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by Simon Royle

  I placed my knife and fork in the center of my plate, and sat back, my hands on my thighs resting on the white linen napkin with the UNPOL logo in the middle. Smiling at my uncle, I said, “Thank you for the lunch, Uncle, and for the opportunity to contribute to your future memoir.”

  Sir Thomas, rising, said, “My pleasure, Jonah.”

  I rose, bent at the waist and gave my uncle a deep wai. He smiled and, coming around the table, took my arm. Leading me back through the scattered tables, he said, “When are you moving up the Coast?”

  “I’m leaving today. I’ve got a car coming to the Woodlands Envplex at 4pm, and then I’ll drive up there. I’m looking forward to it. I haven’t really driven a car since I came here.”

  We walked out onto Topside. The sky had turned into a mass of churning grey, mustard and black, and sheets of rain could be seen in the east, hitting Orchard in great walls of water, and in the west just as dark a mass. “Well, we better be getting indoors. It looks as if there’s going to be a thunderstorm. Drive safely, the long-haulers on that Travway are known to be faulty on occasion and results are always messy.”

  Chapter 21

  It’s a Beautiful Lie

  UNPOL Complex, Topside, New Singapore

  Friday, 27 December 2109, 2:15pm +8 UTC

  We parted, Sir Thomas striding away to the nearest Lev port and I walking along the edge of Topside. The UNPOL Complex was the highest and the Topside landscape flowed down through a series of steps and arching walkys, each swooping down and rising as they reached the West Coast before rising again and topping out over the hill of Clementi’s image-conscious Entplexs.

  The green spaces of Topside hid their color in the midday darkness but I walked with purpose in the direction of the West Coast. I didn’t plan to walk all the way to the West Coast, but heading in that direction, nearer the center of Jurong Island, was a Lev port that was vertically over the part of the UNPOL Complex that Mariko was contributing in. If I hurried I could catch her before she left for Woodlands.

  Taking out my Devstick, I saw the missed call that I’d received when I was having lunch. I’d forgotten all about it in my haste. I saw it was from Mariko and hit reply. The Devstick held an image that I’d taken of her yesterday, sitting cross-legged, straight-backed, reading a paper book, with the book in her lap and her hands on her knees, her chin sharply angled downwards and her belly sucked in. She said it was a way for her to exercise her brain and her abs at the same time.

  She came on and I saw in the inset map on her image that she was at ground level at the Jurong island exit.

  “Hi, I see you’re Topside,” she said and smiled. “What are doing there? I thought you’d be back at the Env packing.”

  “I thought I’d come and collect my damsel in distress.”

  “In distress? Why my knight in shining armor, you must be looking at some other damsel on your Devstick. I’m not distressed.”

  “You must be,” I said. “You haven’t seen me since last night.” I grinned at the Devstick, walking faster.

  “Oh please spare me,” she said, laughing.

  “I’ll be down to see you in about five mins. I was thinking I’d watch you eat and have an alky or two and then we could head back to the Env and take off. What do you think?”

  “Sounds good. How has your day been? Did you enjoy my rose?”

  “Day’s been good, apart from the freezing jet of cold water this morning. Everything has been just great since then. Look, I’m at the Lev port and it’s a little crowded. I’ll tell you my news over an alky.”

  “Great,” she said, and waving with her left hand, signed off.

  A few stops later the Lev reached ground level and I stepped a few paces out of it and looked around. The rain over Orchard had moved south and now it was slashing down in the uncovered space in front of me, splashes reaching the new footwear I’d credded at Smooth. About thirty meters away I saw Mariko walking through the rain towards me. Even from this distance I could tell she was angry about something.

  She looked around at something and then saw me and with a last glance flung over her shoulder she walked straight across, chin down against the rain.

  I put my hand on her arm and said, “Hey, are you OK? What’s the matter?”

  She shook her head brusquely. “I’m OK. Let’s just forget it for now. I’ll tell you about it later. Can we just go? Skip the alkys and get on the trav? Would you mind?”

  Shaking my head, I said, “No, of course not,” and seeing how troubled she looked I took her arm and steered her back to the Lev port.

