by Guy Salvidge
“He’s in protective custody, but he’s fine. Marcel and Vanya will be required to complete their CPF service, but otherwise they’re in the clear.”
“Good. I feel bad for dragging them into it.”
“Very well then, off to surgery for you and then into Yellowcake Springs this evening.”
“Do I get this one?” Rion asked, picking up the SCA. It was surprisingly light.
“That’s just a dummy,” the Superintendent explained. “The real one’s a little bigger and you wouldn’t want people putting their germs all over it before someone stuck it in your head, would you?”
“You’re sparing me the details, I like it,” Rion said. “I wonder what other details you’re sparing me?”
Lyncoln Rose stood up to leave.
9. The Prisoner
The man sitting across from Jeremy didn’t look like someone he would ordinarily spend a lot of time pursuing, but then looks were often deceiving. Rion was gaunt, his face weather-beaten, and he held himself with a quiet defiance. He did not make eye contact and his hands were hidden beneath the desk as though clutching a concealed weapon. Jeremy looked up at the Security officers flanking the prisoner and one of them shook his head almost imperceptibly.
“So you’re Rion,” Jeremy said. No response. “My name’s Jeremy Peters and I’m Yellowcake Springs’ Director of Security. I trust that you have been well treated?”
Rion issued a curt laugh and glanced up. Progress.
“Of course, you’ve visited Yellowcake Springs before,” Jeremy continued. “You once held provisional citizenship, pending the completion of a probationary period.” Something stirred behind those narrowed eyes. “But you never completed your probation and thus your citizenship status lapsed. Pity. Life could have been good for you here. Still could.”
Rion looked up at him but there was no glint of hope in those eyes. “Is that so?” he said.
“Absolutely. You see, I used to be the Director of Advertising here, until I replaced a man called Yang Po.” No reaction. “Before that, I worked with Sylvia Baron. You know her, don’t you? Or you did.”
“I knew her a little.”
“She helped you get into Yellowcake Springs because you said you knew something about Misanthropos, didn’t you? But I think you made that up so that you could stay. Why did you run?”
“I didn’t run, we were evacuated.”
“All right, you were evacuated and then you ran. Why?”
Rion chewed his bottom lip. “The radiation. I didn’t know when we’d be allowed back. And I didn’t know whether they wanted me back at all.”
“You were supposed to do something for us, weren’t you?” Jeremy said. “You were given citizenship in exchange for uncovering information about the real Misanthropos, but you didn’t do it.”
“I couldn’t do it. I was in David and Sylvia’s apartment when the attack happened and then I was caught up in the evacuation.”
“Hmm. It isn’t too late, you know. More than three years have passed and we still want information about Misanthropos and your friend Sylvia. She’s coming here with the protesters in a few days. Did you know that?”
Rion nodded.
“Of course, Superintendent Rose would have briefed you, wouldn’t she?”
Another nod. Rion held eye contact this time.
“And now she has you working for her. Don’t try to deny it. I know what she’s after, sending you here. She’s thrown you to the wolves. I’m one of those wolves.”
No response.
“That implant she put inside you, what did she tell you about it?”
Rion folded his arms. “What implant?”
“They call it a SCA, I think. How appropriate. It captures your entire experience but it leaves a scar, doesn’t it? Must feel strange. Hello, Lyncoln. Are you getting all this?”
Rion’s eyes darted as Jeremy’s words hit home. He pressed his advantage. “I bet she didn’t tell you about the kill switch though, did she?”
“I dunno what you’re talking about,” Rion said in a hoarse whisper.
“They don’t want us using their own operatives against them,” Jeremy explained. “So if things go wrong, there’s a kill switch. Kills the SCA but makes a mess of your head at the same time. Her finger’s probably hovering over the switch right now. Don’t do it, Lyncoln. He’s trying to do the right thing.” He held up his hands theatrically.
Nothing happened. The prisoner exhaled.
“You look like you need a drink,” Jeremy said, bringing out two glasses from the desk. “I insist.” He poured two measures of whisky and took the first sip. “This is expensive stuff,” he said. “Go on, my treat.”
