Yellowcake Summer

by Guy Salvidge

  ARE YOU SURE YOU WANT TO EXIT?

  He typed YES and pressed enter.

  14. The Web

  Jeremy stood over a sleeping Lui Ping, watching her narrow chest rise and fall. Her face was hidden behind the Controlled Waking State helmet but he knew she slept peacefully: the technicians informed him so. And yet here he lingered, wanting... he did not know what he wanted. Victory, certainly, but something more than that. It could not be said, could barely be thought. He wanted domination, not just over humble Lui Ping but over everything. He saw now what Controlled Waking State meant for the future, if the technology could be fully harnessed. It meant the complete subjugation of a human being. CWS promised a world beyond the tired dialectic of master and slave, of puppeteer and puppet. It promised godhood for him who controlled it.

  Look at her there, caught in his web! Dreaming a dream he made for her, only to wake to a consciousness he also controlled. For her, waking and dreaming lost their meaning the moment the helmet clicked into place. Now she walked in an endless labyrinth with no hope of escape.

  Jeremy ripped open the velcro collar of her bodysuit and peeled it back. He rested the palm of his hand on her bare shoulder and stroked her upper arm. Her skin glistened with fresh sweat. He ran his tongue over his upper teeth.

  “Mr Peters,” a voice said through the headset. “The child is very distressed. Shall I have her sedated?”

  Jeremy remembered where he was: not in the control room but actually inside Lui Ping’s pen. “No, I’ll talk to her,” he said. “I’ll be out shortly.” He held Lui Ping’s limp hand in his own and squeezed it. They had a deal: he was to return later. He closed the door behind him on his way out.

  Walking along the corridor, he looked in on his two other sleepers. They were complete opposites in the way they slept. Sylvia’s right leg twitched periodically and she had a tendency to toss and turn. Perhaps she always slept like that. She had even started sleepwalking a few hours back and had tried to get out of her room, so this time he left her door unlocked, curious as to how far she might get. Sylvia the somnambulist, explorer of the boundary between Controlled Waking and Controlled Sleeping. It was eerie, as though on some level she knew that she’d fallen into a trap. The technicians hadn’t encountered a sleepwalker yet and they were very interested in her.

  Rion, on the other hand, slept like a corpse.

  The facility currently had the capacity to house six people in Controlled Waking State at a time, so it was half full. More technicians and more equipment could easily double or triple that capacity, but he’d yet to ask for either from the homeland. The problem was not processing power but money.

  He heard Lijia before he saw her. She was having a tantrum and her cries echoed through the halls. He followed the sound and found the child and the minder he’d assigned to her at reception. The minder, a young Chinese woman of a similar age to Lui Ping, was having a hard time. “She won’t stop crying, Mr Peters,” she said, struggling to hold the child in check.

  “I’m not surprised,” he said. He knelt down before Lijia, who thrashed wildly and tried to claw at his eyes. “Now, now,” he said, deflecting the attack. “Settle down.”

  “I want my mummy! Where’s mummy?” Lijia said through snot and tears.

  He shushed her, placing a hand atop her head. “Mummy’s sleeping. She’s very tired. I’ll show you a picture of her sleeping, all right? Would you like that?”

  The child said nothing but the fight had temporarily gone out of her. He held her tiny hand and led her to the control room with the minder in tow. “We can see her in here,” he said, encouraging the child to follow him into the darkened room. “Look, these men are making sure she’s safe.” He picked her up and put her in his seat. He pointed to a screen. “There she is. Can you see her?”

  Lijia nodded and started bawling again. “I want mummy!” She tried to get down from the seat but he held her back and then she was fighting him again. Lijia sank her teeth into the fleshy part of his hand.

  “Fuck!” he cried, pulling his hand away. “Okay, use a sedative,” he said to the minder, who approached from the side holding a needle gun. The child fought but was soon subdued. Moments after the jab, she drooped forward and Jeremy caught her as she fell. He propped her back up into the seat. “Put her in one of the dorms,” he told the minder. “I’ll send for you when she wakes up.” He looked at the row of tiny teeth marks on his hand. “Fucking brat.”