  Fifteen minutes and two Levs later we were back at the Woodlands Envplex. I used my Devstick to tell the car to come earlier and Mariko went to take a shower and get a change of clothes. She had hardly spoken since we left Jurong. I let her have her space — she’d said she would tell me later and I was sure she would. Instead I focused on packing the remaining items and called up the Envplex’s autotroll. The autotroll arrived with a beeping on my Devstick indicating that it was ready for use and waiting outside of my door.

  I’d stacked the plastic boxes, each about a meter long and half that wide, on top of each other. Apart from the ones loaded with books, they hardly weighed a thing and I loaded the autotroll in the time that Mariko was still in the shower. I flashed a note to her Devstick telling her that I was headed to the Envplex lobby to load the car. It had arrived in the same manner as the autotroll except that it was waiting for me at ground level just outside the southern Lev port entrance.

  I walked to the entrance and looked back at the apartment. The last time I had done this I had walked out with a carry on and left the apartment practically empty. This time I was leaving a woman in the shower getting ready to join me and an autotroll full of clothes, images and books.

  Progress, I thought, and laughed to myself as I remembered the punk rap song, ‘Progress is a Bitch’, and decided not to tell that one to Mariko. I felt happy but at the same time I was concerned about Mariko. She’d been on a kind of monosyllabic auto response mode since leaving Jurong, and I’d never seen this side of her. She was obviously working something really serious out and I had to wait until she was ready to talk. I hoped with all my heart that she wasn’t having second thoughts about moving to Sisik with me.

  The Toyota Titan I’d rented was a mag/offroad hybrid. It was also all-terrain and ocean, which had pushed the cred up another thirty-five units a day, but I figured that we’d come in off the sea and drive up the beach to the house. It would save us lugging the boxes through the four hundred meters of jungle that separated us from civilization. I had no plans to change that amount of separation. In fact I was already thinking about how it might be increased.

  There were a few people standing around looking at the Titan and I nonchalantly thumbed my Devstick approaching with the autotrolly. The door slid open in the sixteen meter vehicle — to call it a car was a bit of a misnomer. It took up a lot of space in the lobby, and with its wheels set well inside the squat body shell, it looked like a very shiny, dark titanium box with a huge cockpit of swept black glass floating on air. I saw the manual on the stairs leading to the top cockpit and picked it up.

  One of the males standing looking at the Titan smiled at me reading the manual. It was pretty obvious this was my first time with this kind of rig. I smiled back and shrugged my shoulders.

  A quick scan of the manual and I located the loader door panel button on the bracing column of the door. Pressing it caused a pneumatic hiss out of the belly of the beast that made me jump and then laugh at myself as I saw a side panel slide back in the hull. I loaded the plastic boxes into the cargo hold. The four lights that defined its corners were orange and casted a revolving glow in the dim of the lobby. Then I walked up the stairs and into the tan expanse of the primary cockpit. It had a high-end Devcockpit done in black with adjustable screens set into a dark grey interior with red piping. The twin drivers' seats allowed for observation or participation, meaning they were adju
stable from extreme comfort to the pragmatic of reaching the controls. The steering column arced its way out from under the front shield in functional titanium, drilled out to reduce weight. Hanging off the end of the column, two thick black rubber grips with a face in between them of an array of multi-colored buttons.

  Manual in hand, I sat down in the comfortable Siteazy behind the wheel. I looked at the black grips and opened the manual to find where the On switch was. My Devstick vibrated and I dug it out of my lower outers pocket. It was the car rental company. I hit accept.

  “Good afternoon, Mr Oliver and thank you for making us your choice for vehicle trav. Welcome to the Titan. My name is Cindy and I’ll be taking you through the start-up routine. I am now turning on the interior systems — we recommend fully automatic trav out of New Singapore and collision avoidance systems will set to auto when you switch to manual.”

  The automated recording from the rental company played on as the Devcockpit came alive with color and images. I looked away from the little Chinese-looking girl on my Devstick, reciting the Titan’s features and systems. Instead I studied the Dev. I caught Mariko walking out of the Lev port, her Devstick to her mouth. I couldn’t hear what she was saying but while she didn’t seem angry, she still seemed serious. She stopped when she saw me sitting up in the cockpit, waving at her. She had no idea I was going to rent something this huge. She probably thought we’d just go up in a standard cab but I had gone with a trav liner and a top of the line one at that.

