Heaven is a Place on Earth

by Graham Storrs

  “So you're just running away?” Ginny said. “You're just turning tail and running?”

  “Yes, I am. Goodbye.”

  “I didn't think you were such a coward.”

  He gritted his teeth. “Well you were wrong. I am. Yellow to the core.”

  She shook her head. Quietly, she said, “No you're not.”

  Anger boiled up in him. He threw down his bag and turned to confront her. “What the hell do you know? You saw me up on that roof. I was pissing myself with fear. I would have jumped. I would have.” He choked up and couldn't say any more.

  “I read about what happened to you in Melbourne,” she said, her voice so gentle it felt like a knife in his chest. “I saw the clips of the police bringing you out of that man's house, the state you were in. I heard about what that psychopath did to you. It was a miracle you survived.”

  “What are you talking about?” He was remembering too, now. Why was she going on about it? What relevance did any of that have?

  “I heard what the police said, afterwards, that you'd held out long enough for them to save that girl. That you'd sacrificed yourself and endured the most horrible mutilation...”

  She seemed to be choking on her words too. But she couldn't see what he saw in his memories. She couldn't see him screaming and begging, thrashing like the wounded animal he had been, willing to say anything that would make the torture stop. Wanting to say it, pleading to be allowed to condemn and incriminate anyone and everyone to make that endless pain go away.

  “I've heard you whimpering in your sleep,” she said. He saw a tear roll down her cheek and realised he too was crying. “I've caught glimpses of your scars. I've seen how you hide them, sensed your shame. But you were a hero. You held out long enough to save that girl. You did what almost none of us could have done.”

  He shook his head. It was all wrong. He'd held out at first, but he wasn't that Rafe Morgan any more. That man had died in that awful room. One of those cuts had killed him. The man who inhabited this mutilated body couldn't have held out for two seconds. He felt himself sobbing, felt himself sink to his knees, cover his face. That other man had held out and held out until the knives had shredded his resistance, cut out his heart, sliced his brain to sushi, and left him a snivelling, screaming creature, unable to comprehend how such pain could go on for so long, thinking of nothing but how to make it stop. In the end, not thinking at all, just longing for death to come soon.

  He felt Ginny's hand touch his shoulder and he jerked away from it.

  “Rafe, I didn't mean to... I was only trying to say...” She sounded shocked at what she'd done.

  He rolled onto the floor, pulling his legs up into his chest, burying his head. He wanted her to go. He didn't want anyone to see him. He wanted to be alone with his pain, with the dreadful, unbearable shame of knowing himself.

  -oOo-

  When Rafe woke up it was dark. He was on the floor still but with a blanket over him and a pillow under his head. The floor smelled of dust and his shoulder ached where it pressed against the unyielding vinyl. He pushed himself off the ground into a sitting position. He felt hollow, as if the inside of his skull had been scraped out.

  “Hi,” a voice said from across the room. It was Ginny's voice but sleepy and soft. He could make her out in the gloom, curled up in an armchair with pillows and a quilt. “How are you?”

  It wasn't a question that made much sense. “I don't know,” he said. “What time is it?”

  “Nearly morning. Do you want some breakfast?”

  He nodded, then, realising she couldn't see him, said, “Yeah, that'd be good.”

  She got up and went to the kitchen, putting the lights on at a low setting. As she moved about, finding what she needed, he climbed to his feet and stretched the aches out of his body. The apartment was cold. The early hour and the dim lighting reminded him of something but he couldn't quite catch the wispy traces of memory. Then he saw it as clearly as if it had been yesterday, his father making sandwiches, chattering away in the kitchen while Rafe, just a small child, put his boots on. They were going fishing and Rafe was in a state of wonder at the strangeness of the experience, of this first glimpse into his father's secret world of men and their rituals.

  “Last of the eggs,” Ginny said, handing a plate to Rafe. The bacon wasn't burnt this time and smelled too good to be real. “Good job we're going today.”

