Genesis by Geoffrey Carr

Author:Geoffrey Carr [Carr, Geoffrey]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FIC028010 FICTION / Science Fiction / Action & Adventure, FIC036000 FICTION / Thrillers / Technological, FIC002000 FICTION / Action & Adventure, FL Science Fiction, FH Thriller
ISBN: 9781911409519
Publisher: Elsewhen Press
Published: 2019-01-07T00:00:00+00:00

July 6th

Da Jinsi Hutong Tao, Beijing

“The drains could be better.”

Sebastian wrinkled his nose in disgust. They were in a house in an alley apparently unacquainted with modern concepts of sewerage. From the outside the place gave an impression, if not exactly of poverty, then at least of having seen better days. The interior, though, was spruce and well furnished, if rather too heavy on dark wood panelling for his taste.

“The Ming weren’t big on sewers, at least not for the hoi polloi. This was dockland, the end of the Grand Canal to the Yangtze.”

Was the building really that old? Sebastian doubted it, though it was hard to be sure, for what he knew of Chinese domestic architecture could have been written on the back of a postage stamp.

“And this is the sort of place,” Chu continued, “where you can hide in plain sight, for a week or two at least. If we stayed in a hotel, they’d register us with the police. In the suburbs, a 6’3” laowai might attract attention. But here, if you keep your head down, they probably won’t notice you among all the other curious foreigners.”

“So, I’m confined to barracks?”

“No. We can go out. But try to behave like a tourist.”

Well that won’t be hard, thought Sebastian. He had been living out of a back-pack for a week now, and he felt it. Planes, trains and automobiles, he had had enough of them all, though he had to say that last ride, from Shenzhen to Beijing, had brought out the train-spotter in him. Two thousand klicks in ten hours. How long had people been talking about a high-speed track from LA to San Fran? And how much of it had been built?

“In fact, that is precisely what we should do. Clear our minds. There’s some serious thinking to be done tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?”

“Is when we meet my haigui. Put your jacket on, we’re going out.”

They went out. The alley – hutong, Chu had called it – really did whiff. Sebastian had read of such places, and how they were being flattened in the rush for modernisation. Rarity, though, can make slums chic. It had certainly worked for peasants’ cottages in his native Somerset, where tumbledown hovels made of mud, dung and recycled ships’ timbers, and roofed with reeds dredged from the local marshes, had been whitewashed, re-thatched and rebranded as the des-est of reses for city dwellers seeking a rural retreat. No doubt the same nostalgia would preserve the hutongs – and, as if to prove his point, Chu steered them into a bar that would not have disgraced SoHo (or Soho, for that matter) in its trendiness.

A menu appeared, in eccentric but comprehensible English. Chu’s was in Chinese. She smiled slightly as she read it, then called to a waiter. Two drinks followed shortly. Sebastian had no idea what they were. A metaphor for the future, perhaps? Both his own, in a stranger’s hands in a place that was truly alien, and that of the world he was familiar with, about to be steamrollered by that alien place’s culture.

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