  After a less than satisfactory lunch at the barracks canteen, he rode his flitter back to the Eye. He didn’t like working on a Saturday but those protesters hadn’t quite fucked off yet and they were still making a nuisance of themselves at the gate. He didn’t feel like having to rub Eli’s nose in it again today, so he’d sent Lillian Chu in his stead. It was over forty degrees and he’d be damned if he was standing out in that heat again. Lillian didn’t like working on a Saturday either, but fuck her. The office was two-thirds empty, but there were still a number of eager beavers typing loudly at their desks in the hope of being noticed for their diligence. Jeremy shut his office door behind him.

  He had that weak, fluttering feeling in his chest again and he knew better than to try to stand. One scotch set his heart to beating in a more normal rhythm and a second brought him fully back to life. A third wouldn’t hurt. Whisky coursing through his veins, he looked again at the fading bite mark on his hand. The little bitch.

  He put a call through to Lillian. She was standing in the shade beneath the gate. “No problems there?” he asked.

  “Just the heat and these flies,” Lillian said, trying not to scowl. Her forehead glistened and she must be boiling in that suit. She waved her hand at the flies buzzing around her face.

  “How many are there today, do you think?”

  “Barely a hundred at last count.”

  “Good, it’s fast petering out then. Tomorrow it will probably just be Eli and his girlfriend.”

  “Mr Peters, do you want me to stay out here much longer? I’ve spoken to them. They didn’t listen.”

  “No, give it another half hour and then you can come back in. I’ll even buy you a drink if you like?”

  Lillian looked at him and almost visibly thought better of making some kind of cutting retort. He terminated the call.

  So.

  He tapped the empty glass with a fingernail while his other hand gravitated toward the bottle. It seemed he was the victor and he hadn’t had to do much of anything. Those were the best kind of victories. As it’d turned out the Grand Director needn’t have worried, but he was an old man and worrying was about all that old men like him were good for. The CWS business was amusing enough, though. He was glad that Li had given him the tip. It was the kind of thing he might make better use of in the future. I’m like a spider, he thought, capturing enemies and cocooning them to eat later. None of those three were much use to anyone, although he supposed that the girl Lijia deserved better than to be left an orphan, even if she had bitten him. Her father was a martyr after all. Yang Po was an evil sonofabitch and he deserved his heart attack. So maybe he’d have to let Lui Ping out in a couple of days, send her and her brat back to the homeland. The other two though... he guessed it depended on the AFP Superintendent’s attitude. She had some answering to do, the sly cow.

  The glass was empty, which was a little perplexing. Hadn’t he just filled it up? So he refilled it and drank again. He needed to order another crate of this stuff express from Scotland. To hell with the expense. Now, what was the time? He looked at the screen and the numbers blurred before him. Still early in the afternoon, apparently. He felt a little dizzy and he thought he’d best give it a rest once he’d finished this glass. There wasn’t much left of the bottle and he’d only opened it this morning. He’d had enough of sitting around and he was almost ready to head back to the barracks, to see if Lui Ping was ready for her next experience.

  A call came through and his first instinct was to let it ring out. The AFP logo rotated across the sc
reen.

  He answered it.

  Lyncoln Rose’s pinched features appeared before him and he had the absurd notion of punching the hologram in the face. “Did you call to apologise for trying to trick me?” he asked.

  “Trick you?” she said. “I didn’t trick you.”

  “Yes you did, but I’m too clever for you, aren’t I? Both of your little snitches are fast asleep now.”

  “They’re in Controlled Dreaming State?” she asked. “They’re both Australian citizens, remember?”

  “And now they’re in trouble in a foreign country,” he said. “You know, I’m not so much annoyed that you tried to trick me. That’s all part of the game. What angers me is that you must think I’m a moron. I know all about your SCAs. Compared to what we’ve got here, it’s pitiful.”

