Heaven is a Place on Earth

by Graham Storrs

  There were tears in Ginny's eyes and Della pulled her friend into a hug. “It's all right, hon. Don't worry about it. I'll help you. Of course I will. Nothing terrible is going to happen, you'll see. I bet the police have been onto these drongos all along. They'll keep everyone safe, you'll see. And, meanwhile, you'll stay with me and we'll have a good time and forget about terrorists and murderers and secret plots.” She felt Ginny's head shake against her shoulder and pulled back to look at her. “Well, we'll give it a go, anyway. At the very least we can get in some quality girl time while society falls in ruins about our ears.”

  Ginny grinned, despite herself. “But you'll ask about the Consortium?” she said.

  With a sigh, Della agreed. “Whatever you need, hon. Just think of this as a short vacation. I'll do all the detective work for the next few days. You just kick back and relax. OK?”

  Ginny's voice was wistful. “Sounds wonderful.”

  “It's agreed then. Come on.” She took her friend's arm and steered her through the exit that led to the real world.

  Chapter 14

  “She's scared stiff,” Della insisted. The broad, handsome man sitting opposite rolled his eyes, just a fraction, but enough to give away the fact that he was losing his patience.

  “She's in no danger,” he said again.

  “Detective Chu, you're missing my point.”

  They were in the Federal Police Building in Sydney, a surprisingly dull and ordinary worldlet, Della thought. Weren't the Feds supposed to have renovated all their worldlets recently? She vaguely remembered an exposé she'd watched about cost overruns and management incompetence. If this was all they got for their millions, they had been seriously short-changed.

  “Ms Kubiak, we all have Ms Galton's safety as our number one priority. Nothing bad will happen to her.”

  “She was almost killed just a couple of days ago.”

  He compressed his lips, obviously trying to keep his temper in check. “I explained that. She and that reporter surprised my people in Brisbane. They weren't expecting them to take off in a quadcopter. It took our officers on foot a while to locate a suitable vehicle to follow them in.”

  “Meanwhile they get jumped and almost murdered.”

  “As I said before, now that Ms Galton is staying with you, we don't expect her to go flying off without you telling us where she's going.”

  “I don't like spying on my friend.”

  “Even if it's for her own protection?”

  Della scrunched down in her seat, feeling cornered. Of course she wanted to help Ginny, that's why she'd been willing to meet Detective Chu when he called that morning, but what he was suggesting seemed all wrong.

  “Tell me again why you don't want me to tell Ginny about this?”

  Chu gave a barely-suppressed sigh. “Ginny's had a bad experience with the police. That man, Dover Richards, impersonated one of our officers and gave her quite a fright it seems. Her companion, Rafe Morgan, is one of those anti-establishment reporters who has a very jaundiced and paranoid view of what we do. I doubt that she trusts us any more.” Well that's true enough, Della thought. “In fact, the fact that she hasn't been in touch tells me she's as scared of us as she is of September 10. I don't want to alarm her further and run the risk of her bolting.”

  “But you could track her through her tag, surely?”

  “Of course, but who knows what mischief she might make for herself before we caught up with her? The incident in Stanthorpe you just mentioned ought to to be proof enough that we're not infallible.”

  “And you're keeping her under surveillance because you think she might be contacted by these terrorists, September 10?”

  “It's vital we get our hands on those people as soon as possible, Ms Kubiak. We have no other leads. This is the only way.”

  “What about the Rice Consortium?” She had already given Chu a summary of all that Ginny had told her on the previous evening.

  Chu shook his head. “It's a red herring. They're a legitimate business. We've already checked them out.”

  “What kind of business?”

  “Some kind of lobby group.”

  “So why were those thugs flying around in a Rice Consortium quadcopter.”

  Chu regarded her steadily. He seemed angry, probably resentful of being cross-questioned by his would-be informant. Well that's just tough, Della thought. If he wants my help, he can damned well work for it.

  “We checked that too,” he said, slowly. “The Rice Consortium flyer just happened to be on the roof that day because one of their employees was visiting the town on business. They were very upset that Mr Morgan damaged it but we persuaded them not to prosecute him, or Ginny.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it is in our interest to keep both of them in play. There is more at stake here than the vandalism of corporate property.” He paused. “I have the feeling I have not convinced you to help us, Ms Kubiak.”

  Della found the man's excessive politeness and his overly formal speech irritating, but he was wrong. She was completely willing to help and didn't need convincing. Cooperating with the police seemed to be the only sensible thing to do. She had already told Detective Chu a lot of what Ginny had told her and would continue to report on Ginny's plans and activities. It was the only way to keep her friend safe. It would be idiotic and reckless not to help the police. All the same, she did not like the idea that Chu was keeping her friend 'in play', using her as a lure to draw out the terrorists.

  “Ginny's worried you'll arrest her,” she said.

  Chu seemed to find the idea funny. He laughed out loud and said, “Don't worry, I certainly won't be arresting her.”

  “That's good to hear. I wish I could tell her.”

  “You can, once this is all over. It won't be long.”

  She nodded and they both fell silent. Chu seemed satisfied at last that Della was on his side. He broke the silence by asking, “Where does she think you are at the moment?”

