Supplejack

by Les Petersen

  She crossed her legs again and bounced one foot up and down. I felt empty inside. Completely ripped open and all the meat stripped from my bones. My heart as empty as a crater on the moon.

  “So, what is there left?” she asked the camera. “You are the only one who knows what happened to Liberin’s code, or where it might have been backed up. Therefore, you are the one who must find the Baeder Box for us before Bell does. We won’t force you to. We will employ you to do this for us. We will give you what you wanted.”

  She reached back behind her and lifted the globe off the table and cradled it in her lap. “This cryo-globe holds a DNA strand from the child they took out of my womb, Jack. Get the Baeder Box for us and we will give you back a son.”

  Chapter 17

  I sat in the cockpit of the life-raft replaying the last few moments of the AVI feed, running it through every PAN Fault test I could think of to confirm it was genuine. I channelled my mind and energy into proving the whole thing was a setup, or some sort of trap of trick from Bell to get me to find the Baeder Box for them. The last few panels were rippling across the screen and Shahn was sitting as she had been when she made the offer of returning my son to life.

  “Bell will not interfere with you for some time,” she said, one hand on the globe to stop it rolling off her lap. “There are still at least five clones active, four of, which I will keep engaged elsewhere. One has escaped the tags we had on it and is loose – we believe he has reverted so we have left him out of the equation.”

  Again, she spoke with someone off camera then nodded. When she turned back she seemed nervous and she rose from her seat before finishing what she was saying. Three men moved into the background shot and began packing equipment. Shahn waved to someone off-screen and told them she was coming.

  “Jack. I’ve gotta go. This message has been recorded and given to Loni, the Bell Guide, because Kren would never think to doubt his own work. Oh, in case you don’t know, Kren’s head of Security at Bell now;, but he also holds the rank of Field Marshal with High Command, so he can call in some heavy artillery. And in case you are wondering, I didn’t only live with him to keep him away from you; there was more to it than you know., but he is as stubborn as you and he’s been busy since you went Shining.” She gave the camera a wink. “He thinks he can get what he wants just by flashing his tits around the place.” I could hear laughter in the background. She walked around the chair and picked up a jacket lying across the table. I saw a PAN connection there and a heavy calibre pistol. The men in the background were suiting up for some major action and they were toting some heavy firepower.

  Shahn turned and looked at the camera again. “The last thing to remember is Esteve Estany is not to be trusted. He has become unreliable and predictions are he will revert. All clones revert at some time or another. Gotta go. See you in Sydney…at the Olympic Stadium…when you get back. Just dial my old number and I’ll get the message.”

  The camera stopped rolling. She was leaning forward against the chair as the screen froze and she maintained that pose while I gave Loni the signal to close it.

  I sat there thinking of the mention of Esteve Estany. He will revert, she said. And she had said it of the other clone. To what? “GaZe…run the film through Fault for me and see what you can find. You know the drill.”

  “Completed, Jack.”

  “Set me up, GaZe.”

  “Fault has determined the voice print and visuals have an interrupt.”

  “The message has been cut or altered?”

  “Cut, Jack.”

  “Can you show me where, please.”

  “The final two frames do not overlap. Time variance is approximately a second, Jack.”

  You could live and die in a second. You could cut out your own heart and watch it beat its last few beats in a second. You could say words that would tear apart your whole world and then be led before a firing squad and be shot in a second. You could stand in front of a mirror with the birth control pill in your mouth and carefully consider what you were doing before spitting it down the toilet, all within a second. Make a life. And lose one.

  Knowing her like I did, I knew she had said something in those last second and then decided it was better that I didn’t know. Maybe she had said she loved me, or missed me, or maybe it was nothing like that.

  I sat and tapped my fingers against the arm of the chair.

  How much more was there to layer on this whole sad tale. Assassination, Ferals, corporate raids, clones, and now...

  Things were going screwy. As a Shiner, you get the smell of an assignment in your nostrils and you know when something is going wrong. And I smelt the stink of something very bad. Bell International no doubt knew of the feed I had received and that I had been offered the chance of having a son again. And they’d be giving me every opportunity to find the Baeder Box and get it back to Sydney., but two questions nagged away at me. The first was: Why was the location of the Baeder Box and the domicile of Esteve Estany so close together? The second question was even more predictable: What was removed in the missing second?

  I asked myself both those questions and then said to myself, “Seems everything I want requires me to go to Spain to watch the rain fall mainly on the plain...or something like that. Do you know why that is, Jack?”

  “Yes, Jack,” I answered myself. “Because you need a holiday. Or a new life.”

