by Les Petersen
I nodded and roused myself. Sansan had sent a Cameo to help me. Harry. I straightened my clothing, wiped my face and watched as he secured a line to the pod. We rose through the cloud, into the outer atmosphere that was streaked and striated in static. Images flickered across the sky, channel surfing. Too many, too fast to tell you. The escape pod shuddered and banged, the walls groaning from the pressure. Harry kept peering in the window and smiling that used smile. I focused on his face, smiled back, let my mind accept the changes. When the static ceased, we were on the HoloCloud. While it all patched back together, I closed my eyes and gathered my thoughts.
Chapter 8
The Dansen was in darkness and someone was knocking against the door, slamming the entrance button. “Mr Earner, your time is up. Mr Earner? What have you done to the controls?”
I checked the PAN was still attached, tapped for low lights and door open and began unbuckling the straps. Lucy Clarke looked through the bulkhead when I opened it up and shook a finger at me, chastising me like my grandmother used to; an action I found infuriating. “Mr Earner, not only are you overtime by ten minutes, you’ve altered the configuration of the door controls. You must respect other users’ needs. This will take hours to fix. What have you done?” When I didn’t answer, her she shook her head and ran a finger through her fringe again. I dropped out of the seat and stretched a little.
“Thank you, Miz Clarke. I have priority, I believe.”
Lucy’s face burnt red with anger. I realised my holoface was down and swore at myself. I tapped the chin mount, the face came up and the HUD gave a readout I didn’t want to see. Wall down, minus thirteen minutes. They had me. I marched past the librarian caring nothing, trying to feel nothing.
She grabbed me by the arm and spun me around, her fingers digging into my arm like surgeons’ knives. “The only priority you have is in your pants. Fuck you, Pretty Boy!” she said. “I’m going to check on the backup to find out what you did, and if I find you have been tampering with the system, I’ll bring you before Flintlock’s Ethic Committee.”
I flicked her arm off me and walked out of the library without looking around. I walked toward the Ford, waiting for the crack of a rifle or the body charge of squad, but apart from the normal traffic no harsh sound disturbed the daylight. The car’s interior was dark and cool, the doors hissed down. I headed for the dock.
“Reinstate, team up.”
Sansan sounded worried. “We’re here, Jack. Are you okay?”
“Just fine.”
GaZe chipped in, sounding professional. “Welcome back, Jack. Harold Earner has been prepped for assassination and a team has been dispatched to find us. Medusa has been diverting them, but they’re closing her out now, so she’s shielding the houseboat for as long as it takes. Squad ETA two minutes. They’ll go to the library first.”
That’s why I like them so much. Even closed down they still work on my defence., but I didn’t feel like praising them. “Sansan, get me SmartGuy, please.”
The communication tones warbled like an electronic songbird and a patch of fuzzy grey filled one corner of the holoface. On the second ring SmartGuy’s green teeth smiled at me. “Gidday, Jacky baby. How’s it hanging?”
His cheerfulness lifted me for a moment. “Long and loose and full of juice, Smarts. You?”
“Same as always, though I never had your length. What d’ya need?”
“Complete remake.”
He whistled through his teeth, “Finally got you, have they? Who did it?”
“Beats me, Smarts. Could’ve been anyone. Maybe it was even you.”
He grinned and shook his head. “You know me, Jacky. I’m just the mechanic, not a Pretty Polly. How long?”
I showed him the graph.
“One minute ten. Cutting it fine, Jacky. Fifty million and ten percent!”
“For fuck’s sake, Smarts! Do you want all the blood I have?”
“Hey, you’re wasting my time! You want full transpose, triple-linked holobase paraphernalia and overlapping credit referencing, you pay for it. Sixty million, now. And twelve percent.”
I had no choice. “Done.”
“Encrypt’ll take too long. Open channel?”
“It’ll have to be.”
“One sec, then.”