  “I told her I had to pop into my office for a while to check on a few things. She knows I'm a workaholic.”

  “That's good. Maybe you can invent some crisis, or an urgent piece of accounting that will require you to drop by every now and then. At least once a day would be good.”

  Della nodded and stood up to leave. “Yeah. No worries. I should be off.”

  He stood too and held out a hand. “And you'll call if anything comes up? Anything at all?”

  “Of course.” They shook hands and Della left by the nearest exit.

  -oOo-

  She didn't go straight home but, instead, went to her office. She really was a workaholic and the chance to extend her absence by another half hour to get some work done was too good to miss. After the daggy drabness of the police station, the offices of Chastity Mining seemed unusually smart and modern. Display surfaces everywhere responded to her presence and updated her on critical business indices, intra-office communications, and news.

  She got stuck into her work immediately but within a few minutes her attention began wandering. A few minutes later, she set her work aside and sat back in her chair staring at the ocean. When she wasn't entertaining clients or meeting colleagues, her office configured itself as a kind of high-tech beach shack. Bleached wooden planking, the sounds of gulls and distant breakers, and the smell of the sea, provided an incongruous background for the banks of virtual displays that hovered around Della's high-backed leather chair. With the screens pushed out of the way, she had a view through the open door past her wooden verandah to the ocean and wide, blue Caribbean skies.

  “I always say – ”

  Della jumped and swivelled the chair to face a tall woman with angular features who had just walked in behind her.

  “Sheila! I thought I was here on my own. Just a sec.” She popped up a display to reset the décor to office normal, but the tall woman stopped her.

  “No, leave it. It's nice. I have my own office set to Gstaad, skiers whizzing past all the time,
wooden chalets and fir trees.” Sheila was CEO of the company and could pretty well suit herself in such matters. Although she was just three management layers above Della in the company hierarchy, it might have been three thousand as far as actual status went. “I always say,” she went on, “working weekends is a sign of poor delegation skills.”

  Della laughed politely, assuming it was a joke and not an admonition.

  “Your figures for last quarter were really very good,” Sheila said and Della tried not to look amazed that anyone at Sheila’s level would notice anyone at Della's. She immediately felt stupid, realising that Sheila must have pulled up her division's performance figures, probably had them on display from the minute she saw Della working, along with peer comparisons, market averages, and year-on-year trends.

  “I'll see if we can do even better next quarter,” she said, playing along.

  “Good onya. I'll set a flag so I don't forget to check up on how you did.” She laughed as if she'd just made a big joke. Della tried to look pleased, despite the sinking feeling. It was, of course, an opportunity to shine, and be noticed. That was the right way to look at it. Yet the timing wasn't great, what with all this business with Ginny at the moment.

  “I suppose it's no big deal, coming in here all hours with no family at home to worry about,” Sheila said. So the woman had pulled Della's personnel file too. “Still, even single people have to make sure they get their work-life balance right. Don't you agree?”

  “I just popped in to check on how a few things were going. I won't be staying long.”

  “Make sure you don't. It's all too easy to burn yourself out in this business. And how is everything going?”

  Della glanced at her displays. “I could do with a better exchange rate against the Yuan, but the year's going well against plan.” This would be the perfect opportunity to mention the new nickel dredging project in the Torres Strait, she told herself, prime the pump a bit so it's already on Sheila's radar when the approval request hits her desk. Instead, she found herself asking, “Do we have any dealings with the Rice Consortium?”

  Della's heart skipped a beat as her CEO's face fell and her body stiffened. Sheila stepped closer, standing over Della. “What do you know about the Rice Consortium? Where did you hear about this?”

  “I – ” The woman looked really angry. Had Della stumbled onto some terrible company secret she shouldn't know about? Could she bluff this out, find out what was going on? She would never have brought it up but it had rankled with her that Detective Chu had so obviously lied about the Consortium and their attack on Rafe and Ginny. She said, “I heard about them. From a friend. They seem to crop up a lot lately. My friend suggested I try to make contact to see if there were any business synergies. She seemed to think there might be. So I just wondered whether we already had a relationship with them.”

  Her boss underwent a swift transformation from anger to cautious suspicion. “Your friend isn't with Chastity then?”

  “No, she's... in the worldlet services business.” Sheila nodded as if that made sense. Della risked a gentle push. “So are we in bed with them?”

  “No, we are most definitely not. Whatever your friend may think, the Rice Consortium is not a company we would ever do business with.”

  With Sheila's emotional state rapidly swinging back towards anger, Della's instinct was to shut up and back off but, for Ginny's sake, she tried to look innocent and asked, “Why? What's wrong with them?”

  “Never you mind. All I'll say is this. They approached us about a year ago. We did the usual due diligence, and something came up.”

  “They're some kind of lobbyists aren't they? What was it you turned up? Bribery? Blackmail?”

  “Frankly, it's none of your business. That's what it is. I don't want to hear them mentioned again. And if they ever approach you again – through friends, or any other channel – you report it to me, straight away. Yes?”

  “Er, yes, of course.”