  “What have you got, Jeremy?”

  “Never you mind,” he said. It occurred to him then that the whisky bottle was visible on the desk. Fuck it. “I’m just having a drink to celebrate my success,” he added. “You should have one too. You needn’t worry about Misanthropos. You can call off the dogs. Everything’s in order.”

  “When are you going to release Orion Saunders and Sylvia Baron?”

  “Couple of days, probably,” he said. “Or a week. Depends on what you’re offering.”

  “What I’m offering?” This was her angry face, she probably practised it in the mirror. “Now you listen to me. I’ve cooperated with you. I’ve supplied you with two Australian citizens to assist you in your investigations. I’ve made sure that the protesters on your doorstep come to no harm. And what do you do? Sit on your ass getting drunk in your office, then ask me what I’m offering. You don’t realise what a precarious situation you’re in here. You’ve completely lost touch.”

  “Okay, spare me the details,” he said with an airy wave of his hand. “What do you want? Spit it out.”

  “The Protectorate can’t be allowed to expand,” she said. “It’s political suicide for this Government in an election year. They want to take it off the table as of now.”

  “I’m just the Security guy,” he said. His guts churned. “This shit goes a lot higher than you or I.”

  “Of course it does,” she snapped, “but what we want from you is an assurance that you’ll withdraw your support for the proposed expansion on Security grounds. You’re to raise your concerns with the Grand Director. We can work out the details later.”

  He thought about it for probably a millionth of a second. Bile rose in his throat and he burped it up. “So basically,” he said, “you’re trying to tell me how to do my job, correct? The piss-weak leaders of your tin-pot country are shit-scared of losing their meaningless election, and you expect me to help these losers get re-elected? Since when were you in politics anyway? Aren’t you the police? And you tell me that I’m the one who’s lost touch? Get fucked.”

  “I thought you might say that,” she said. She nodded curtly and ended the call.

  He stared at the screen.

  What had just happened? This shit beggared belief, it really did. Clearly it was amateur hour at the AFP and Lyncoln Rose was the clown-in-chief. The yokels in this country had been allowed to get too big for their boots in recent times. Jeremy was doing them a favour by taking them down a peg.

  He tried to get out his chair and pitched sideways onto the carpet, his head narrowly missing the corner of the desk. The empty tumbler bounced across the carpet and smacked into the bookcase. He could see the crack in the glass from where he lay. Well, fuck.

  He was woozy all right, but he knew he could get up if he really concentrated. Upright, he leaned against the bookcase listening to the mad skittering of his heart. Okay, now it was starting to settle down. It was maybe six steps across the carpet to the door, which proved no problem. The bathroom was just down the corridor and he made it there in shuffling steps without being noticed. He sat on the toilet for quite some time, just trying to get his breath. Then, feeling marginally better, he went over to the sink and splashed plenty of water over his face and neck. To say that the face in the mirror looked dishevelled was like saying that too much whisky and rich food was bad for you: the fact that it was true didn’t help. He cupped his trembling hands under the tap and drank, then threw open the door and lurched out.

  It wasn’t far to the lift and everyone had gone home now. Only the cleaners were still here. His fliptop was buzzing but he ignored it and got into the lift.

  B stood for basement and F was for flitter. B again for barracks and L for Lui Ping. Hey, S also stood for Sylvia, didn’t it? She was in pretty good shape now, not sullen and chubby like she’d been when she worked for him. That was the plan and yet so far all he’d managed to do was to press the button for the basement. The lift descended and his delicate stomach didn’t appreciate the tremor the lift made. The doors opened and he heaved the contents of his stomach – that horrible canteen lunch and his expensive Scotch – all over the walls and floor of the lift. Well, that was what cleaners were for. He wiped his mouth on his sleeve.

  Fifty steps to the flitter. At least.

