Chapter Fifty-Three

This zero-star hotel has only one exit. Fortunately the lobby is too chaotic for anyone to notice me descend the stairs and slip out the double doors.

On the sidewalk I stretch out my stride, putting as much space as possible between myself and a certain woman and her daughter. That’s the better part of the current plan.

In fact it may be the entire current plan. The only other thing that occurs just now is the one most likely to get me tied to a chair somewhere. That would be appearing at the razor wire-swathed gate of the Peoples’ Beijing SARS Treatment and Quarantine Hospital with an earnest expression and a nice bouquet.

Actually there is one other idea that occurs, but I’m determined not to acknowledge it. The Temple of Heaven Park and its Circular Mound Altar are so close now they’re speaking to me with each step. Not that I’m listening. I’ve half a mind to show up at that Irish bar on Third Ring Road, assuming it would be open at this, or any other, hour. Not that Ralph O’Malley would likely constitute much in the way of substantive aid, but I don’t know anyone else in Beijing. As for now, I’d feel considerably less conspicuous inside a taxi, whatever its destination, if only this broad, empty thoroughfare offered one. I think I’m reasonably near a subway station. Reaching an intersection, I peer in each direction, distracted somewhat by a persistent tinny screeching approximating the human voice. Finally turning to glare in the direction of the sound, I encounter a most unwelcome sight. A singing condom machine. Half-panicked, I scan the streets for additional troubling signs. I find them.

Strung along the sidewalk are three women beneath three parasols. Five, no, but we take what we can get nowadays. Beyond all possible doubt, mere seconds from now, those women’s steps will fall into perfect sync and I will vanish into the maw of a room with neither a view nor room service.

I dash into the nearest shelter, the open door of a shop. It turns out to be an herbal pharmacy, a crowd of women pressing against a counter behind which white-clad pharmacists scoop medicinal herbs onto old-fashioned scales. I pretend to read a poster on the wall, a government-issued one that goes into some detail about how, in a moment of madness, one might wash one’s hands. I study it for a full minute, hoping that the incoming penetration might find someone else to skewer, the last thing I’m needing right now being a fresh complication.

Finally, timidly, I peek outside the door. The street is relatively normal, all except for one thing. As my eyes tip up, I notice that the multi-story building across the broad avenue is topped by a series of red plastic Chinese characters, each erected on a rusting balustrade. The penultimate character is missing, and I stare at this display with some displeasure. Déjà vu was never very high on my list of favorite things. In most instances, the event wasn’t all that much fun the first time around. Yet I’ve no question that I have looked upon exactly this sight before. I believe it had something to do with a very menacing red toadstool and a room composed of eyeballs and not a whole lot else.

There’s nothing to do, I decide, but follow the rabbit. My eyes still on the too-familiar rooftop, I exit the pharmacy and trace the sidewalk in a direction that would provide the remembered angle of view. This requires turning a corner, then another, which places me on a quite narrow street with no view of the building at all. Still, the angle should be more or less correct now. I begin backing across the street, and a truck, horn blaring, nearly runs me down. As the truck barrels away, I note that it is an orange seafood-delivery truck. License tag 999-333. I turn to examine the nearby street number. The nearest doorway is ninety-nine.

That’s so nice.

Crossing the street, I tiptoe in vain. Were I a couple of floors higher, I think I’d be gazing at that storm-damaged rooftop from roughly the same perspective as I recall. Turning, I discover that I’m standing beneath a broad third-story balcony, perhaps that of an apartment, judging from the draped ferns. The anonymous building offers no other balconies, just the one. That’s a bit odd. In Chinese cities, it tends to be either hundreds of apartments or none at all. Someone of means, it seems, has created a solitary domicile above a street of anonymous offices and warehouses. My curiosity piqued, I drop my gaze to street level. Directly beneath the balcony and its ferns is a steel door with neither buzzer nor intercom.

I look about the street for pebbles to toss. Nothing. Backing up a bit, I see that one of the sliding glass doors of the apartment is open. I consider shouting something, but what exactly does one shout? Hello in the apartment? Throw down the chocolate? Ever occupied while stabling? Cupping my hands, I call out the only words likely to stir a response, the words once shouted at me during a too-close encounter, not that I’ve a clue what they may signify.

“We are the Hydra!”

No reply. After a long moment, I shout again, more insistently, “We are the Hydra!”