  Without another word, Sheila turned and left, leaving Della wishing she'd kept her mouth shut.

  -oOo-

  “But that's great news,” Ginny said, when Della related the details of her roller-coaster meeting with her boss. “Now we just have to get hold of that report Sheila had done on the Consortium and we'll know what they're into.”

  “Yeah, right. I'll just nip along to the CEO's office and ask for a copy. That'll get me back in Sheila's good books.”

  Ginny winced. “I'm sorry, Del. She's probably forgotten all about it by now though. I'm sure it'll be all right.” Della did not feel reassured. “But, look, Sheila got a report, but she didn't actually compile it herself. That would have been done by someone else. Who does that kind of thing, your legal department?”

  “Accounts, most likely.”

  “Right. Accounts. So that's where we need to go to get the file.”

  “Unbelievable! I've just trashed my reputation with my CEO over this and now you want me to break into our Accounts Department database and steal a highly confidential report? I'd never work again if they caught me – and that's after I got out of jail.”

  Ginny chewed her lip and looked around as though searching for some way past the problem of getting her friend arrested for larceny, yet still acquiring the file she wanted. It took her about ten seconds before inspiration struck and her face lit up. “Rafe!” she said.

  “Rafe? You mean your emotionally unbalanced reporter friend who goes to pieces at the first sign of danger? He's going to burgle my company's file system?”

  “No, of course not, but I'll bet he knows someone who can.”

  Della took a deep breath. It wasn't much more than an hour ago that she had promised a Federal Police officer that she'd keep him informed about what Ginny was up to. How could she possibly tell him something like this? Even conspiring to commit an offence was an offence. And she would be an accessory before the fact, or something. She should quash the idea immediately. But Ginny was so excited by the prospect and was thanking her for being so brave with her boss and getting them this brilliant new lead. Della just didn't have the heart to do it. On the other hand, she was pretty sure that the fragile Rafe would bottle out of the proposed burglary, so the whole idea would fall at the next hurdle.

  “All right, let's talk to Rafe then,” she said. From Ginny's surprised expression, her friend had obviously expected more of a struggle.

  “He said he knew computer experts,” Ginny said. “I bet he knows all kinds of shady people. He's got that air about him. Looks like he's always doing dodgy deals with underworld types for juicy bits of information.”

  “Sounds charming.”

  “Yeah, but useful, I reckon. Let's go see him.”

  Ginny had actually taken a couple of steps towards the guest tank before Della called out, “Whoa. When did you turn into Action Woman? Some of us haven't even had our breakfast yet. I think I'm going to need a full stomach when I meet this seedy reporter of yours.”

  So they printed some toast in Della's top-of-the-range autochef and Della nibbled at a slice while Ginny wolfed hers down and waited impatiently for Della to finish. When Della could stall her friend no longer, they got into their respective tanks and turned up at the offices of the Sentinel.

  “I'll see if Mr. Morgan is in,” an animated receptionist told them with a bright smile. The construct went through the motions of picking up an old-style phone and murmuring into it. Cute, but Della wasn't in the mood for being entertained.

  “Just tell him we're not going away until he sees us,” she snapped. “Or maybe he'd rather we went to talk to the police?”

  “Mr. Morgan will see you now,” the receptionist said in a sing-song voice, smiling cheerfully. It indicated a door and Della strode off towards it with Ginny hurrying to keep up.

  “What's put you in such a grumpy mood?” Ginny asked

  “I'm always grumpy when I'm conspiring to break the law.”

  Ginny looked shocked, as if it hadn't occurred to her t
hat her friend might resent being dragged into all this. She put a hand on Della's arm and said, “I'm sorry Del, I didn't mean to – ”

  Della cut her off. “Let's just get on with it, shall we?”

  She threw open Rafe's door and marched in. A scruffy-looking man in his forties regarded her from a smart leather chair in a smart, white office. The office was so out of keeping with the way the man looked and dressed, it emphasised his crumpled, careless appearance. Like a chimp in an operating theatre, she thought. She studied him for a moment as Ginny said hello and introduced everybody.

  The Twenty Per Cent Rule was a law passed in the early days of ubiquitous augmented reality and applied to virtual reality too. It said that no-one could alter their appearance by more than twenty per cent on any particular attribute. You could be taller – but only by up to twenty per cent. You could be slimmer, younger, have bigger eyes, longer legs, a squarer jaw, bigger breasts, anything you liked, but only by up to twenty per cent. It meant people were always rather more beautiful than they really were, but not so much more that you didn't get an impression of what they were really like. If Rafe Morgan looked this shabby in VR, he must look a complete wreck in reality.

  “I don't want to see anyone,” Rafe said, looking at Della. “I don't want anything more to do with it.” He turned to Ginny. “I thought you understood.”

  “Ginny needs your help with something,” Della said. She was already predisposed to dislike this man. As she saw it, he had used Ginny and then ditched her when it all got too much for him. “All we want is a name and you can go back to your nervous breakdown or whatever your problem is.”

  “Tough guy,” he said with a sneer.

  “Don't make me come to Canberra and beat the snot out of you,” she said, sneering right back at him.