It was more like three seconds before the depth charge hit the PAN. A weasel couldn’t be any slimmer, or any more savage. I drove slowly, gripping the steering wheel, while SmartGuy demolished all I had done over the past three years and rebuilt my ivory tower from the base up. He laundered all my accounts, took his profit and recycled it back into new accounts. He was more than thorough, as if he drove a bulldozer through my gardens with the grace of a ballerina, rebuilding facts in different places, then clipping the hedges and flying away with the rubbish—a completely new personal history filled in behind me. Sansan took it all as it came, re-routed for historical relevance and time scale. Charlie ran silence, while GaZe checked for Fault.
“How’s that, Jacky?”
It was flawless. “You’re not a mechanic, SmartGuy; you’re an artiste. You want to see the feed as it comes in?”
“Physical? They that close?”
“I can almost hear the sirens.”
“Hey, ‘bout time I got to see some of the fun. Yeah, patch it through. Full encrypt though.”
“Cost you seventy per cent.”
He grinned from ear to ear. “Make it sixty and it’ll be worth it.”
“Done. Don’t forget the steak knives.”
When Bleeder gave the all clear and had searched the local area for remote video surveillance and reprogrammed their actions, I pulled the car over to the side of the road. The place was deserted of people. I stepped out. The Ford pulled away from the curb quietly, drove a block before Bleeder’s programme kicked in and it spun across the traffic and stopped in the middle of the road, sat gunning its engine, rocking sideways from the torque. People came out onto the street to see what was happening. I kept walking back the way I’d come, until I could take cover in a public holobooth. I lifted the receiver, tapped in a few numbers and waited, listening to a time check while holo and HDVD tuned on the street outside the booth.
Delivery traffic began to back up behind the Ford, horns protesting. Some drove around it, some tried backing away, diverted by Road Control. Sirens wailed closer. It almost looked like the road would be cleared, but then patrol cars slid to a halt at either end of the town, lights flashing. Officers tumbled across the bitumen, took up position with guns trained. People came out to see what the disturbance was. A crowd gathered, but some of the braver officers began ushering people away. A squad truck rolled into town and began spitting Tinmen soldiers who clumped their way through the police perimeter and began a sweep of the area.
Seconds later a military chopper came screaming out of the sky from the northwest. Two others came out of the south and a fourth rose above the buildings to the east. They closed in on the car, blow-horns threatening.
With the screech of a racing start, the Ford rose on its suspension and blue-smoked itself through town, heading south, weaving frantically from side to side, dodging between delivery vehicles. Gunfire erupted. The road surface blew into the air. Sparks spat off the side of the car. People screamed. As the Ford hit the centre of town, it rose from the ground, retracted wheels and hurled itself toward the choppers.
Rockets speared away from both Mils, slammed into the car, which exploded with fiery damnation. The car disintegrated: panels and parts hailing through the air; the engine block fell out of the sky as if a heart had been dropped on the surgery floor; a fire ball blew out the windows of all nearby buildings, knocked on-lookers down. The acrylic windows of the phone booth bowed inwards and the structure shuddered as the car crashed to the ground, skeleton burning.
One of the choppers tipped nose-down, gained a thousand meters and sat waiting. The other swaggered forward. The remaining choppers closed in on the scene. Cyborg soldiers ran toward the remai
ns with their guns clattering. A secondary explosion flipped the remains of the Ford into the air and onto the car salesman’s yard, crushing some of his stock. Oil and petrol caused further fires. Soldiers and police ducked for cover.
Silent expectation covered the whole area.
I lay down on the ground and waited. The sky was blue, cloudless, like water in one of Shahn’s paintings. I could’ve fallen upward forever, toward the ocean of light.
A cyborg leaned over me. “Ser, the situation has stabilised. You may rise without fear of injury. May I see some ID please?”
I got up, acted dazed, reached in and drew out a driver’s licence. Another Tinman stood nearby, a military special tucked under his arm, muzzle pointed toward the ground. I couldn’t escape them. No matter how fast I was, it would be faster and more accurate. Up and down the road similar acts were taking place as the Squads questioned witnesses, checked for perpetrators. “Mr Stromlo?” the first Tinman said, it plastic face giving a reasonable facsimile of friendly concern. “I need visual confirmation of your ID. Please lower your holoface.”
