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by Simon Royle

  And that’s what puzzled her. If she could find this evidence after so many years had passed, why hadn’t Sir Thomas when he’d investigated at the time? Marty thought that Mariah, with the two children, had been smart. She’d avoided the major EVTour stations, and walked for a long time and a long way. Reaching Coolangatta, Marty presumed, by walking most of the way along the beach, fifty-five kiloms north of Byron Bay, the EVTour then took her as far as Andergrove about one thousand kiloms farther north. Again she’d been smart, but Marty did what she always did and asked herself the question: If I was Mariah, what would I do? If I was a mother, scared for the life of my children, running from someone who had killed my husband, what would I do?

  She tried to put herself into Mariah’s mind, a scared woman with a young boy and a newborn. Long EVTour rides give the chance to rest and hide and I can buy food along the way. I have to feed the boy, Gabriel, and myself for the baby and to stay strong. I have to stay out of sight and use cred chips. Not my Devstick. And I have to get as far away as possible, quickly.

  Thinking as Mariah, Marty closed her eyes and felt herself slip into the role of the woman running scared from the murderer. Two choices. Head for the most populated part of the Australian Geographic or the least — the Northern Territories. Go for least cameras. I need to start thinking about how to get out of the Australian Geographic without going through a security zone. Cape York, the northern-most point on the continent and close to the Geographic of Papua New Guinea. No, there’s nothing and no one there. I’d stand out too much.

  Darwin, sitting between the PNG and the East Timor Geographics is a better choice. And I am a smart woman. I’m tired. I’m stressed. I reach my destination. I’m in Darwin. What do I do? It’s 9:30am on the 18th of October 2075. I'm hot and tired and want to get off the street as fast as possible. The first thing is to walk. Two hundred and fifty meters from where I had disembarked from the EVTour is the Travelodge Mirambeena Vacenv.

  It had taken three hours and an UNPOL Blue Notice to get the Vacenv to cooperate in releasing details of staff who had contributed back then, but they had located one who still lived in Darwin. An aboriginal desk clerk by the name of Billy Boy Malangi. He’d agreed to talk with Marty and said he would pick her up at the Mirambeena at 7:30. She’d drunk too much coffee and was about to head back to the Darwin Lev port, when a battered ancient vehicle rolled to a stop opposite the window of the Vacenv’s lobby where she had been waiting. A man stepped out of the vehicle wearing a checked shirt and jeans. His hair and beard were long and totally white, and he held a bushman’s hat in his hand. He took a long look at the entrance of the Vacenv and then walked up the stairs and into the lobby.

  Marty rose and intercepted the man before he reached the Dev on the check-in counter.

  “Mr. Malangi,” she said, walking over to him. An EVTour pulled up with a loud hiss of its brakes just outside and the door opened.

  The man’s face broke into a huge smile as he saw her.

  “Yeah, that’s me. UNPOL makes ‘em good looking dese days. If I’d known you were a looker I’d a come sooner.”

  The automatic doors of the lobby opened and a stream of people barged in, milling around them.

  “Come on, Missy, Billy Boy’ll take you for a ride.” Saying this with a wave of his hand, Billy turned around, skirting the edge of the tour group, and went out through the lobby doors. Marty followed and climbed into Billy’s ancient vehicle.

  “Is this thing safe?”

  “Hey now, Missy, be nice to Matilda. She’s a sensitive old girl,” Billy said as he pressed a red button on the dashboard between them. The vehicle’s starter motor kicked over and over before finally the engine coughed. Marty had never heard anything like it before and was sure the vehicle wouldn’t pass environmental inspection. Billy drove out of the forecourt of the Vacenv and onto Cavenagh street.

  “What does this thing run on?”

  “Bit of everything really. Right now, she’s running on coconut oil,” he said this with a smile, and Marty wasn’t sure if he was pulling her leg or telling the truth. She decided she didn’t want to know.

  “So, Billy, do you mind if I ask you a few questions about the woman and the boy?”

  “Not now, OK. I don’ like it to talk and drive.”

