by Simon Royle
“I’m not upset, Sir Thomas. I fully understood your intentions. Now you understand mine. Are we clear?” I saw Mariko’s head moving up the stairs. “Well?”
Sir Thomas looked at me and smiled. That horrible little upwards twist of the corners of his wet lips. He brought a fist out from behind his back and softly banged it on the railing. He nodded his head.
“Oh, and one other thing?”
His eyes went wide, the smile disappearing again.
“What?” Sir Thomas’s eyes flicked to Mariko who was shifting the beers to one hand so that she could open the sliding doors. Charles didn’t move. I saw out of the corner of my eye that his gaze was fixed firmly upon me. Sir Thomas’s eyes flicked back to me. Mariko got the door open.
“What?” he said in a low urgent hiss. Charles’s hand crept into his jacket.
“You owe me eleven hundred cred from the golf.”
Sir Thomas blinked, his mouth opened, I thought he was going to say something. His mouth opened wider. And then his loud barked laugh ripped through the quiet of the night. Mariko handed a beer to me and offered one to Sir Thomas.
“No, thank you my dear. I must be going. I just wanted to personally drop off this invitation.” Sir Thomas reached inside his jacket. I stiffened, but his hand came out holding a small piece of white card. He passed it to me and said smiling, “Don’t leave this laying about will you, and do bring Mariko? And now I must be off.”
Sir Thomas walked down the steps onto the beach followed by Charles. They disappeared out of sight around the edge of the house. I listened and Mariko went back inside the house to the windows opposite the deck. She came back out.
“They’ve gone,” she said, and came to stand beside me. I held up the card in the light from the house.
I read, ‘Sir Thomas Bartholomew Oliver requests the pleasure of your company at A Cull Party, Marq V, Penthouse, New Singapore, at 10:30pm, 28 February 2110’.
In the bottom corner it said, Dress Code: Formal. There was no RSVP.
Chapter 36
A Cull Party
The Marq V, Penthouse Env, Sir Thomas’s New Singapore Residence
Friday 28 February 2110, 11:01pm +8 UTC
“This is a very cool party, no?”
The play on words came from the tanned young man with a French accent and smug grin, standing in our little group of six. I smiled and glanced at Mariko who also smiled politely. The man to my left laughed out loud and said too loudly, “A cool party. Oh very good, excellent.” His wife patted him on the arm and, glancing at the alky in his hand, quickly looked over her shoulder to see if any of the other guests had noticed.
There were perhaps fifty or so people gathered in Sir Thomas’s large living room, broken up into small groups, standing and sitting around. I saw Cochran with her partner Sunita Shido, who I recognized from the newsfeeds. So she’s a Hawk too, I realized, and quickly shielded my thought as Cochran looked in my direction. I turned to Mariko.
“Will you excuse me for a moment? There’s someone I must talk with.”
Mariko nodded. “Of course, darling. You go ahead and I’ll let these charming gentlemen amuse me in your absence.” The tanned young man looked alert and smiled a competitive little smile at me. I ignored him and turned away, giving Mariko’s hand a squeeze.
I walked across the room towards Cochran. The last time I had seen her was in the small conference room at UNPOL on the day that had started the journey that would end here, tonight. Weaving my way between French perfume and testosterone mixed in the charged atmosphere, the forced laughter and stiff poses, I sat down close beside her on the sofa. Our legs almost touching. She looked down her nose at the distance between our legs and sat back slightly shifting away. Sunita hesitated in what she was saying to Secretary Deng, but with a quick once over at me, carried on with what she was saying.
“Good evening, Sharon. You’re looking stunning as usual.”
“Thank you, Jonah,” Cochran said, watching me, with slightly raised eyebrows.
“And congratulations on your promotion. The youngest ever Director of UNPOL - that’s quite an achievement.” Cochran smiled demurely, and I thrust the crudely prepared thought into her mind. “I want to fuck you.”
She spilt her drink as she jolted forward, her mouth open, staring at me. She ignored the spilt drink, so I took out a handkerchief and dabbed at the liquid splash on her bare leg. This earned me another harder look from Sunita, but Deng was talking to her now so she turned away again.