  Mariko turned her face sideways but kept her eyes on me, now smiling. She took the Devstick from her ear and walked over to the door. I leaned forward so that I could see her face down the half spiral stair. There she stood, her cloth bag over one shoulder, holding the Devstick in her hand.

  She looked up at me and smiled. “Let’s go,” and grabbing the hand rail walked up the stairs and plonked down in the seat next to me. She pursed her lips together in a pout and made a sucking noise with her tongue.

  The twin brother or maybe sister of my steering column rose out of the cockpit floor and extended from below the front shield, the extension of the twin grips easing its way towards a position above Mariko’s lap. The black grips, Devpad and drilled out titanium column matched the matt black leg outers and chromed cloth outer tank top she had on. She stretched out her arms and flexed her muscles. I started to feel alarmed, hoping she wasn’t thinking about driving the Titan out of here.

  Mariko took hold of the steering grips and hit a button on the center Dev pad with her right thumb. The door slid shut with a quick hiss and metallic solid clunk. There was a slight whirring sound as Mariko adjusted her seat, going to a half recline with the steering grips still in her hands. Neither of us said anything — I wanted to see what she would do. She fiddled with the angle of her seat and then, appearing satisfied, reached up and pulled the rear and side view Devscreen down from the roof above her, the lobby behind us displayed in clear color and infrared. She took a last look at that and, reaching out with her left hand, tapped another button on the Devpad. She reached again and adjusted the black mic that coiled out of the roof above us like a dark snake about to strike.

  She said, “Systems check — go.”

  A Devscreen in the wide expanse of dark grey carbon fiber came to life and the liner’s systems rolled up in a slow reading scroll. Mariko thumbed the Dev a couple of times and the scroll speeded up. All the lights in the cockpit buttons blinked green three times and she said, “Go manual, autocol on,” and the Titan starting moving at a walking pace over the polished cement floor of the lobby. I thought about putting on the safety webbing but decided against it — she might not think that was funny, and at this speed I had nothing to worry about. We exited the Envplex and had to wait while the Travway cleared enough space for us to enter. The Travway radar came up on the Devscreen, replacing the systems check, and flashed green.

  Mariko twisted the grip with what was almost a snarl of her lips and the Titan leapt out of the on-ramp, thrusting me against my seat. She engaged the safety webbing for both of us as she accelerated through one hundred and forty kilos taking us within two mins to the causeway. She had to drop our speed as we came to the causeway with the evening trav just starting, but she swiftly pulled over to the exit lane and took the exit ramp that lead to the wharf and warehousing area along the strait. Steering through a curving right corner and then cutting speed down to a crawl, she eased the Titan into a storm drain outlet that sloped down to the strait in between two warehouses.

  I was sure the little Chinese girl from EasyRent didn’t have this route in mind. There was a fairly strong stream of water flowing in the storm drain as New Singapore sluiced out the afternoon’s rain, and Mariko edged the Titan down the ramp. A flashing red alarm button went off accompanied by a loud urgent repeated buzz. Mariko calmly reached over and hit the squawking button. The front end of the liner floated free on the water and she gave the throttle a quick twist, pushing the back end of the craft into the water.

  A schematic display on the center Dev showed the Titan’s fat six wheels retracting into its belly and laying flat, as the current swept us sideways. The left-side Dev showed images of the hydro planes extending and the Travway radar switched over to radar of the shipping and other craft that were traversing the strait. It was all big container ships with a few lighters and ferries scurrying about. The props fully extended and locked, Mariko twisted the throttle, and the nose of the Titan rose and then settled as she countered the sideways drift and then took us up in a series of smooth shudders on the small waves of the strait to hydroplane speed. The hull dragged itself up and clear of the sea beneath us.

