The Second Cure

by Margaret Morgan

  She lurked outside the courthouse, having ascertained where he’d be coming out. She didn’t have her videodrone with her, but even if a formal interview wasn’t possible, some background on his charges would be useful. This was a great story, with international interest, and she wasn’t going to let anyone else in, given her familial advantage. She also wanted Shadrack’s take on why the judge had released him. It must have something to do with that note. Where had the judge gone? Who’d he gone to talk to? Presumably by now Judge Brown’s superiors, the Chief Justice, the Minister and even Effenberg would have heard about what transpired in Court Number Three of the Cairns District Court Complex and would not be well pleased. She doubted the judge would even have a job by the close of business today. He’d surely be dewigged and disbarred.

  A CSSA agent sidled up to her and lit a cigarette. He stared at her as he blew the smoke out of his nostrils. ‘So, what were you doing in there?’

  Brigid wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of moving away from his smoke. ‘My job. I’m a journalist.’

  ‘Oh, I know who you are. Just seems to me you were on the wrong side of the dock.’

  Once, she’d have shot back a response. No longer. She stood there, waiting it out. He smoked his cigarette, deep and languorous puffs to show her he was in no hurry. He didn’t take his eyes off her until he’d smoked it to the filter. He dropped it with precision between her feet and placed his boot there to grind it out. She felt pure revulsion at his proximity, his deliberate, intimate goading, but was damned if she’d let him see it. He smiled.

  ‘See you later, Brigy.’ He sauntered away and she breathed again. Soon after, Shadrack emerged beneath the portico, squinting in the harsh light, and Brigid made her move, shrugging off the thug and his lingering smoke.

  ‘Shadrack! Can I buy you a coffee?’

  He looked at her and then his gaze travelled to the street beyond. ‘Sorry, Brigid. Prior engagement.’

  She turned and saw a white van idling at the kerbside, its side door open.

  ‘Don’t you want your version of events on the record?’ she persisted.

  He hesitated. ‘Look, just a sec.’ He walked over to the van and the darkened front passenger window opened. ‘This is the journalist I told you about,’ she heard him say. ‘She’s good. She’s safe. She and I could talk on the way.’ She was excruciatingly aware of the cameras outside the courthouse recording it all, hoping it wasn’t also wired for sound. The driver responded with something Brigid couldn’t catch. Whatever was said to Shadrack must have been agreement because he directed her into the back of the van.

  ‘I’m afraid you’ll have to find your way back into town,’ he told her as they climbed into the two available seats. The rear of the van was filled with boxes of electronic equipment. ‘I think there are buses.’

  ‘Back from where? Where are we going?’

  ‘Summer holidays. We need your vocomm.’ When she hesitated, he added, ‘It’s standard, Brigid.’

  She removed it and passed it to the front of the van. The driver put it into a shiny, soft bag, presumably something that would stop signals in both directions. That could be handy, she thought, in these days of vocomms being hacked and controlled remotely. Nice technology, and it was even nicer that it meant they were going be saying things they wanted kept secret.

  ‘This is Turing. Turing, Brigid Bayliss.’ The driver of the van was shaven bald and it was hard to estimate his age. Twenties, thirties?

  ‘Turing?’ she mouthed to Shadrack. ‘Yeah, I know,’ he answered. ‘They get to choose their own undercover names. Turing’s a techie. We’ve also got a Magneto and a Loki, so, trust me, this is mild.’

  Undercover names. This was getting interesting.

  Turing had driven off into the traffic. The absence of windows in the back of the van meant Brigid had soon lost any sense of direction, but her attention was more focussed on Shadrack.

  ‘So if this is a “prior engagement”, does that mean you knew you’d get bail?’

  ‘No, I didn’t know, but the odds were good.’

  ‘It’s got something to do with that note the judge got, right?’

  Shadrack nodded. ‘Listen, Brigid, I’m going to trust you here. Seriously trust you. I’ve been wanting to talk to you, tell you what we’re doing. This wasn’t how I’d planned it –’

  ‘– You’re the red flower guy!’