Cochran lashed herself into my mind with a feral leap. “Take your hands off me. So the young Oliver has learnt a new trick has he? And he wants to play silly little boy games with his new toy.” Her thoughts crackled with venom.
I stopped dabbing at her thigh and put the handkerchief back in my pocket. I forced my thoughts through the noise in her mind. “Not games, Sharon. I’m serious. The Cull is tonight and bloodlines are being drawn.”
I switched my line of thought to the second phase of my unbalancing act.
“You’ve never had a man before have you? It’s always been her. You’re still a virgin. Perhaps fuck was too strong a word, although I think we would enjoy it. Perhaps breed is better in the context of tonight. Think about it. Matriarch of a dynasty. Can she do that for you?”
And rising from the sofa, I smiled and said, “Well, lovely to see you again, Sharon,” and I turned and walked slowly back to Mariko. Cochran was incoherent.
***
Stanislav stared at the Devscreen. There was only one word on it.
Now.
He turned to glance at Fatima on his right and, sitting next to her, Dom. They had pulled their Devcockpit together for this one. This one was special. Dom and Fatima looked at him and he said, “Re- re- re-”
“Ready,” Fatima and Dom said in unison as they both smiled at him and then turned back to focus on their Devscreens. The three Devcockpits were pushed up against the door to the Cave.
Stanislav pressed submit and the level one security alert that he had prepared for Cochran was transmitted. Now they were committed.
***
Cochran was having a mental argument with herself. She wavered between walking over to Jonah and telling him he was Philip Zumar’s son and no relation of Sir Thomas, or asking him if he was serious about his offer. In her confusion, an uncomfortable and unfamiliar feeling, there was a thrill. The thrill of the unknown. What would it be like? The little voice, which had been silent for a couple of weeks, decided it had been silent too long. There’s two ways to interpret ‘I want to fuck you’. A hot flash of anger spiked through her and then her Devstick, resting on the black leather seat of the sofa, flashed red. For a crazy moment she thought she had caused it. She swallowed the alky in her hand in a single gulp and used her other to pick up the Devstick.
Level 1 Security Alert.
Positive trace identification: Gabriel Alexander Zumar
Location: Wharf Three, Warehouse 21, Jurong Island, New Singapore
She paled. He’s been here all along? On Jurong Island. Within four kiloms of her the whole time. She had scoured the Earth and the Moon for him. Her breathing became shallow. Sunita laid a hand on her forearm but Cochran ignored it and, getting up from the sofa, walked across to Sir Thomas. He was talking to a stately looking woman well into her eighties and wearing a dress from her thirties. Cochran waited.
“Yes. Tonight at midnight,” he was saying to the woman. "It will be released by Harper’s to the global feeds. I must say that I am very pleased with the effort they’ve put behind it. It will be going into print as well – hardcover.”
Cochran hovered just behind the elderly woman’s elbow and out of her sight.
“Yes, Sharon?”
She took a step forward.
“May I have a word, Sir Thomas? In private. It’s UNPOL business.”
Sir Thomas turned to his companion and, grasping her softly by the elbow, said, “Francesca I hope you will not be offended if I take thi
s young lady up on her offer of a private tête-à-tête with me.” He winked at her upturned smile and, releasing her arm, said, “Unfortunately I fear that all she will want to talk about is business.”
***
I watched as Sir Thomas left the old lady and walked out onto the balcony through the sliding doors with Cochran in tow. I could see them through the clearfilm, Cochran’s head bent low, talking fast and gesturing with her Devstick. Sir Thomas nodded. She came back inside and walked swiftly through the room. She bumped shoulders with one lady who had stepped back suddenly but ignored her and continued straight to the door where Charles was standing. He opened the door for her and she strode out, her Devstick like a baton in her hand.
I looked back to where she had come from. Sir Thomas was standing, watching me looking at him. He stroked his chin, glanced at his watch and then, looking up again, motioned for me to join him.