Rion took a sip of the whisky and grimaced. He put it down.
“Not used to it, are you? I understand. I want to help you, Rion, but I need you to help me too. I want that thing out of your head as much as you do, but if we try to take it out, Lyncoln’ll fry you. It’s a conundrum, so let’s think it through. She can see what you see, hear what you hear and feel what you feel. What doesn’t she have access to though? Just one thing.”
“My thoughts,” Rion said. He picked up the glass again.
“Exactly. And where is the one place that your thoughts don’t influence your actions? At least not very much.”
“In my dreams,” he said.
He was sharp; he already knew something of what Jeremy wanted. “You know where we can talk freely, without her listening in?”
“I expect so,” Rion said.
Jeremy drained his glass. He nodded at the Controlled Dreaming State console in the corner of the room. “That’s my rig there. I’ll have these two take you downstairs and get you hooked up. Have you used CDS much before?”
“Not for a long time.”
Jeremy smiled. “You’ll soon pick it up again. And don’t stress about Lyncoln Rose, all right? Those SCAs are expensive. She won’t pull the pin on you unless I try to dig it out and I’m not going to do that. There’s only one thing that the AFP and I agree on and that’s putting an end to this Misanthropos nonsense. We don’t necessarily agree on whose responsibility it is, but that’s another story. Drink up.”
Rion finished his glass of whisky and Jeremy indicated for the officers to take him. Alone now, he sat thinking, twirling the empty glass on the tabletop with one finger. He’d clearly guessed correctly about the presence of a SCA, but the thing about the kill switch had been pure fabrication. Hell, for all he knew, they might really have a kill switch. He reached into the desk for the bottle and poured himself a small top-up.
A call came through just as he raised the glass to his lips, so he took a quick gulp and put the glass back in the drawer before answering. It was one of the Security officers. “He’s under,” the man said.
“All right, keep an eye on him,” Jeremy said and terminated the call. He went over to his CDS console and strapped himself in. The whisky had made him sleepy and he was under the instant the headpiece clicked down into place.
Jeremy and Rion sat on opposite sides of the desk. There were no Security officers present. “Welcome back,” Jeremy said. “Looks the same, doesn’t it? No way to know whether it’s real.”
“I remember going under,” Rion said.
“So do I,” Jeremy replied. “Another drink? Can’t do you any harm here.” He poured them each a double shot. It tasted just as good in CDS, except for the bitter knowledge that this was a simulated pleasure and not a real one. A lot of people didn’t seem to care, but it bothered Jeremy. He could afford to be bothered by things like that.
“Still don’t like it,” Rion said and they both laughed.
“It’s strange. I feel like we already know one another,” Jeremy said. “I wanted to ask you a few questions about Sylvia, now that we know our friends in the AFP can’t hear us.”
“All right.”
“Back on June First, during the evacuation, you talked to Sylvia briefly. What did she want, if you can remember?”
“I remember,” Rion said. “She wanted me to go with her. She wanted help getting out of town.”
“I’m glad you didn’t try to assist her, but I’m wondering how she feels about you now, whether she’s still angry at you after all this time for not helping her.”
Rion shrugged. “You want me to talk to her, I’m guessing?”
“That’s the general idea, but it’ll have to be in CDS, or else the AFP will know about it and I don’t want that. Try to remember this if you can: everything anyone says to you while you’re awake from now on will be a form of misdirection.”
“Then Sylvia will have to be in CDS herself, won’t she? You’ll have to get her to agree.”
“I’m working on it,” Jeremy said. “There’s something else I wanted to ask you. I’ve been investigating the reactor attack and the Fearless Six. Your name came up in relation to that.”
Rion frowned. “It did?”
“Yes. It seems you’d just started working at Regal Perth Hospital when the Six were flown in with radiation sickness.”
“Yeah, I worked there. I met one of the wives.”
“Lui Ping,” Jeremy said. “Actually they weren’t married. She’s here at Yellowcake Springs now, her daughter is almost three. Jiang Wei’s daughter.”
“Jiang Wei,” Rion said.