  Marty nodded, telling herself to be patient and go with the flow. She sat quietly looking out of the window as they drove out of Darwin heading east. Reaching the Arnhem Travway, Billy guided them on to the inside slow lane, and their speed rose as he connected to the maglev track. About half an hour later, Billy pulled off the main Travway and on to a normal tarmac road. They headed north until he turned right, this time onto a dusty track that made Marty close the window she’d opened. About five kiloms down the track, Billy pulled to a stop in front of a small white house, its windows dark in the night. Marty looked at the time on her Devstick, noticing that out here she was offline. 8:10pm. It had been a long day in a string of long days and it wasn’t over yet.

  She followed Billy through the iron meshed gate that he unlocked with a key from his chain, and walked up to a porch. “Hang on a mo’ I’ll get some light on,” Billy said, and he disappeared into the house.

  Solar lamps lit up the porch then Billy came out of the house with a bottle of red wine in an ice bucket and two glasses in his hands. He put the ice bucket on a small table set between two rocking chairs made from the branches of dead trees, and indicated that Marty should take a seat.

  Marty sat down and Billy, twisting the top off the wine bottle, poured them each a glass. Putting the wine bottle back into the ice bucket, he picked up her glass and gave it to her.

  “Thank you.”

  “No worries, Missy,” said Billy, taking the seat next to hers. He offered his glass to hers in a toast.

  “Now we can talk like civilized humans, eh?” He smiled at her.

  She took a sip of the wine. “Mmm, this is delicious. By the way, please call me Marty or Martine if you prefer.”

  “Glad you like it, Marty. Mob down south sends ‘em up for us. We send ‘em de bark paintings, and the yirdaki.”

  “What’s a yirdaki?”

  “You fellas call it a didgeridoo. We call it a yirdaki. Born here it was, Arn’em. Anyways we trade ‘em for the wine. Dead euca for live grape — good business eh?”

  “Very good,” Marty said, taking another sip of the delicious wine. “So what can you tell me about the woman and the boy?”

  “Damn sorry business dat. I did not see nothing.”

  “That means you saw something right?”

  “Yeah, I works dere maybe for a week or two dat time. Come down from me camp to Darwin and fella at Mirambeena give me a go. Do de desk, Billy, and I done it. And dat Chinaman and Balanda coming next day, tell me dey’s check out and pays de cred.”

  “Sorry, Billy what’s a Balanda?”

  “You, youse is a Balanda, a white man or woman.”

  “Right, OK. So what happened? The woman checked in with the boy and the baby. How long was she there? Did you talk to her?”

  “Just to say g’day, you know, how you do? Dey was dere bout three day. The next night, the fourth night, dey was gone. I was on early morning shift, three to eleven you know, and fellas come to me at five. I was sleepin’. Nothing going on about. And then fellas wake me. Say dey come to take the woman and de babe home. Pays the cred and up and left. By ‘n by I checks the room and that me make think strange.”

  “What was strange?”

  “Room clean as a whistle. Nothing dere. Only cover on de duct off see, lying on de floor.”

  “But you didn’t see the woman or the boy leave?”

  “Nah, just de babe. Fella was carrying im in ‘is arms, when ‘e cred the room. Cute little fella, de babe I mean.”

  Marty took a long sip of her wine and looked out into the warm dark night. What Billy had told her was significant. To her it meant that the baby was taken alive and could still be alive. Whoever had the baby or h
ad brought him up, could lead back to the people who had killed Philip Zumar and his wife Mariah. Mariah had hidden Gabriel in the air conditioning duct and he had crawled out of it after whoever came for them had left. Otherwise they’d have replaced the cover on the duct. She’d saved her children at the expense of her own life. A tear rolled down Marty’s cheek. She let it roll. For Mariah, she thought.

  “Would you be willing to sign a statement about what you’ve told me and if required repeat what you have told me in a court?”

  “Yeah, no worries, Marty. Never like bad business. Making wrong right is OK by Billy.”

  Martine sniffed and with an embarrassed glance at Billy, smiled. She wasn’t pissed off anymore. She and Billy rocked on in silence.

