No woman enjoys rejection. Even if she is a manipulative person with unknown motives. Like Ying Ning. She especially dislikes it if she is a strong-willed person used to getting her own way. Like Ying Ning. Yet Ying Ning had accepted rejection from Stone as if he’d turned down a drink at the bar or a game of Scrabble, rather than the offer of sex.
Stone sat at the table explaining the scribbled note in Semyonov’s writing to Ying Ning. She was sceptical, unco-operative, difficult — but no more than usual. Stone was being careful because of what happened when they arrived back at the apartment. Maybe that was her plan.
Stone had a theory that the numbers near to 9.8 could only refer to the constant of gravity. They were variations in the earth’s gravity which could help him find the Machine, maybe even explain what the Machine was. ‘There are two questions here,’ Stone explained to Ying Ning. ‘First — where is this place? And second, why is the gravity field different at this one spot?’
Ying Ning was looking through maps of Western China online, trying not to look like she was listening. But she was listening. She was listening intently.
‘We think of the earth as a ball-shape, a sphere,’ said Stone. ‘The earth’s gravity should be the same at any point on the sphere. But it isn’t. Gravity varies slightly between the equator and the poles. That’s because the earth is not an exact sphere. It’s slightly fatter around the middle at the equator, and that means the force of gravity at the equator is a little stronger. The force is on average 9.8 metres per second per second, but at the equator it’s roughly 9.83, whereas at the poles it’s 9.79.’
Ying Ning was looking at a gravity map of the world, with a look as if to say, ‘You expect to believe this stuff.’ But she was listening intently. ‘What else causes the variation?’ she asked finally. ‘There are tiny variations all over this map.’
It was true. Stone had seen this the night before. There were areas of red all over the map where gravity is stronger, and blue where it’s weaker. The red ones were the mountain ranges where there was more “stuff” in the earth. It was very clear with the Andes mountains. Other places, typically the deep oceans, had lower gravity.
‘Many variations are caused by what is under the surface, said Stone pointing at the map. ‘See here. India is an area of low gravity. So is much of China. Only the Himalayas and Tibet in between have higher than average gravity.’ Most of China was colured in blue.
‘So what does it all mean?’ asked Ying Ning, looking again at her online maps. She was already looking intently at a map of Western Sichuan Province. She’d already spotted what he’d seen. ‘If Semyonov’s figures, the one’s that Oyang gave you, are something to do with gravity, why are they important?’
He didn’t know, and neither did she. But they could still find the location.
‘If you look at this gravity map of China,’ he said, ‘You’ll see that most of China is blue, meaning slightly lower than average gravity — apart from the Himalayan mountain range. And apart from this one spot.’ Stone pointed to a pin-prick sized red spot on the map. It was so small it looked like a mistake, or one bad pixel on the screen. But it wasn’t. It was a small spot of higher than normal gravity.
Ying Ning had an atlas of China open at the same region as the red dot, and she was circling place names.
‘This tiny anomaly in the gravity field,’ Stone went on, ‘Was picked up by a satellite. There’s nothing above the surface there, no mountain. So there must be something under the surface at that spot, something very large and very dense.’
The Machine?
Ying Ning said nothing. She didn’t need to. She’d already written down Chinese characters alongside Semyonov’s numbers. Looking sure of herself.
???Tieshi Lin 328 19.2 9.8229
??Field Well 15 8.3 9.8218
???Silvermine Field 169 15.9 9.8229
?? 2 Trees 3 Trees 97 6.7 9.8219
??Sitong 44 0.7 9.8249
Stone would have done the same if his Chinese had been up to it. If these figures were correct, she’d got the precise location. The centre of the “gravity bulge” was located near to these villages. Just how near was provided by the figures. They were the bearings and distances of the anomaly from each of the place names Semyonov had written down.
Ironstone Forest was just an English way of saying the village of Tieshi Lin. The characters were iron, stone and forest. Two trees three trees was a way of saying Lin Sen, whose name contained the character for tree — twice, then three times. The anomaly was 19.2 kilometres from the Tieshi Lin at a bearing of 328 degrees, and it was at 6.7 kilometres from Lin Sen, bearing 97 degrees. The other bearings and distances were written in the same way. Semyonov had made a very accurate pinpoint of the location in the far West of Sichuan Province, near the border with Tibet.
The last name on the list was virtually on top of the gravitational bulge, only 700 metres away. Stone took the map from Ying Ning and placed his finger on the map. ‘That’s where we’re going.’
Oddly, Ying Ning didn’t look too sure about it. She changed the subject. ‘This place too dangerous,’ She said, then she paused and came to the point. ‘We go to Sichuan, yes?’
‘To find the Machine?’
She shrugged as usual. ‘Could be.’
An hour later, Stone sent a message via the secure NotFutile.com email server.
Found the Machine. Bear 128 degrees, 43 km from village of Tieshi Lin, Western Sichuan. See what you can discover re gravitational/magnetic anomaly nearby.
Fancy a trip to China?
Meanwhile, Ying Ning was still looking at the map. She had circled a location in the map heavily in black pen. It was the last name on the list. Stone asked her what the characters meant. Sitong.
'The name means Death Hole,' she said.