  The fliptop in his pocket was still buzzing and he thought of dropping it into the bin, but he stayed his hand. Lyncoln Rose didn’t have his private number so it was probably Hui informing him that she was moving out. Dumb bitch didn’t seem to understand that he’d had nothing to do with her boyfriend’s death. She flat out didn’t believe him. Right now, though, he needed every bit of his attention focused on making sure that he didn’t fall over and crack his head on the concrete. He got there in the end and the flitter opened.

  “The barracks,” he said to the flitter. The basement roof opened and the platform ascended to street level, blinding him with light. The flitter started moving along the Amber Zone boulevard at its top speed of thirty kilometres an hour. He turned on the siren. The fliptop rang for maybe the fifth time and finally he was able to give it his attention. He flipped it open on the seat beside him.

  An agitated-looking Lillian Chu appeared in hologram.

  “I said you could come in, Lily,” he slurred. “How come you’re still out there?”

  “Sir, they’re attacking the gate!” she cried. The sound of an explosion rang out behind her and she threw herself to the ground.

  “Who’s attacking? What?”

  “The protesters! They’re attacking the gate!”

  Holy fuck. “What? You can’t use lethal force, all right? Push them back.” He heard the unmistakable bark of rifle fire. The distortion of a second explosion ripped through Lillian’s hologram. “Lily?” he said.

  She was gone.

  15. Are You Sure You Want to Exit?

  Sylvia lay on her cot looking up at the cracks in the ceiling and the spider web in the corner of the room.

  Get up.

  A voice in her head and yet not of her.

  Sylvia, get up if you can.

  She got to her feet feeling energised, as though she had been on the cot for a long time. She had no memory of how long it might have been. She did not know the voice that spoke to her and yet she trusted it, as though perhaps she had heard it before but had since forgotten.

  Try the door. It may not be locked.

  “Who is this?” she said, searching high and low for some hidden speaker. No speaker and no response. She went over to the door and turned the handle. It opened into a dark corridor. The only light came from inside her cell and now she stole away from there. There did not seem to be any guards around, but she heard a woman’s low moan coming from somewhere. “I’m out,” she said. “I’m in the corridor. I can hear someone crying.”

  Look for Rion, his cell should be nearby. You might be able to open his door.

  Rion? That was a name she knew, but it only deepened her confusion. What was the last thing she remembered before her cell, her cot and the spider web? Her father shouting at her. And yet he was dead.

  The cell door along from hers was closed, whereas the cell on the other side of the corrid
or lay open and was obviously empty. “Rion?” she said, knocking on the closed door. There came a muffled reply but she didn’t catch the words.

  He hears you. Open the door.

  She tried to open it but it was stuck. It wasn’t the kind of door you’d expect to find in a prison; it was just an ordinary door. Her hand touched something she couldn’t see and the door clicked open.

  Rion! His angular face, his dark eyes. Her arms came up as though she meant to throw them around him but she stopped herself just in time. What was she thinking?

  “Sylvia!” he said. Now he hugged her instead and she collapsed into him, smelling his smell. “You got me out,” he said, letting her go. She felt a sense of loss.

  “Someone’s talking to me in my head,” she replied.

  “Mine too,” he said. “I think I might remember who it is.”

  I’m trying to get you out of the place you’re in but it’s hard. I can’t see what you’re seeing, I can only hear your voices.

  “Did you hear that?” she asked and he nodded. They listened again but nothing further was said. Rion’s cell was much the same as hers, barren of colour except for a window in the opposite wall looking out over a jungle. It was a wall of greenery, impenetrable and alien. Even if they managed to escape the prison, trekking through that jungle would be hell.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Rion said.

  They went out into the corridor. “I heard someone else before,” she said. “Someone crying. It wasn’t you?”

  “No.”

  “Then there’s someone else. Listen.”

  They listened. The crying came from the opposite direction, back past her cell. It was the cell next to hers on this side. “It must be Lui Ping,” Rion said. “Father said she was – ”

  “ – coming over for dinner,” she cut in. “But we’re not related, are we?”