  “You should come,” he said, feeling awkward. “To Canberra.” How did he get back from where he'd been yesterday?

  “No,” she said. Her tone said she'd understood something and knew what to do now. “I checked the flights. There's one to Canberra today. You should get that. It's two days till the next one.”

  They ate in silence for a while. Reluctantly, he asked, “What will you do?”

  “I'll be fine. You're right. I'm not really in any danger. You just worry about getting yourself home and safe.” She nodded at his bag in which the wad of documents still lay. “And make sure that gets out onto the Net.”

  He wanted to protest. She was treating him like an invalid. He could see it in her face. She knew now badly damaged he really was. Knew nearly as well as he did. Knew he could not cope with the danger that stalked him. Knew that just getting up in the morning and holding out until it was time to sleep was too much for him, that determination and bravado had only carried him a short way, and now he had no props. She could see that to lean on the people around him was all he could do to stave off a collapse that would soon come anyway. So, he didn't protest. He didn't take even the small risk that she might withdraw her collusion in his flight to safety. He let her give him what he needed and told himself it was all for the best.

  He called his editor after breakfast, waking her from sleep, and explained that he needed her and anyone else she could rustle up to meet him on his arrival. “Yes, physically meet me,” he told her. He got her promise in exchange for his own to explain everything in full as soon as he arrived.

  Ginny called a cab to take him to the airport and went down to the street with him when it came. They stood beside it. He felt guilty and humiliated but forced himself to say, “It didn't change anything, you know, finding out about the Consortium. We already knew Dover Richards was from some other faction, that someone else, someone dangerous was taking an interest in what we did.”

  She nodded. She knew this too. She was still willing to let him go, to get him safely home.

  “We didn't know there were more of them,” she said. “We didn't know what resources they had, or how hard they'd try to stop you.”

  He felt the panic rising in him at the mere suggestion of his continuing jeopardy. He should get in the cab and go. He glanced up and down the street but saw no-one.

  “You should go,” she said.

  He nodded but still he did not move. He remembered the little black box and the cylinder and pulled them out of his pocket. He held them out to her. “Here. I'll feel better if you have them.” She began to refuse but he took hold of her arm and pressed the gadgets into her hand. “Please.” She looked unhappy, perhaps about his reasons for thinking she might need them, but she took them anyway. “It's not like they did me any good,” he said. “The one time I could have used them, I was in too much of a panic to think of anything but running.”

  She stepped forwards and gave him a quick hard hug. When she stepped back, he smiled and nodded. Then he got into the cab and told it to go. He looked back after a while to see her still standing on the pavement, watching him leave, a small lonely figure in the bright cold morning.

  Part 3

  Chapter 13

  Della Kubiak was at work when the doorbell rang. She worked as a middle manager for Chastity Mining PLC, Australia's largest mining company, and was wrapping up a staff meeting on the quarterly results. Her direct reports, their direct reports, and so on down to the lowliest staff members filled a small auditorium. Over two hundred faces gazed up at her as she stumbled over her sentence and investigated
the interruption.

  It was her apartment doorbell, which was weird, especially since she had set the apartment never to interrupt her at work except in exceptional circumstances – like if the place was burning down or something. Or if it was a close personal friend. There in the virtual pop-up she saw Ginny standing in her hallway, looking around nervously.

  Barely missing a beat, she told the apartment to open for Ginny then turned to smile at her audience. “So, to cut a long quarter short, we did well. Most of you are on track for healthy Christmas bonuses if we can keep up the momentum until the end of the year. I need to shoot through right now, so I'll leave Chui Yi to deal with any questions you might have. Have a great weekend and I'll see you all on Monday.”

  She left the podium mouthing a silent apology to her surprised deputy, and went straight back to her tank. As the lid came up, she found Ginny standing over her, looking sheepish.

  “I need somewhere to stay for a few nights, Del. Any chance I can crash here?”

  She looked her friend up and down. Ginny seemed OK, apart from her anxious expression. She noted the travel bag on the floor behind her. “Of course you can stay.”