  The pieces had just fallen into place for Brigid. The meeting with Deep Throat had been planned for the next day, but obviously events had got in the way. She looked forward to telling him he was a crap cryptographer … but he was looking at her blankly.

  ‘The red flower guy?’

  All the pieces fell apart again. ‘Okay, you’re not.’ She was more confused than ever. ‘Never mind, go on.’

  ‘The judge was a sleeper. We’ve got a few of them and they just wait till they hear from us. Then they act.’

  This was great. She’d heard rumours and here it was. She wanted to whoop. Instead, she asked coolly, ‘Who is “we”?’

  ‘The underground. The resistance. The people who are trying to overthrow the Effenberg government.’

  Brigid was reeling. Shadrack’s charge of sedition had seemed laughable, but there he was. The real deal.

  ‘That judge is going to be in deep shit,’ she said.

  ‘He’ll be across the border within hours.’

  ‘And you? What are you going to do about that?’ She gestured to his ankle.

  ‘Turing has skills beyond thinking up nerdy nicknames and driving responsibly.’

  That was sarcasm. Turing’s driving was terrible. He took corners too quickly, causing the boxes of electrical stuff in the back to slide about. She hoped it wasn’t valuable, but it looked like it was. She looked ahead through the windscreen to the road beyond. Soon they were out of the city, travelling through dense, low-lying scrub. It looked coastal.

  ‘So what’s in it for the judge? Throwing away his career to give you bail seems a bit extreme.’

  ‘I don’t know the specifics of this judge, but it varies. Most have had enough of the laws they’re enforcing and want to go out with a bang. They’re persuaded to wait till an appropriate bang comes along. And I, apparently, was Judge Ellis Brown’s. Some, of course, are less willing to cooperate, but they don’t dare risk us disclosing what we know.’

  ‘But blackmail is such an ugly word, right? This sounds pretty organised, Shadrack, this … underground. How many of you are there?’

  ‘No idea. We have cells, but beyond each cell we don’t know much about each other.’

  Turing turned off the narrow road into one even thinner, and a sandy, rocky surface replaced the bitumen. The van juddered, its suspension struggling. ‘We’re going to the beach?’ she asked.

  ‘Yep. Summer holiday, remember?’ He leant forwards to Turing. ‘Nearly there, are we, mate?’

  ‘Just around this bend.’ Turing took the corner, and Brigid could see the shining aqua of the Pacific ahead. They followed the track along the beach, finally pulling up at the edge of the sand near a rocky headland. Shadrack pulled open the side door. An old wooden jetty poked into the ocean, its weathered pilings thick with crustaceans. The tide was low. They’d parked next to another van, identical to Turing’s. It was empty, by the look of it.

  ‘Now what?’ asked Brigid.

  ‘Now Turing works his magic.’

  Turing had got out of the driver’s seat and was fossicking in the rear of the van. He returned to the side door with a box of electronics. He took out a mini-keyboard, a relay, a computer the size of a pack of playing cards, and an array of wires. He connected the various bits together, and attached a wire to Shadrack’s wrist with what looked like an electrocardiograph electrode. Shadrack had pulled up his trouser leg, revealing the ankle monitor. Brigid had never seen one up close before. It was a dull, grey, flattened ring, tight-fitting, and made from some robust but lightweight material. A green light flashed rhythmica
lly on its side. No, not rhythmically, she realised. It varied slightly, sometimes slowing, sometimes speeding up.

  Turing saw her staring at it. ‘It’s Shadrack’s pulse,’ he told her. ‘This thing’s full of sensors, taking readings of a range of his vital signs and sending them back to some CSSA station somewhere. That way, they get not only an indication of where he is at any moment, but also what he’s doing. Sleeping, jogging, having sex –’

  ‘– Not in front of the lady, Turing!’ Shadrack interrupted.

  ‘– Getting drunk, getting stoned, whatever,’ Turing continued.

  ‘And what are you doing?’ she asked.