“What do you think?” The young man with the French accent had said something to me but I had missed it, focused on Sir Thomas.
“Excuse me for a moment. My uncle needs to talk with us.” I inclined my head in a slight bow and took Mariko by the hand. We walked a little way and then I stopped her and looked in her eyes, smiling, holding her by the shoulders. “Cochran has just left and Sir Thomas wants to talk. Let’s stick together,” I thought. She smiled and nodded back. We walked over to Sir Thomas.
He frowned when he saw that Mariko was with me. I looked evenly at him, ignoring his frown. As Hawk heir apparent I took my role seriously, glad of the imperviousness it afforded by its nature.
Sir Thomas went out onto the balcony and I followed, swooping two alkys off a table set against the sliding doors. Sir Thomas was leaning with his arms resting on the railing of the balcony, looking out over Topside to the UNPOL Complex. The thump-whoop-whir of a Heliocopter startled me as it passed overhead and I glanced up to see the black underside a mere ten meters above me, speeding away toward the warehouse district. Cochran has taken the bait, I thought.
I passed one of the alkys to Sir Thomas. He took it and raised his glass to mine.
“Cheers, Jonah, salute.”
“Cheers, Uncle. What are we raising our glasses to?”
“To tonight. To this moment. Victory. And to you, Jonah. I must confess I wasn’t sure you had it in you, but you’ve made me proud.”
I clinked my glass against his to forestall any more talk of what had made him so proud of me. Conscious of Mariko standing by the door, her arms loosely by her sides, I glanced across at her. Sir Thomas read my glance and nodded his bald head minutely in understanding.
“Have you worked it out yet?”
“With a name like the Cull Party, it didn’t leave much for the imagination. Yes, I think so. You’re going to cull a portion of the population using the Tag somehow.”
He turned and smiled at me. “You were always a bright boy, Jonah. Sometimes I wondered if you were too bright. Too much thought and no action. Well tonight is about action . Tonight we’re going to change the world and make it a better place. Not just a portion of the population, Jonah. That is thinking too small. No. A large portion. Six point three billion people will die at midnight tonight, and an hour from now we will own the world and everything in it.”
I looked out over Topside and, not trusting myself to say anything, slowly sipped the alky.
***
Cochran, sitting in the Heliocopter, hovered silently in position, two hundred meters from warehouse twenty-one. She was waiting for the SOE teams she’d called to get in position. A dark blue helo assault craft slid in beside her. She couldn’t see it and wouldn’t have noticed except for it showing up on her Devscreen. Her eyes were on the next Devscreen, showing the infra-red satimage of the three bodies in the warehouse. She thumbed her comms switch on the secure channel.
“All teams report in.”
One by one the five teams reported in. One team to cover each wall and she would lead the entry team through the roof.
She steeled herself and checked her weapon – a Glock 45 loaded with fragmentation shells.
“On my mark.” Mark? Why did that word jar with her – Mark Zumar of course. She thought back to the mind conversation at the party and shook her head. Focus.
“On my signal, three, two, one. Go.”
Stanislav and Dom had split the tasks evenly. Stanislav had taken all comms into and out of Cochran’s Devstick and her Heliocopter. It had taken him all week to set up but Cochran had no idea that she was talking to him and him alone and that the satimages she was looking at were false. Dom had taken the comms role for the four other teams that didn’t exist and Fatima had taken the UNPOL operations center pretending to be Cochran. There was no getting around the one team that they had allowed to be dispatched: Cochran would be too suspicious if there was no one on the roof with her. The other four teams were digital illusions on Cochran’s Devscreen. To all intents and purposes she was about to enter the warehouse without back up and with no one aware of what she was doing except Sir Thomas.
***
The explosive tape wrapped around the skylight was ready to blow. Cochran looked over to the team around the other skylight. She raised her fist, her stake for the rappelling rope in her other hand primed to fire into the roof. The signal came. Electricity cut and she pumped her fist downwards. Twin spirals of smoke blasted up and the skylight in front of her dropped in as she pulled the trigger on the stake. Heaving on the rope to make sure it was tight in the ratchet, she turned on the night vision helmet and tossed her coil of rope through the black charred edge of what remained of the skylight. She walked to the edge and dropped into the hole.