  She turned the craft gently, powering up all the way through the turn in a wide, right-hand arc, cutting underneath the stern of a huge anchored seahauler. I glanced at the rear Devscreen set into the roof and saw hardly a ripple behind us. The rain had stopped, and through the cloud cover, a dark golden sun tipping into scarlet found the center of the rear view Devscreen as we headed east out of the strait at ninety kilos.

  I released myself from the safety webbing when our course straightened out and, steadying myself with a hand on Mariko’s seat, walked down the steps behind into the cabin below.

  I stepped over to the fridge and got out a couple of cold beers. I also checked to see that the food I’d ordered was in there and it looked like EasyRent had done their job well. Then I turned and went back up the stair to the cockpit, ships’ rusted sides gleaming gold with the sun at our backs as we flew down the strait. Mariko had both hands on the grips so I twisted the top off her beer and fitted it into the holder on the side of her Siteazy.

  She looked up with a smile and taking her left hand off the grip gave mine a squeeze. “Thanks for not asking,” she said. She picked up her beer with an elbow bent back to reach it, and raised the drink in salute. “Great choice — the Titan I mean — I hope you don’t mind me coming by sea.”

  “No, it’s a great idea, but I had no idea you knew how to handle one of these things. Where did you learn to handle a rig this size?”

  “There’s a lot you don’t know about me, Jonah. Let me get us out of here and tracking north up the coast in the open sea and then we’ll talk. OK?”

  I sat back down in my seat and swiveled to face her, kicking off my shoes. Curling my legs under me I rested an elbow on a knee, the Tiger beer dangling from my fingers swaying to the motion of the craft’s plunge through the darkening sea.

  “Sure,” I said and smiled softly at her, not understanding the look of sadness that haunted her green eyes. A cloud hastened the departure of the dying sun behind us as the craft pushed into the darkness in front and the lights of the Devscreen and the buttons in the Dev consoles illuminated the inside of the cockpit, casting everything in a green light.

  Mariko banked the craft left and the GPS showed our track as running NNE at about fifteen degrees. She said, “Go to Autopilot at eighty kilos.” The pitched whine coming from the engines behind us dro
pped a level as the craft seemed to raise its nose a fraction against a horizon now rapidly fading to black. She pushed the steering column out of her lap and her seat rose to a sitting upright position. Then she hit a button on the side of the Siteazy and her seat turned her to face me.

  Holding the bottle with two fingers and a thumb and tilting her head right back to force the flow to full, Mariko took a long pull of her beer, looking at me all the time. She stopped gulping, removed the bottle from her lips and exhaled forcefully.

  “I’ve wanted to tell you what I am going to tell you since the first time I woke up with you in your Env. It’s just that then I wasn’t sure if it was legal for me to tell you, and when, after I’d returned to my contribution I knew it was, then everything was so perfect that I couldn’t find a way to fit it in without spoiling that perfectness. This evening I’ve realized that there will never be a perfect time to tell you what I have to say, which makes the perfect time right now.”

  She put the beer back in its temporary home in the holder on the Siteazy, and reaching across, her arms fully extended, placed her hands on my leg. She looked at me from under her fringe, and took a deep breath.

  “I can’t live a lie, no matter how convenient it may be and no matter how beautiful the circumstances. I can’t do it, and right now I’m living a lie and I’ve got to put it right. Are you ready for this?”

  I was scared by the intensity of her words and my mind was reeling, tripping through possibilities of what she could have lied about. But I hid this and with an inscrutable expression, said, “Yes, I’m ready.”

  She breathed out heavily again and straightened up, looking me in the eye, withdrawing her hands from my leg and placing them on her own knees again.

  “I didn’t meet you on the Moon by accident. I was flown to Shackleton to meet you and ordered to engage with you. On the flight home, I knew you’d been given a concocted Truth Treatment and I questioned you under orders from Senior Agent Sharon Cochran. I am contributing in SOE as I have told you. The reason I was in such a bad mood this afternoon was that Cochran had just warned me before we met up that since you were no longer attached to UNPOL, I could not reveal any UNPOL specific information to you. I told her that from a legal standpoint I could, since at the time I was cleared from the task of questioning you and you were cleared of the Blue Notice, you and I were both UNPOL-related and therefore both had access to the information.