Still nothing. I glance nervously up and down the street. All is cemetery still. I let a full minute pass before cupping my hands, taking a deep breath, and shouting, “We are the Hydra! Couldn’t be prouder! If you can’t hear us, we’ll yell a little louder! WE ARE THE—”

The steel door below the balcony motors slowly open. Once fully open, it stops and I gaze inside a tiny foyer containing only a metal ashtray attached to a wall, above it a wordless no-smoking sign¬.

A bit nervously, I step inside and the steel door motors closed behind me. An elevator begins to descend noisily. While I await its arrival, I look about for some clue as to where I am. There’s nothing to see. I check inside the ashtray. No sign that it’s ever been used.

The door of the elevator opens. I step inside. There’s no button to push. The door closes on its own, and the elevator ascends to what seems to be the third floor. I watch the door open upon a cluttered room that doesn’t quite qualify as either apartment or office. Clearly someone spends a lot of time here. I’m gazing into a large, unkempt workspace with a broad balcony dotted by potted ferns—beyond which is exactly, precisely the view I recall.

I step inside the room. The elevator door closes behind me.

Separating the workspace from the balcony is a wall of glass and two tripod-mounted telescopes aimed at the heavens. I also take note of a row of ceramic pots, some of them bearing a low-growing cacti fully appearing to be lophophora williamsi, better known as peyote. Several other pots offer fully mature marijuana plants, and my eyes admire the heavy, drooping buds. Now I notice a cluster of small aquariums in a dark corner of the room, each bristling with variously hued mushrooms. I ask myself whether I might arrange to sublet.

Along every wall of this room are shelf after shelf of books and beneath them worktables bearing new and old computers and countless sticky notes, some of them faded. There’s also a scanner, a laser printer, a microscope, an electron microscope, and a tray of dried mushrooms. Various messy notebooks lie open. An overfull trash can is surrounded by paper wads.

Aside from the bookshelves, nothing at all adorns the walls of this anomalous space with the exception of a single publicity poster proffering the words, “A Room of Eyes, by Bi Yu Nu.” I step closer to study the poster and its illustration of an all-enclosing wall of eyeballs. Somehow I manage not to shudder.

“How did you find me?”

I turn to face a doorway where an elderly Chinese man sits in a wheelchair. Despite the deep lines of the pallid face, the man is robust. His most arresting feature is the matching pair of almond-shaped eyes, shockingly large and bright with a sickly yellow.

“That,” I reply, gesturing toward the view beyond the balcony.

“That?” says the man.

“The view,” I say. “I’ve seen it before.”

Using his large hands to maneuver the wheelchair to the center of the room, the man stares at me, unblinking. There are green flecks in the enormous eyes. I was wrong about the color. Not a sickly yellow, they’re a dull gold.

“Ah,” says the man. “You were lying on a bed in a dark room. You were protecting your right arm. Before you ran away, you saw something and now that something has brought you here. Amazing.” He rolls a little closer. “Positively amazing.”

“You’re Bi Yu Nu,” I say.

The old man scowls. “My name is the least important thing you could possibly be asking me right now.”

“You’re right. Would you have a spot of English gin? Never mind. I don’t drink.”

“I know you’re one of them,” says Bi harshly. “Do you know you’re one of them?”

I look around. There are no chairs in the room. I lean against one of the worktables and reply, “My name is Julian. Thanks for asking. And that’s okay, I prefer to stand. One of whom?”

“The reason I know,” he continues, “is because I am repelled by you. Aren’t you by me? You can be completely honest.”

“If we’re being completely honest,” I say, “you could use a housekeeper. And I’ve no interest in you at all.”

“Did you learn nothing at all in the Room of Eyes?”

“I learned to never again eat the whole mushroom. I think I may have also stumbled onto an interstellar neural network, if that’s what you’re gesturing toward.”

Bi nods slowly, measuring me. “That’s how they found this place, you know. This planet? They found it through that network.”

“Who’s they?”

“Whose name were you shouting on the street a moment ago?”

“The Hydra?” I say. “That’s a mythical creature from very long ago and therefore not on my current list of worries.”

“The Hydrae, plural,” replies Bi, “is a nomadic hominoid race from elsewhere in this galaxy. They are obsessive colonizers and interbreeders. The story of Hercules and the Hydra arose from early encounters between our race and theirs. They come in pods of nine. Thus, the nine heads of the Hydra. Now you’re going to ask me why they are obsessive colonizers and interbreeders.”

“Not really, but you go ahead.”