  ‘Just a little hack. These things aren’t state of the art. Probably got it second-hand from some other regime. Lots of vulnerabilities. The newer models have voice monitors. If this one had, we’d be stuffed.’ He pointed to the electrode on Shadrack’s arm. ‘We’re getting a baseline on his output and we’ll convince the monitor that this,’ pointing to the computer, ‘is him.’ Brigid wasn’t really following but didn’t want to interrupt him with more questions. Turing was working quickly, entering numbers on the keyboard, checking the display. He reached back into the rear of the van and extracted something she did recognise. A drone, similar to hers.

  ‘Okay,’ he said to Shadrack. ‘I’m going to need your help here.’

  ‘Can I do something?’ asked Brigid, aware of the fact that if she did, she’d probably be breaking half a dozen laws. It had been a long time coming, and now it was here, Brigid felt a surge of profound relief. She wasn’t just a journo any more. She was a participant. She wasn’t going to turn back. She wasn’t alone.

  Turing looked briefly troubled. ‘Stakes are too high. Sorry, but I don’t really know you. Or your techie skills.’

  She decided not to be affronted, considering that Turing didn’t seem overly endowed with social graces. And it was true: he was right to be cautious.

  Turing held a wire coming from the computer with a small, sticky attachment on the end, and handed Shadrack the keyboard. ‘So, you’re going to release the locking mechanism by hitting the spacebar, right?’

  Shadrack nodded.

  ‘At the same time, I’ll attach the computer wire here.’ He indicated a spot near the flashing light. ‘The timing has to be right because the disrupt I’ve programmed to hide the transition is split second.’

  ‘He means, we screw it up and I’ll be contorted in agony, and the full force of the Capricornia Special Security Agency will land on us like a ton of very pointy bricks,’ Shadrack told Brigid.

  ‘Right. No pressure then,’ she replied.

  ‘On my count of three, got it? One … two … three.’ Turing pushed the pad against the side of the ring. Simultaneously, Shadrack hit the spacebar and the monitor clicked. The light pulse continued without a glitch, mimicking Shadrack’s own.

  ‘Want to do the honours, Shadrack?’ asked Turing.

  ‘With pleasure.’ He bent over and opened the monitor. The skin beneath carried its imprint and the place where its sensor needle had pierced the skin was inflamed. He handed the monitor to Turing, who proceeded to fasten it, along with its newly attached computer, to the base of the drone.

  ‘Oh, that’s clever,’ said Brigid.

  ‘Should do the trick,’ Turing replied. ‘At least until Shadrack’s well away.’

  Shadrack pointed to a small boat that had arrived at the jetty. Brigid hadn’t noticed its approach, having been focussed on what they’d been doing. ‘That’s my ride,’ he said.

  ‘Where will you go?’

  ‘Not-Capricornia,’ he answered. ‘That’s all I know at this point.’

  Turing carried the drone out onto the beach, his back bent over so the machine remained at ankle height. Brigid and Shadrack followed and watched as he fired it up. It had been programmed to mimic the movement of a lower leg walking, alternating momentary stillness with a forwards lifting and falling stride. He set it free and it floated above the sand, looking like a levitating foot with an invisible body, wandering along the beach. They watched it saunter away, finding it hard to believe it was merely a machine.

  ‘It’s going to go up to the top of that cliff,’ said Turing, indicating the headland at the end of the beach. ‘And then, as far as the CSSA knows, Shadrack will fall into the ocean, his body never to be found. They’ll assume suicide.’

  ‘But what if they find the drone and the computer? Won’t they work out what you’ve done?’

  ‘The wiring will disconnect when it hits the salt water and the computer will erase its memory. Even if they find all the components, they shouldn’t find anything to link them. And if they find the empty monitor? Well, lots of sharks here.’

  ‘How can you be sure we weren’t followed?’

  ‘The sensors didn’t pick up anyone following us, either by road or drone.’

  ‘Sensors?’

  ‘In the back of the van.’