  Chapter 18

  I left the life-raft and walked through the encampment, working the stiffness out of my muscles and easing some of the heartache out of the crevices in my soul. Most of the Ferals had left earlier in the day to take the bodies of those who had died to a secret burial site. I wasn’t part of their community, so I hadn’t been invited. For the first time I was able to walk around the compound and see how they lived in their wilderness abode and I was surprised at the sophistication of the grounds, the way the houses had been built to take advantage of the solar and wind power, at the way electrical conveniences had been replaced by more natural actions. Rock ledges and homemade soaps instead of washing machines, gauze covered cabinets and evaporation instead of refrigerators, clay ovens and open fires instead of microwaves and convection ovens., but no matter how sophisticated this look, I knew few people could relax in a place like this. For all its beauty and careful construction, it lacked protection, comfort and, above all, privacy. Anywhere in this compound was a public place. You would hate to be one of those people who found going to the toilet a very personal thing. The latrine was a pit, a post and a pole. Still, maybe by removing some of the privacy the Ferals had created a community, a way for all to share in the frailties of the human spirit. By removing selfishness and possessiveness led the rest of us to the brink of damnation, they had created a caring community.

  I, on the other hand, would rather have a hot shower, hot percolated coffee in my own personalised mug and a good movie on the holoface to get me through a tough day.

  I headed for the main halls while listening to the call of the birds dancing in the trees. A trace of smoke still lingered in the air.

  When I entered the Meeting Hall I found Sure-shot Sam waiting there for me. By herself. She sat at the head of the table with the chair on her left pulled out from me to occupy. She was wearing a pair of cut-off jeans and an open shirt to, which she had clipped her PAN. It was the first time I had seen them all out and open and I could see they were a customised Padala 4 Entity, only one generation behind the 620 series. She waved me forward to the chair and compromised her severe face with a snapped smile. As if she had thought about the action and then gone ahead and got it over with as quickly as possible. It was also the first time I had seen her in civilian dress and much of her body was exposed to view. And I’ll admit it was admirable. Not that I looked too long. I didn’t want a third eye socket in my head.

  “We need to talk, Jack,” she said. “Have a seat.”

  The pack ice over the Arctic Circle was looking like a very enticing hideaway. I decided to be
civil and as I moved forward, she stood up and watched me approach. When I had eased myself into the chair, she sat down, placed her hands flat on the table and looked at me.

  She came straight to the point. “Jack, I know about the message from Handel.”

  You could’ve knocked me down with a spoon. “What?”

  She looked down at her hands and confessed she had been interfering with my PAN. “When Shotgun and Panchel picked you up from the river bank, your PAN pleaded with them to get you to a safe haven, offering them quite a lot of money if they did so. That’s why they brought you here and didn’t just dump you on the road for the military to find. When I arrived, your PAN was demanding to be taken to you, so I interviewed them. I could get a lot more out of them than they thought they were telling me: I was able to put in a tap on your PAN and when they told me of the life-raft, I located it and put in a media bug there as well. I’ve heard the feed. All of it. From the first moment you took control of the life-raft to the moment you left it to come here a few minutes ago.”

  I sat and stared at her. So much for privacy in cyberspace. “Remove your tap on my PAN, right now.” I said the word slowly and clearly, letting the words carry a threat I could never follow through on.

  She nodded to me, as if she had expected this to be my first reaction. “I’ve done that, the moment I knew you were coming here. I’ve also disabled the media tap in the life-raft.”

  A connection struck home then. “So, that’s why the Grey-cards didn’t pick me up when I was waiting for them. You wanted me to use the life-raft so you could track me. In case I ran from the scene.”

  She nodded and looked at me. “If you had given over any information to the Squads or Luddites we’d’ve been in trouble. We needed to be certain of you.”

  “All right. I accept that. So, what happens now?”

  “I want to come with you.”

  “What?”

  She sat back in her chair. Gave me room to think. “I want to come with you when you go for the Baeder Box. I know you can’t trust anyone and you don’t think much of me, but I want to help you get the Baeder Box.”

  “Why?”

  She was ready for the question. “I owe you my life. When the Mils struck the other day and you came off the mound, you saved my life. You distracted them long enough for me to get the holoface reactivated. I was in the dark, completely blind. I never thanked you for it. So now I want to do this, to help you.”

  Her answer didn’t quite sit with what I knew of her. “I haven’t decided if I’m going to take up their offer.”

  She looked at me as if I was quite strange. “I know you want this child more than you want anything else in the world. I’ve been doing a lot of research on you in the last few days and I knew about the death of the child even before I heard Handel say what he had to say. This is a chance at life; giving the child a decent opportunity. I understand what you were trying to do, Jack. I understand.”

  Sudden anger was burning inside me. The horrendous invasion of someone like her into my past. The walls came up like security shutters in a bank vault. “No. You don’t understand me at all.”

  She held up her hands in supplication. “Okay, maybe I don’t,” she conceded. “It’s different for me being a woman – I can have a child by many different means without involving a man at all –, but I can guess what you’re trying to do. Having to choose a partner and…”

  She could see I was getting angry and she stopped talking. After a moment, I realised I was being as nasty as I could because she had poked her way into my past without permission, but then I remembered I had done the same with her when I was standing in front of the help desk at the Library. Not that I had gone to the depths she had. I apologised. “Too much is happening around me, Sam. I’m getting a little moody with it all.”

  “It’s all right, Jack. I’m sorry if I have stepped on your toes.”

  “It’s not my toes I’m afraid of. I didn’t mean to get this close to anyone here.”