Bi seems to warm to the subject. “The Hydrae are exquisitely murderous by nature, specializing in their own family members. It seems to be the pheromones that set them off. The more identical the genetics, the more agitated they become. You know the story of Cain and Abel? Hercules’s murder of his family? Those aren’t just stories.”

Bi and I share a gaze. “So the Hydrae’s only means of averting extinction,” I venture, “is to put as much space among themselves as possible? That’s why they’re colonizers?”

Bi nods. “As soon as a healthy male reaches adulthood, he’s sent away as part of a nine-pod composed of as dissimilar genetics as possible, making it less likely that they’ll tear each other to pieces before their work is accomplished. That work is interbreeding, crossing themselves again and again with more docile hominoids wherever they find them.”

“I gather their success here has been somewhat mixed.”

“There’s been some progress. Genocide is slowly giving way to domestic battery. The Hydrae seem to be reasonably encouraged. They return here every few thousand years to tweak the genetics.” Bi rolls his chair a little closer. “Did you know your father?”

When I don’t reply, Bi smiles icily. “Oh, I’m sorry. I see the question disturbs you.”

“I’m already disturbed, thanks. You’re telling me the human race is directly descended from the Hydrae?”

Bi shakes his head. “Our planet was originally seeded by a far older civilization. They come around every so often, too, but not often enough I’m afraid. Other civilizations have stepped in and made a hash of things, none more so than the Hydrae.”

I give Bi a cool gaze. “No, I didn’t know my father. What of it?”

“Do you have unusually high intelligence?” he fires back. “Let me guess. Your IQ is off the charts, you’ve never been sick a day in your life, and you’re a bit telepathic. Or maybe a lot telepathic?”

When I don’t reply, Bi smiles chillingly. “I don’t suppose you’re ever drawn to the occasional little taste of violence?”

“Only against myself,” I reply. “As for the rest, how did you know?”

The unblinking gold eyes gauge me carefully. “Are you telling me that you are not given to unprovoked acts of violence?”

“Sorry. Actually I’m experiencing a sister problem, and I wondered if—”

“You have a sister?” interrupts Bi, “and you haven’t killed her?”

“I gave her a hickey once, but she really deserved it. And this may be the strangest conversation I’ve ever had.”

“You’re mocking me?” whispers the man in the wheelchair. He begins to tremble, his face flushing. Bi seems to double in size. All at once, it appears inescapable that he will either launch himself at my jugular or fall dead at my feet. Finally Bi’s breath catches and he falls back in his chair, wheezing. As he fights to regain his composure, I ask myself how close I just came to annihilation at the hands of a crippled senior citizen with a row of really nice pot plants. I also wonder how he knows so much about me.

“Your sister,” pants Bi, wiping a tear from an iridescent eye. “Is she younger or older?”

“Yes,” I reply. “We’re twins. And I think I should probably be going.”

“Twins?” gasps Bi, rolling closer still. “You said twins? And you’re both alive?”

I back away from the wheelchair, which appears very close to creasing at least one of my feet. “Uh, you seem to know quite enough about me already, if you—”

“We are the Hydrae. You and I. Your sister, as well.”

With a little leap, I flee to the other side of the room, and Bi turns his chair to face me. “I was one of three brothers. We never knew our father. Not a word was ever spoken about him. When my older brother was twelve, he lost his temper and killed our mother then himself. My younger brother and I weren’t present, or I’m sure he’d have killed us as well. Shortly thereafter, my surviving brother and I fell very ill. Poisoned, I believe. Culled by the Hydrae as failed genotypes. My brother died. I survived to be passed from one relative to another. Finally I was placed with a wealthy family with the resources to deal with a very sick child. The Hydrae lost my trail.”

Bi looks up at me. “My privileged circumstances have meant unlimited access to books and tutors. I’ve used those resources to help me understand what happened to my family and what could still happen to my new adoptive one. I’m not so different from my older brother, you know. I, too, am capable of murder.” Here he almost giggles. “I think I might like it, actually. So I determined that it would never happen. Never. As soon as my writing income allowed, I left my adopted family and assumed a series of false identities, moving frequently, all the while continuing my research, looking into myth and history and archetype and ancient architecture, unearthing all I could about these… “ Bi’s gaze flickers. “About these monsters we are.”

“You’re telling me that you are a failed genetic experiment among extraterrestrials?” I say. “And that I am a more current one?”

“Everything here is extraterrestrial,” growls Bi. “Even the planet itself. What is a planet but a coagulation of interstellar gases and minerals caught up in the orbit of a newborn star? After the initial coagulation, other foreign things—meteors, asteroids, bits of emerging life—are attracted. Much later, more advanced forms of life come along. But it all begins somewhere else, don’t you see? Every bit of it.”