  “I don't know,” her friend said, as if she were already reconsidering. “I should probably explain it all to you first, then let you decide.”

  Della grinned. “Ah, Ginny Galton, Woman of Mystery. I suppose you've been consorting with terrorists again. Well, whatever it is, why don't you take a seat and I'll get us a cup of coffee. Then you can buy me dinner – there's a great little place in Paris I've been dying to try – and tell me what kind of mess you're in this time. I've got a guest tank in the spare bedroom and the bots are filling up the drips even as we speak.”

  Ginny smiled weakly, which was not a good sign, then moved in for a hug. “I knew you'd be just what I needed,” she said.

  “And what's that exactly?”

  “Sensible,” said Ginny. “In your own slightly crazy way.”

  -oOo-

  The restaurant was a seedy little place in a tiny street behind the Rue des Théatres, in a version of Paris a good hundred years older than the real one. There were just ten tables in the whole place, and only half of them were occupied. An overweight, middle-aged woman in a floral dress saw them to their table, making no attempt at pleasantness. Della found the simple wooden chair rather more comfortable than it looked – thanks to the magic of virtual reality – and ordered for both of them in French from the one-page menu. She smiled at the couple at the next table, a quiet man with a moustache and a loud woman in a hat. A standard poodle sat beside the woman on its own chair. She fed it morsels of food with her fingers and cooed over it.

  “Nice,” said Ginny in a tone that suggested she thought otherwise. “A personal recommendation? Or did you read about it in the Kennel Club Magazine?”

  Della winked. “Just wait, the food is supposed to be fabulous.”

  Ginny smiled sweetly. “Well Lassie seems to be enjoying it.”

  “Never mind the other diners, let's hear the rest of the story. You were just up to the part where Detective Chu kicks in your front door and you swoon onto the sofa.”

  “If you're not going to take this seriously...”

  “Ginny! Lighten up! You've been acting completely stonkered since you arrived. Of course I'm taking it seriously.”

  Ginny regarded her steadily. “I don't think I'd ever been so scared in my life, Della. I thought Dover Richards was coming in to get me.”

  “The creepy one you quite fancied when you first met him.”

  “The one who murdered Gavin.”

  Della raised her hands in surrender. “OK, I'll stop being glib. Just tell me the rest of the tale.”

  With a sigh, Ginny continued, talking non-stop through three courses and a couple of after-dinner liqueurs. Della, who had started off believing her friend was dramatising herself and making a great deal out of very little, grew increasingly astonished as the tale unfolded. If half of what Ginny said was true, she had been through an adventure such as Della had never heard of in real life. The fight on the roof in Stanthorpe shocked her so much she thought Rafe's consequent breakdown perfectly reasonable, even if he had started out mentally hale and healthy.

  “You actually shot that man?” she said as the coffee arrived.

  “He was only wounded,” said Ginny in her defence. “I had to shoot or they'd have killed us both.”

  Della noticed their grumpy waitress was hanging around close to their table and wondered if she might be a real person and not a construct as she had assumed. She made a small gesture of caution to Ginny and nodded towards the woman. “Let's go for a walk along the Seine,” she said.

  They got up and Della paid the bill.

  “You should let me,” said Ginny, dismally.

  “This place might look like a dump,” said Della, not caring if the nosy waitress heard. “But the prices are top of the range.” Seeing her friend's glum expression, she added, “Come on Gin, you're a struggling artist and I'm a rising star in the corporate firmament. I make – what? – ten times what you do? Twenty? I'd tell you my actual salary only the French proletariat would have me swinging from the nearest lamppost before I'd got all the zeroes out.” She was glad to see a small grin on Ginny's lips.

  They teleported straight to the river, appearing close to Notre Dame on the Quai de la Mégisseries, and linked arms as they ambled downstream, past the shops and cafés towards the Jardin des Tuileries.

  “Do you think Rafe's right?” Ginny asked. “I mean, about me being in no real danger any more?”