“And now we’ve renamed the reactor that killed him after him. He’s pretty famous.” This was the important part, he had to get this right. “Did she say anything to you about Yang Po?”
“No, I hadn’t heard that name until you mentioned it. Didn’t you say he was the guy you replaced? What happened to him?”
“Heart attack. So Lui Ping didn’t say anything to you about what Jiang Wei had been doing in Yellowcake Springs before the attack?”
“I don’t think so.”
So you haven’t heard of Controlled Waking State then, Jeremy said to himself. “Fair enough,” he said. “I think we’re done for now. I’ll tee up this meeting with Sylvia and we’ll go from there.”
“Fine.”
Jeremy disconnected and began unhitching himself from the console. Only a few minutes had passed. He went over to his desk and drained the half-empty glass. Then he put through a call. “He’s still under?”
“Yes, sir. Shall I bring him out?”
“No. Have him transferred in the mobile unit to the barracks.”
“Sir, you mean while he’s still under?”
“That’s exactly what I mean. I’ll meet you there.”
He finished his drink and went down to his flitter.
10. Heatwave
As Sylvia stepped up onto the air-conditioned coach, she reminded herself that she was fate’s plaything now and that events would take their course. It was Thursday January 12th, not yet nine in the morning but already stifling at the bus port where the protesters had been gathering. She had spent so long at the mercy of others – first David, then the guards at Symonston, her difficult mother, latterly Eli and most recently Lyncoln Rose – that she’d forgotten to want anything for herself. She took a window seat near the back of the coach, desperate to tune out the excited voices. The protesters were very young for the most part, mostly students from Quindalup University. She turned toward the window, impatient for the coach to start moving.
“Sylvia, there you are,” Tamara said, sitting down next to her. “I wanted to talk to you.”
Tamara’s wavy hair was tied back and her skin was beaded with perspiration. “Hot, isn’t it?” Sylvia said. The aisle filled up with people in search of a seat.
“At least it’s cooler on here,” Tamara said, wafting cold air from the vents down with her hands. Then their eyes met. Tamara leaned in and spoke in a low voice. “Did you stay with Eli last night?”
So that’s what this was about. “Does it matter?” Sylvia whispered in reply. Images of Eli’s soft, hairless chest rose unbidden. His sallow, flabby skin. The pig-like grunts he made when he was inside her.
“It matters to me,” Tamara said, her eyes rueful. “Was he all right?”
“How do you mean?” Sylvia asked. The coach shuddered and began to inch forward. “You’re asking me whether I liked it?”
Tamara looked away. “No, it’s just that sometimes he can’t –”
“– Well this time he could. But between us, I think his best talent is oration.”
Tamara’s frown morphed into a sly grin. “I’m not really jealous, I’m just protective of him. He’s been under a lot of pressure.” She sighed.
“He seemed to enjoy himself just fine,” Sylvia said. What she didn’t say was that Eli might have enjoyed himself, but she certainly hadn’t. She hadn’t had sex in a long time, so long that she’d almost forgotten what it was like, and Eli hadn’t exactly stoked the dormant fires within. He hadn’t been selfish, just... inept. It wasn’t the kind of thing you could say about your cell organiser and the heir apparent to David’s throne. She suspected that for Eli it was more the idea of sleeping with Sylvia Baron, the founding father’s widow that motivated him. She didn’t regret it. It was just another duty, just another thing she did for the cause. The only problem was that she no longer knew what the cause was.
“He’s lost interest in me,” Tamara said, interrupting Sylvia’s reverie. The coach had stopped at the traffic lights leading onto the Northern Freeway.
“Don’t stress. I’m just a novelty to him at the moment,” Sylvia said, touching Tamara’s shoulder. “I’d be happy for you to take him off my hands, to be honest. I’m not all that keen.”
“Really?” Tamara brightened. “I love him, Sylvia. I can take good care of him. But you’re so pretty and thin and I’m just... me.”
“I’ll say something to him.”
“Don’t make him angry. I don’t want him to think it’s because of something I said.”
Sylvia shook her head. “It isn’t because of you, don’t worry.”