  The Lev ride up the Australasia Vactube took forty-five minutes to go from Darwin to Changi Lev port. Darwin time being three hours ahead of Asian Time, Marty had left Darwin at 10:35pm and with the Friday traffic delays in getting a Lev, had arrived back in New Singapore at 8:05pm. Tired, and with the strange feeling of having gone back in time, which traveling on the high speed Vactubes always left her with, Marty was glad to arrive back in front of her Env.

  She glanced at the time on the Dev by her Env door. 8:20pm, Friday the 3rd of January 2110. The Dev scanned her eye and she went in, walking across the running track and swiftly to her cabin. What she needed badly now was a clean and a good long sleep. She entered her room, and the hairs on her neck rose and she froze. Something was off.

  She went into a crouch, reaching into her canvas backpack side pocket. With her left hand she pulled out the black market fight gloves that she’d bought in Pattaya. Still crouching, she turned a full three hundred and sixty degrees and saw nothing out of the ordinary in the room. But something had set her on edge. Her heart was thumping in her chest. She controlled it, forcing a steadiness into her veins. She put the fight gloves on and turned them on, the sleeve of mesh running up and around her arm to her shoulder. The mesh from fingertip to shoulder couldn’t be cut and its power lent a deadly speed and force to any blow commanded by tapping her fingers in their glove tips.

  Still in a crouch she silently stole to the light control Dev in the room. In the bottom drawer of the stand it was on, was a night vision helmet. She took that out and put it on. The oiled drawer slid back in its place without a sound. She reached up and killed the master switch, counting to two with her eyes shut, she opened them to see the fully lit room through the visor of the helmet. She silently walked to the shower room and reaching out with her hand pushed a button set into the granite wall of the shower cubicle. The meter wide shower head descended into the cubicle stopping ten cents from the floor.

  Marty climbed onto the shower head, hooking a long lithe leg around the steel pole in the rear of the shower head and rising three meters above her. She pressed a green button set into the top of the shower head and it started to swiftly rise. The noise of the wires running on the rollers to the counterweights was all that could be heard in the warehouse. She came to a stop in the center of the ceiling, nestled among the steel ceiling beams that held the roof of the warehouse.

  She looked over the warehouse from her perch high in the rafters. There was nothing out of the ordinary. There was no one here. Lowering herself to the ground, she took the helmet off and said loudly, “Lights.” She rolled her shoulders, shaking the adrenalin out of her limbs. Lifting her arms and beginning a springy, bouncy walk, she walked out of the door of her cabin and across to her fight bag. Before she reached it she tapped out a sequence with her fingers in the fight gloves and without halting her stride her fists lashed out, two lightening fast jabs from her left, two fast solid punches from her right and then she went in with the elbow. The bag swung violently on its hook. The warehouse echoed with the sound of its chain rattling. She stood back from the bag and taking a deep breath shut her eyes and turned off the gloves. The mesh uncoiled itself from around her arm and she shook the gloves off holding them in her hand as she went back into the cabin.

  She walked over to her Sleeper and looked at the table beside it. The Devstick that she used to call Mother was gone.

  Chapter 27

  Perfect Timing

  UNPOL Executive Club, Topside, New Singapore

  Friday 3 January 2110, 8:28pm +8 UTC

  Assistant Director Cochran and Director Flederson walked out of the Lev together onto the red carpet that had been laid specially for them. The traditional New Year Board of Governors Dinner at the UNPOL Executive Club on Topside was made special by their inauguration. Flederson was wearing the full dress uniform of an UNPOL Director with its single gold star denoting the highest rank achievable by an UNPOL officer. On his hands, white gloves contrasted with the dark blue of the rest of his uniform. Cochran, walking slightly behind him, was dressed similarly — the difference only in the silver star on her cap and epaulettes.

  Reaching the entrance, the Devstick in Cochran’s hand lit up. Looking at it she said to Flederson, “Director, I must take this. Please go ahead. I’ll be there in just a moment.”

  Flederson smiled at her and said, “Don’t be too long, Sharon, the Board of Governors is not known for patience.” He turned, tugged at the bottom of his jacket to straighten it, straightened his back, stuck his chin out and walked into the club.