  Della thought about it for a minute. She didn't like the sound of this Rafe bloke at all. His prime motive in everything he'd done seemed to be his own self-interest. In fact, Della could see several reasons why the various parties would want to hurt Ginny – or at least keep an eye on her. Yet her friend was so anxious. Even here, she was looking around all the time, checking everybody they saw on the street.

  “I'm sure you're worrying too much about it. Besides, the plebiscite is tomorrow and, if they get a 'yes' on that, the Government says it will have the vote in Parliament within a few days. After that, it's all over, isn't it?”

  Ginny nodded. “That's what I thought.” It seemed to give her no comfort though. “Whatever they're going to do, it should be before the vote. And Rafe said he'll put the S10 documents out on the Net as soon as he gets to Canberra. There's nothing I could add to that, even if I wanted to. Even if I went to the police, all I could tell them is to go and look at Rafe's documents. I'm not a threat to anybody now, am I?”

  Della squeezed Ginny's arm. “Stay with me until the vote is over. Then you can go back home without having to worry.”

  “But what if the Consortium thinks I'm part of the S10 plot? What if the police think I'm with S10 – or the Consortium?” She pressed her palms into her forehead. “It's driving me nuts. I can't think straight.”

  “Hmmm, well, two bottles of French wine might have something to do with that.”

  But Ginny was not to be jollied out of it. She looked around again. “Can we go back?” she asked. “I feel too exposed out here.”

  Reluctantly, Della agreed and called up a portal that would take them back to their tanks. But Ginny caught Della's arm and stopped her. “You don't have to let me stay,” she said. “Now you've heard the whole story, you know what a risk you're taking. I'd understand if you told me to sling my hook.”

  Della could hardly believe her friend was being so melodramatic. Ginny had always taken life a bit too seriously, of course, but there in the yellow lamp-light of that quiet street, she had the tortured expression of a 2D movie heroine caught up in one of those inexplicable old plots about virtue or family honour. Could she really be so scared? Did she really feel so helpless? It prompted a question that had been in her mind for several hours now.

  “Ginny, why don't you just go to the police and tell them everything?”

  Ginny looked confused, as if Della
had missed the whole point of what she'd been saying. “Because I don't trust them to be on my side. From their perspective, I've been a courier for September 10, I've consorted with known terrorists, I've failed to report a death, I've shot a man, I'm in possession of an illegal firearm...” She paused for breath. “They might just arrest me, Del. They could easily do that. And then they could hold me indefinitely without access to a lawyer. They could even torture me if they wanted to. I'd be crazy to risk all that on the slight chance that they might be able to protect me from untagged ghosts who can come and go without the police knowing.” She stared into Della's eyes as if looking for an acknowledgement of the peril they were both in, but clearly did not find it. “I should go,” she said. “It was stupid of me to come here and put you in danger like this, only...”

  “Yes?”

  “Only there's something I wanted your help with, something you might have the right connections to help me find out.”

  “The Rice Consortium,” Della said, leaping to the obvious conclusion.

  Ginny nodded. “I've tried every search I can think of but I can't find much. It's a real company. It has a sort of minimal worldlet that's all corporate colours and discrete logos and doesn't even say what it does. I thought maybe you might know people, or people you could ask, anyway.”

  “And this is the group that sent people to grab Rafe? Don't you think it would be better to just leave them alone? If they find out someone's trying to find them, wouldn't that just be like poking a dangerous animal with a stick?”

  Ginny sighed and looked at the ground. “I know. And I shouldn't ask you to help. I just need to know. I just need...” She looked up suddenly, her gaze intense. “Something bad's going to happen. S10 or the Consortium, or somebody is planning something terrible. People might die. I'm not a hero, Del, but what if I'm the only person who can do something about it? How could I live with myself afterwards if people died and I'd just stood around and let it all happen? I wouldn't have come here, I wouldn't ask you to help if I didn't think there was so much at stake.”