodization.
Fixx caught his wrist and held it there for a moment while he used a
sharp side kick to hobble the younger brother. Gau was pulling a
spike-chain from his belt as Fixx turned the big brother’s hands the
wrong way. He lost the knife and the op heard it clatter away across the
table.

Skinny was getting to his feet, his face all puffy and crimson. Below
them, Juno had gone into a powerful rendition of “Shade Me”, the crowd
clapping along with the beat. “Unstoppable!” said the kid. “Break…
Break the dark!”