  She smiled a little smile that curled up the corner of her mouth. “Yeah. Two inches too close, huh?”

  I remembered my conversation with Shotgun when we were heading for the river and could’ve kicked myself. “You heard that?”

  “And about the chains and leather.”

  “Jeezus. Talk about putting your foot in your mouth.”

  “What’s it taste like?”

  “My foot? Not too good.”

  “Maybe you can share it with me sometime. And I promise not to carve up the bill with a knife.”

  Was she flirting with me? “I give in. Okay?”

  “So, I will come with you when you go.”

  I shook my head. “Look, I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”

  She looked me in the eye. “Be practical. Think it through logically. You need someone to guard your back. You can’t do this all by yourself. Bell will follow you, because they know where you are and where you’re going. Gilamens is the protector of this place, they won’t come here – not while adverse publicity can be called down upon them., but as soon as you leave Haven you’re in their world and they’ll have your blood. We can take my cruiser. There’s room for two. It’s completely unlisted and shielded. I’ve had it customised and it’s completely stealth. There are hard points to keep anything they throw at us at bay and there’s also cargo bays so we can carry the Baeder Box without any trouble.”

  “I don’t think—”

  “I’ll beg if that is what it takes.”

  “No, I don’t want you to beg. It’s not you, it’s just that I’m–”

  “If you want, you can have as much privacy as you need. I can navigate, it won’t take any more than 20 hours or so. You needn’t do anything at all. We can go via Colombo, Bahrain–anywhere you like.”

  “You are begging now. I didn’t want you to beg.”

  “Well, I’m not too good at this sort of thing. Just say yes.”

  “Let me think about it, all right?”

  She nodded her head slowly and I could see she doubted her chances already. “We can strap on a sidecar and can bring Barb if that’s what you want. I know you two are—”

  “Hey, no, wait a minute there. There’s nothing between Barb and me,” I said, though I felt like I was betraying the quiet moments we had shared in the bunker on the first night together and the hours we had slept together under the life-raft’s wing. “She’s a nice girl, but that’s all there is to it. I’m not trying to lead her on, she has just taken it in her head that…I haven’t done anything…have I? If I did I didn’t mean to.”

  Sam shook her head slowly. “Malachite would have gutted you if you had done anything. He can be a jealous when she touches strangers.”

  That statement answered a lot. I’ve heard Eskimos have similar ways of sharing their community with visitors, how they invited guest to share bodies with clan members so visitors knew they were part of a greater community, and I could see how Malachite would have been seething about Barb taking a shining to me. After all, I was better looking and definitely far more charming than he was.

  “And you’re willing to take her along if it appeases me?”

  “Well, not really., but I thought I could at least make the offer. Jack, some things you can’t do by yourself and some things can’t be done in cyberspace. When it gets down to the dirt and the flies, you need to come out of your virtual shell and fight for what you believe in. You might be reasonable against a small force, but Bell will throw everything at you. I can help you. Don’t waste the opportunity.”

  She stood up. “Think carefully about the tactics involved here. My instructors used to tell me, ‘Knowledge and foresight are your best weapons’. That’s what we should do. Go in with both our teams ready to defend us when we run for it, because that’s what we’ll have to do. Bell will let us get to where we are going and then they’ll come after us on the way back. When you are ready, I’ll be waiting.” She left me sitting there and walked out of the hall.
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  Chapter 19

  The cruiser was a modified Tzachya training jet. It reminded me of a paper airplane design: a meter of nose cone, two meters of swollen belly for the pilot seat, another two meters for the passenger, three meters of dual cargo holds and three meters of razor rotor engine held together by a delta swing wing. I didn’t really trust its age, but it had the added bonus of having hard points to hold weapons.

  Strapped into the pilot’s seat, Sam became clinical in her actions. As if she was a surgeon cutting apart the drills needed before the cruiser lifted into the air. Her PAN was dicing through each panel and I traced their weaving pathways through the system, amazed at some of the flexibility they showed when they began customising my immediate environment. Sam flicked switches on manual systems and she had obviously primed her PAN on how I like an interior to work. I could smell sandalwood and lilac, my favourite scents.

  Sam booted up a holoface. Surprisingly it was her own face that came up. She called her team to order. “Galleon, navigation. Purge all previous. Choose previewed location. Take us there. Tomo, I’ll need language augment. Local dialect and general Spanish. Duplicate to passenger.”

  “Local currency, Sam?”

  She thought about it for a second. “No, thanks, Tomo. Use Eurodollars. What funds do we have available?”

  “Current estimate: Sixteen million, four hundred thousand local.”

  “Dedicate half that amount. Ticia…Refuel requirements?”

  “Sufficient on board.”

  “Thanks Tish. Tell Su Lin we need full weapon array before entering Asiatic airspace and we will be there in approximately 240 minutes.”

  “You got it.”

  She checked to see I was strapped in, looked out the cockpit window to check the area was clear, gave Shotgun and Gilamens a wave and then pulled back on the stick and had us skywards with the swift kick of the Razor-air rotor. I sat back and relaxed. As much as any expectant father possibly can.