I acted coy. Being a bit paranoid about whether he was doing a heat test on the newly printed licence I looked to see if anyone was looking in my direction. “Well, I don’t want...”
The Tinman also checked the perimeter. “Your privacy will be respected. If you need screens they can be provided.” The other cyborg stepped closer.
I shook my head. “No. It’s okay.” I reached up and touched the chin mount, the holoface came down and it was the moment of truth. Thirty million dollars and a new life. The Tinman cross-checked the 3D image on the new licence—the newly printed licence that had just come out of the flexiboard printer that must be at least two degrees warmer than it should’ve been. Body heat would account for that, I hoped. He looked up into my face and I saw two black eyes. Snake cold. “Mr Stromlo. Have you anything to declare?”
I brushed a hand through my hair, took the time to reactivate the holoface and shook my head. “I didn’t see anything. I was just going in the phone booth. And this car, I don’t...”
“Please concentrate, Mr Stromlo. Think back. The sound of a car engine racing. You looked back over your shoulder and you saw…?”
I stared at the concrete and frowned. They knew I had looked back over my shoulder. How fast can you be? Careful. “I saw a car in the middle of the road. It was shaking. It was sitting there. Shaking.”
“Yes?”
I brushed a hand over my forehead. “I can’t think what colour it was. I can’t think—” I staggered slightly, reached out for support.
The Tinman gripped me with one hot hand and lowered me to the sidewalk, then stood waiting for me to recover. I didn’t know how long I would have to keep up the charade, how long they’d detain me, so I chose direct action. “Isn’t anyone going to help me?”
The cyborg reacted with predictable calm. “My apologies, Ser. I will summon aid.”
Almost a whole minute passed while I sat on the pavement, the second cyborg standing guard over me. Eventually, a BB Snip came over and looked down at me. He got the nod and the feed from the Tinman, knelt beside me and placed a hand on my shoulder. “Do you need trauma counselling, Ser?”
I gave him (her?) a weak smile, put all the acting skill I had into it, looked at the Tinmen like they were the incarnation of the devil. “No. I just need a friendly face.”
She picked my meaning immediately, nodded knowingly, waved away the Tinmen. “I understand, Mr Stromlo. Perhaps you would like to sit in the shade for a while. You could talk to me about it, or if you need to, you could forget what has happened, leave it till a later date. One of us could escort you down to the station….”
I took the chance as it came. “Yes, thank you. I’ll be fine. Just the violence of it all. I’m not used to it happening around me. It’s so…”
“I understand. Virtual has no comparison to reality when it comes to information and sensory feed. Full sensory overload isn’t a pleasant thing. Perhaps you would stay silent for a moment. Let your fingers experience the feel of the pavement under your hand. Focus on that. It will help clear your mind.”
I scrunched my hand up and poked at the ground, pretended to show interest. After a second I sighed. “I’ll be fine, thank you.” I looked at the remains of the car yard, most of, which was surrounded by the squad who were foaming down the fires, scanning the area for evidence placement, loading information for reassembling later. The salesman was sitting in the shade of the coffee shop, his head being tended by a BB Snip. He was shaking with the shock of it all. One woman was having a difficult time controlling her husband who was yelling at the cyborgs, his fear converted into anger; and a pair of teenagers were miming the explosion to each other, having the time of their lives. No one was looking at me. I was just a victim amongst many.
It was time to leave the scene. I motioned that I wished to stand and the Snip helped me up. I looked around, pretended to be frightened a little. “It’s so horrible. Maybe I should go home. I just need….”
She nodded and led me down the street, past the other witnesses who were more than willing to give a vivid account of what they thought had happened. The Snip led me through the police cordon and down to the river. All the time she kept one comforting hand on my shoulder. Just before she left at the river bank, she handed me a card, “Should you wish to relive any of this, or if any memory comes to you that you wish to declare, you can contact me on this number.” For a second I thought she was going to say something else or crack onto me, but she said goodbye, turned and walked back up the street.