  Cochran smiled into the Devstick saying, “Yes it’s happening now — I’m sorry, I’ve really got to go. The Governors are waiting for me.” She turned with the Devstick at her ear and looked at the entrance to the club. The guard by the door stood at full attention, practically quivering with tension waiting for her.

  “A few hours, but I should be home before midnight. Yes, me too, bye. I’ll call you when I’m finished.” She looked at the time, 8:30pm, and folded the Devstick to its smallest. She put it into the pocket of her bottom outers. Like Flederson, she straightened her jacket, both hands tugging sharply down, and in the same motion strode forward. She walked through the tall dark mahogany doors and saw the single large round table where the Governors and Flederson, with his back to her, sat waiting.

  The next thing she knew she was lying face down on the granite floor with a loud ringing coming from one ear, blood dropping onto the floor near her eye. She twitched her arms and legs to check if she was all there. She couldn’t hear anything. She reached up and touched her forehead with her hand. It stung and when she looked at it the blood spread in the white material of the gloves. She became aware that a pair of boots was in her line of vision and looked up into the face of the guard she had passed moments ago.

  He was shouting but all she could see was his mouth moving. He pulled her by the arm and she stumbled up into a crouch as he led her back out of the entrance and sat her on the red carpet, her legs splayed out in front of her. She saw that her bottom outers had been blown off and her legs were naked. The guard left her and ran back into the Club. Sitting on the carpet she wanted to lie down, but resisted the temptation and pulled her legs up under her so that she was kneeling on the carpet. The blood dripped from her forehead as she slumped forward and she still couldn’t hear anything. She knew that a bomb had gone off.

  Out of the corner of her eye she saw the Lev door open and a full team of SOE come out running. The glare of the light above the door hurt her eyes. Two of the SOE team ran to her and crouched down. The rest went running by into the club. The SOE officer was saying something but still she couldn’t hear anything. Watching their lips, she understood what they were asking and, rather than attempting to speak, she took out her Devstick. She quickly unfolded it to be a Devscreen with a keyboard then she typed, ‘I am all right. See to the others inside. Please hurry’.

  The SOE team member nearest her took out a bandage from a pouch on their belt and pressed it against Cochran’s forehead, wrapping the bandage around. Looking into the helmeted mask that the SOE officer wore, she saw with a shock that it was Mariko. Mariko’s eyes smiled at her through the visor of the helmet as she reached into another pouch, pulled out a
regen bag and gently placed it over Cochran’s head. Supporting her back, Mariko then pushed Cochran's chest softly, laying her down on the carpet.

  Cochran let herself go and laid down, keeping her eyes wide open and fixed on the entrance to the club. The Lev door opened again and a team of regular UNPOL officers ran to the Topside railing. Taking out a crime scene tape, they taped it to the top of the railing and ran backwards towards the club. Medical teams rushed past her, a stamp of feet that she felt rather than heard. Carrying foldable wheeled stretchers on their backs, they disappeared into the club. Two of the medicals stopped and knelt down beside her. One unslung the folded stretcher and turned on the Dev attached to it. The stretcher quickly unfolded and slid itself under her, thin straps closed around her to hold her firmly against the stretcher. Suddenly she was rising and reaching the waist height of the medicals. She twisted her head on the stretcher, watching the door space to the club, but nothing came out. Cochran closed her eyes as the two med staff rushed her into the Lev.

  Sir Thomas sat in a lounge chair on the balcony of his penthouse holding a scope to his eyes. He pressed zoom and the Dev in the scope focused in so that he could see the threads in the bandage on Cochran’s head. He felt the Devstick in his inside breast pocket vibrate, but held the zoom on Cochran’s face as she lay on the carpet, until the clearfilm edge of the stretcher blocked his view and he set the binoculars onto the low teak table beside him. He took out the vibrating Devstick.

  “Yes?”

  “Sir, there has been an explosion at the UNPOL Executive Club.”

  “Casualties?”

  “Five dead, two wounded. One of those wounded is in a life threatening condition and the other has minor injuries. Sir, it was the — ”

  “I know. The Governors’ dinner. Who are the dead?”

  “The Governors, sir. Director Flederson is seriously wounded but the med staff say he may make it. It depends on the brain damage, sir.”