When she reached the floor and cast free of the rope in a crouch, her team spread out around her. The warehouse was empty except for two huge round disks leaning against the walls. She thought, Wha –
The light hit her as her brain computed what the disks were, a fraction too late. Lunar lights used by mining Ents on the Moon. Turn night into day. With her night vision helmet on and her wide open pupils, the light blinded her instantly. Her retinas burnt away. Blackness now, a red kind of blackness. She heard a clicking sound and turned towards it and heard the bodies of her team hit the floor. Something rolled along the floor. It rolled and rolled and then stopped. Devstick, she thought, and reached for it in its holster across her chest. The teams outside will get me, she thought.
She still hadn’t figured out that her Devstick had been hijacked.
“Sharon.”
She froze. That thought had been in her mind but it didn’t belong to her. Her grip tightened on the Glock. She thought a tentative, “Yes.”
“Sharon. Put the weapon down on the floor and put your arms out to your sides. No one knows you are here. No one’s coming to help.”
She hesitated. Perhaps if she removed the helmet her eyesight would come back.
“Sharon. If you don’t put down the weapon I will be forced to cut off the hand that is holding it. Put the gun down now.”
Cochran quickly knelt and laid the Glock on the floor and straightened, holding her arms out to her sides. She heard footsteps approaching across the floor, getting nearer. Steady footsteps. She thought, I can reach it.
“Sharon. Don’t even think about it. Just stay calm and everything will turn out all right. Do something stupid now and you’ll be dead or worse.”
She thought and heard her little voice say. Did you hear? He said or worse. Yes I heard it.
The footsteps stopped and a hand gently took hers and calmly pulled it behind her back, doing the same with the other and putting a restraint on her wrists. The hands took the helmet off. She kept her eyes open. Darkness, no more red, a deepest, darkest blue, almost black. A hand took her by her upper arm and pulled, indicating she should walk. She went, following the pull of the hand. After thirty steps, she’d counted, the hand stopped her. Two hands now held her by her upper arms and pushed down. She sat, resisting the urge to ask what was happening to her. She trie
d not to think.
***
“There is no list,” said Sir Thomas in response to my question, and looked at his watch.
Well that’s it then. Plan B, I thought, and glanced over my shoulder into the room. It had been twenty minutes since Cochran left and any moment now Shido would be getting the call. I looked at my Devstick. 11:45pm. In the fifteen minutes we’d been talking, he’d told me everything about the Tag. The Ents that made it, the toxin from South America, and the last most shocking information, that there was no list.
“How do you select then?” I said, turning to face him, one arm on the railing.
“It’s a simple algorithm based on simple parameters. Find, inject, move on to the next. When It reaches six point three billion confirmations, it will stop. Simplicity is always best.”
Sunita Shido yanked the sliding doors open and, brushing past Mariko, barged in between Sir Thomas and me, a Devstick in her hand.
“They’ve got her.”
“Calm down, my dear, calm down. Who has her and who is she?”
Shido jerked her head back and for a sec I thought she would hit Sir Thomas. So did he because he took a step backwards and his hand dropped inside his jacket.
“We have to delay. We can’t do it tonight. He has Sharon and he says he will kill her if we relay the command.”
I moved behind Shido so that I was closer to Mariko - Shido and Sir Thomas in front of me.
Sir Thomas, with one hand slid into the lapel of his jacket, said, “Who has her, Sunita? Who is he?”
She stepped backwards towards the railing and seemed to notice me for the first time. Her look hardened and she raised her hand, a finger pointing straight in my face. If I reached out with my mouth I could have bitten it.
“His brother. That’s who. It’s my satellite and we are going to cancel this ri –”
Sir Thomas moved so fast that I didn’t realize what was happening until he was shielding the stabbed body of Shido with his own. Her eyes staring, panicked, above the hand that covered her mouth. It reminded me of Wigley. Her legs kicked stiffly, and then bowed.