  ‘Okay. But they could trace it. They’ll have got CCTV footage from the courthouse.’

  ‘They’ve got a white van with a numberplate.’ He walked her around to the other side of the vehicle, where Shadrack was swapping the registration plates with the second van. ‘This van is clean. Shadrack’ll put his fingerprints on the driver’s side, on the steering wheel. It’ll look like he dropped us off somewhere and came here on his own. When they come looking, they’ll find an abandoned van, near where the signal stopped. Suicide.’

  ‘You’ve thought this through.’ Brigid was impressed, but struggled to suppress her fears. The consequences, if they got caught …

  ‘Not the first time we’ve done it,’ shrugged Turing. ‘Different spots, of course. Different methods. No use being predictable. I can give you a lift back to the main road, to a bus stop, if you like.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Brigid.

  Shadrack had finished his fingerprinting on the steering wheel. It was time for farewells. Brigid still needed an answer, though. ‘So, why did you want me to see this?’ she asked him. ‘Why did you want me to know about the underground? You know I won’t be reporting on it. You need secrecy, not me blurting it out to the world.’

  ‘We might need you, Brigid. I have no idea how this is going to play out, if we’ll even succeed. But having you briefing us, keeping us informed about what you hear, might make a lot of difference. And, one day, the story will need to be told, whatever goes down. It’ll be yours to tell. You can bear witness.’

  She nodded and they shook hands. ‘Good luck, Shadrack.’

  ‘You too,’ he said, pulling her into a hug. ‘We’ll all need it.’

  She climbed into the passenger seat of the van next to Turing. The last she saw of Shadrack was on the deck of the boat. He raised his arm in farewell and disappeared below.

  Brigid and Turing waited until the boat had vanished around the headland, going south. He pointed to the top of the cliff.

  ‘Look,’ he told her. Just visible was the drone and its cargo. It was poised at the edge of the precipice and then lunged into empty air. Its flying mechanism switched off, and it plummeted into the churning white of the waves.

  ‘Shadrack’ was no more.

  Sydney

  Charlie messaged Brigid as soon as she’d heard the news reports. Shadrack had amazingly, miraculously, been granted bail. Her texts went unanswered, though, so that night she phoned. Brigid was unable to give any more detail than was in the news reports, however. Charlie thought her demeanour odd. Stilted and overly chirpy.

  ‘You must know something, though, Brigid? Where’s he staying, do you know? Is he okay?’

  ‘I really have no idea, Brigid.’

  ‘So the best I can do is just watch the news reports?’ Why was Brigid being so frustrating?

  ‘Yeah, I guess. But, you know, you can’t believe everything you see on the news. Am I right or am I right?’

  Just as they were about to end the call, Brigid asked, almost as an afterthought, ‘Oh, can you get Richard to send
me his recipe for boeuf bourguignon? I’ve been craving it lately.’

  A beat, then Charlie said that of course she would. It was a message, she knew, conveying something very different from a culinary request. But what?

  Although it was over a decade since he’d nearly destroyed a hundred thousand dollars’ worth of equipment in Shadrack’s lab, the echoes of that day remained. Richard had become more accepting of Shadrack’s existence and had even talked with him on occasion at social events, but his suspicion still lingered. Shadrack, for his part, tended to dryly patronise Richard in an oblique way that the latter only uncertainly perceived. Even though creativity was a research interest of Shadrack’s, he was not awed by the trait in others, no matter how successful they might be. All in all, Charlie found it wise to avoid the subject of her ex-husband.

  Richard was going through a Pakistani cooking phase and was serving up a fragrant chicken karahi. The kitchen was rich with the scents of ginger and coriander. Charlie told him about Brigid’s request of him.

  ‘Boeuf bourguignon?’ he asked. ‘She’s given up the lentils and kale?’

  ‘I thought it might mean something to you. Maybe a family joke, or something,’ Charlie said casually, collecting a forkful of chook and basmati rice.

  ‘Nope. So what, she just rang out of the blue and told you to tell me that?’