They lapsed into silence. The oddest thing had started happening to Sylvia just recently. After years of hating David for his reckless stupidity, she was surprised to find that she’d finally forgiven him. Now that he was dead, images of his chiselled features, his rough chin and hard limbs, had started manifesting themselves in her mind. She wanted him in a way she’d rarely wanted him when they’d been together. And pudgy Eli was practically his polar opposite and not at all her type. Even Rion was far superior in that sense. In fact, now that she thought about it, the very last time had been with Rion, hadn’t it? But they’d parted on bad terms on June First. She’d asked him to help her get away and he wouldn’t, not that she really blamed him for that now. She’d more or less turned him over to the authorities in the first place. She should ask Eli if he knew anything about what had happened to him.
The coach was on the freeway and at last it was moving at a reasonable speed. This whole protest was a waste of time, in her opinion. She hadn’t approved of David’s measures, but this was going too far the other way. What did CIQ Sinocorp care about peaceful protesters? The AFP needn’t worry. She had tried to explain this to Lyncoln Rose the other day, but the Superintendent hadn’t seemed convinced. Sylvia sometimes went hours without thinking about the SCA now, generally only remembering it at embarrassing moments such as when she was on the toilet or when Eli took off his pants in front of her. That was probably too much information even for the AFP.
As the freeway gave way to the coastal highway, she looked through the darkened glass at the burning world beyond. She saw a wall of smoke enveloping the eastern sky, a massive bushfire on the periphery of those blighted outer suburbs in the distance. New heatwave records were being set all the time, so often now that people had become altogether blasé about them. Nothing much moved on foot out there. Though it was not yet ten, the residents of those grim developments who were not working would be huddled inside beneath their air-conditioners, while those who could not afford them sweltered. Today was supposed to be 44 degrees and the maximum hadn’t been below 40 all we
ek. To be wealthy these days meant to be sufficiently cool, while to be poor was to fry. Autumn was months away and for many people in these mad, thirsty days they would die before it came.
Here, just south of Florinton, the roadsides were clogged with car dealerships, shopping centres and fast food outlets, but all of these had been afflicted with a malaise, or so it seemed to her. No cars were being sold, no shoppers were bustling along the concourses, and no greasy food was being served at drive-thru windows. Commerce could not be transacted in this heat. The only meaningful activity consisted of the fire-crews working to keep the hungry flames at bay. The suburbs would burn, routing residents and forcing them from their homes, but not today.
The highway bypassed Florinton and soon after that the coach reached the periphery of suburbia, a realm of new housing developments, signage and yellow sand. Every stretch of sand was an ‘Exciting Opportunity’ and ‘Too Good to Miss’. The suburbs finally gave out some ninety kilometres north of Perth. Here at last the landscape could be seen for what it truly was, a windswept coastal plain populated by scrubby bushes and little else. This unpromising landscape too would one day be transformed into a desert of traffic lights and terracotta roofs. Ridge Point was less than thirty kilometres away and beyond that was the CIQ Sinocorp Protectorate and Yellowcake Springs. It was a landscape she had never wanted to set eyes on again and yet here she was. The place was a vortex, exerting a subtle pull.
“Nearly there,” Tamara said, obliterating their long silence. She pointed to a sign which flashed past before Sylvia could read what it said. “Aren’t you excited?”
“I lived up here, remember?”
“Come on, you’re excited,” Tamara asserted, and Sylvia thought better than of trying to disabuse her of the notion. “We’re going to be at the centre of history,” she continued. “All eyes will be on us. On you.”
They already are, Sylvia thought.
The coach turned off the highway just south of the border, at the road to Ridge Point. She thought of the route she’d once taken across this arid landscape. How far it’d seemed. At least she’d undertaken that trek in the cooler months. She wouldn’t have made it far in this weather. Ridge Point was much as it had been, an outcropping of coastal suburbia in an otherwise barren landscape. Should CIQ Sinocorp get its way and be allowed to expand its Protectorate, then Ridge Point would be subsumed. Perhaps for this reason, the property market in town was in decline, judging by the profusion of FOR SALE signs.