“Is there a nine-pod of Hydrae on Earth now?” I ask.

Before answering, Bi slumps in his wheelchair, exhausted by his recent rage. “They’ve been here for some time. I think they’re near the end of their lifespan, perhaps down to a lone survivor. I’m fairly certain they arrived here six to eight hundred years ago, here in China, and established deep political connections in Beijing. I think they’re still here, what remains of them.”

Bi stares at me for a moment. I fear that he’s going to tell me something I don’t wish to learn.

“I think they’re desperate,” he continues. “Once there’s only one remaining pod member, that survivor must posit his DNA somewhere, must keep it going by any means possible. It’s their most compelling racial imperative. It’s a madness, really. That’s why the ninth head of the Hydra is said to never die but remain lodged beneath a rock somewhere.” Bi smiles icily. “Earth, in the present instance.”

For a moment I ponder this thing compelling racial imperative and ask myself to what extent I myself am operating on compulsion and, if so, whose? I keep telling myself I’ve no idea what my next move will be. And yet it really couldn’t be much clearer where I’m going. Finally I come out with the question that’s been gnawing at the edges of my awareness. “What can you tell me about the Circular Mound Altar?”

Bi’s eyes brighten. “At the Temple of Heaven Park? Why would you ask me about that?”

“I seem to be headed there. Not that I’ve decided to go. I’m not sure when I last decided anything, to tell you the truth. That place means nothing to me. Yet I can scarcely close my eyes without seeing it. And when I look back on the past three or four days, I don’t know how I could be beating a path there any faster.”

Neither of us speaks for a moment. Unwilling to gaze into the unblinking yellow eyes, I look through the window-glass at the cityscape that so improbably and unfailingly delivered me to this singular conversation. I’ve held fast to the belief that my mad dash to Beijing has been all about Lillian, about freeing her from that hospital from hell—and of course it is.

But freeing her for what exact purpose?

Finally Bi speaks again, his voice gravelly. “The truth about the Temple of Heaven is there for anyone to see. Just read the dedication. The temple is dedicated to ‘The Supreme Ruler of the Universe’ whose home is in the heavens. I’ve little doubt that the Hydrae themselves designed that altar as a way of re-invoking their dominion here. Think about it. The most exalted man in the world, the emperor himself, was required to go to that place three times yearly, humbly and on foot, and offer human sacrifices to the glorious ruler of the sky.” Bi’s mouth curls in disgust.

“It’s more than that,” I tell him. “That structure is composed entirely of materials selected for their piezoelectric signature.”

Bi stares, transfixed, and I swallow hard. I’ve very little idea what I’m talking about.

“Very similar really to the paramagnetics and diamagnetics of the Great Pyramid of Giza. This focuses a very clear geometric signal into the bedrock below, in effect making of the entire planet an amplifier.”

The gold eyes narrow. “You’re telling me the Circular Mound Altar is focusing a signal into the Earth? What kind of signal?”

“A bad one. It’s a Trojan Horse just about to whinny, and it seems to have something to do with me. Or I with it.”

“Go, then,” says Bi, “but you’ll find it locked. The whole complex is closed indefinitely, supposedly because of SARS. But that doesn’t quite explain the newly-installed razor wire or the thumbprint-reading device now placed at the main entrance.”

Bi rolls his chair closer to me, close enough for me to see tiny flecks of red in the unblinking gold irises. “Maybe that means nothing. It certainly suggests the Hydrae have re-established their connections within the Beijing power elite. I’ve felt for some time that they’re waiting for something. Some opportunity. Could it be that you are that opportunity?”

Bi wheels suddenly closer, using his chair to pin me against the wall. “Monster!” he snarls. “Fool! You think you can play with these creatures? You’ve no idea what you’re up against. They’re inside you, Julian!”

I struggle to free my legs from the wheelchair, but Bi grips my wrists with two powerful hands and yanks my face closer to his. I wince at his breath.

“It’s not enough to look for them out there!” he snarls. “You have to start by finding them inside you. As I have my entire life!”

Pulling away, I stumble toward the elevator and push the button to open the door.

Bi wheels to point a trembling finger at my face. “You have a decision to make, Julian.”

I dart inside the elevator. As the metal door begins to closes, the man in the wheelchair sneers in my direction as though wishing me a truly unpleasant day. Just before the door closes, he whispers hoarsely, “Who is your family, Julian?”