It was too easy. I doubted everything. When she was far enough away not to be able to overhear me, even with a pencil mike, I tapped up the team. Sansan gave me the run down on the HUD, but I only skimmed the run and took out what I needed to know immediately.
Boris Stromlo. Bell International (Corporate Surveillance). Married. Two children. Living in Perth. Current assignment: Nildottie seeding.
No wonder I had been able to leave so easily. They wouldn’t interfere with an interstate agent. “You still taking feed, SmartGuy?”
His face appeared on my screen. He was bouncing up and down in jubilation, the end of a sausage roll being waved around like a crazy conductor’s baton, sauce flying everywhere. “Jacky, Jacky, Jacky! I got it all. Fantastic. Bloody brilliant! We’ll make a bloody mint. I’ve already sent a sample to Channel Three and they’re talking fifty million, up front. I know I can get eighty, at least. Don’t worry; I’ve changed angles and planes, they won’t find you. If we echo—”
No holding back his enthusiasm., but he had dropped me in it as deep as my shoelaces. “SmartGuy, you’ve done the dirty on me.”
He smiled away, doing something off-screen. “What ya mean, the married thing?”
“Married I can handle. Wake up, SmartGuy. You’ve given me a connection to Bell.”
“Yeah. So?”
“That’s where all this started. I’ve worked for Bell.”
He looked me straight in the eye. “As if I didn’t know that. Are you forgetting who gave you the inside running to get away from that crowd? So, you wake up, Jacky boy. Where better to hide? Why not become the wolf in sheep’s clothing? Huh?”
Christ, no turning back now, was there? “All right, SmartGuy. I don’t have enough time to stand here chatting. The Tins are watching me. You get ready for another air-tight cover, I’ll do what I have to.”
“Can’t do. I’m out of stock. Take at least a week to get another ready. You’re making a big mistake, Jacky. You have a bloody good look at what I’ve given you and be thankful. I’m off line for a while.” He logged off. I cut the connection, stood there sweating about it for a moment and then decided on direct action. I’d hide away as Stromlo for a while. What was needed now was a quick exit. “Sansan, I need a car!”
“Already purchased and on its way. ETA three minutes at this location.”
“Nicely done, young lady!”
; “As always, Jack.”
“Call me Boris!”
“Yes, Boris.”
Some names feel awkward and Boris was one of those names. I felt like I should be slamming back vodka. And I could do with a drink. Especially because I was married and had missed out on the honeymoon. I walked down the jetty, gave Mr Frennet a wave.
Medusa came on-line urgently just as I stepped aboard The Sea Mistress. “Tactical error, Jack. Frennet hasn’t been updated on your new name. He’s checking contacts. The Brothers Four have monitored SmartGuy’s link and they have not been able to read the feed, but it was charged to Harold Earner and the connection wasn’t severed in time. They’re on their way here now. You’ve very little time to clear the area.”
I moved fast, took my stuff and headed for the shore, her prompt for action constant in my ears. For a second I thought I had made it, then one of the choppers came over the edge of the town, side-on; their gun platform aimed in my direction. I slowed to a walk. A second chopper came up beside the first, fish-tailing like a guppy in a bowl. Or a cat’s tail, flicking in agitation. The pair of them lifted tail rotors in some weird kind of salute, moved toward me. Nowhere to run. Mr Frennet looked out of his office, the receiver still held in his hand. Yeah, they’d checked with him on what Earner was wearing. He shook his head at me, as if to apologise. I nodded and sighed, dropped my bags onto the wharf and waited for them to close in. Cyborg soldiers began taking up positions along the shore, all at ease, the chase over. Patrol cars swarmed to join them.
The sun peered down from overhead, a hot day gliding across the globe, a fiery eyeball grinning at a fool. I looked around at the flat line of water, the low hill-lines, the boats rocking at anchor, the reflections wobbling under the pier. I zipped up the jacket and waited.
“Sansan?”
“Yes, Jack?”
“Seizure imminent. Any land-based escape routes?”
