Inkers

by Alex Rudall

  Hardwick had checked with his most trusted lawyer in the vaguest possible terms. The lawyer had confirmed, in the vaguest possible terms, that there was nothing illegal or unethical about meeting with the boy on an informal basis, just as the note had suggested. The note had said the library at Walter Sisulu University. It had said six o'clock that evening. It had said to come alone. Hardwick was, as a rule, not used to going out of his office to meet investment opportunities, especially not students, particularly not outside working hours. Over a career of fifty years Hardwick had developed a profile as a savvy technology investor, willing to take on big risks and difficult, expensive projects. As a result, those looking for investment or expertise came to him, at his offices, during normal working hours, after successfully arranging an appointment. But Hardwick was interested and he knew his experience and skill should give him a major advantage in any negotiations. That was if he didn’t get jumped trying to get to the library.

  “Open up,” he said, and without sound the door slid up to let him out. He stepped out, said, ‘drive away if someone other than me comes near, but don’t go more than half a mile, and be ready to come back and get me as fast as possible if I call.”

  The big black car’s door slid shut without response.

  Hardwick crossed the car–park, umbrella in hand in case the rain started again. There was an expanse of grass ahead of him – he couldn’t see a path to the buildings, so he set off across the grass with a sigh. After a few steps he felt dampness start to set in around his ankles. A few steps later he half–fell into a dip, going down on one knee and a hand, pain shooting through his joints. He managed to stand again, swearing, sweating, breathing hard, and limped more carefully across the rest of the grass until he reached tarmac. There was a gap like a canyon between two of the high buildings, with a single streetlight picking out a vending machine, a closed door, a disabled access ramp. Out of the darkness a pair of female students trotted past, wearing hooded jackets and carrying backpacks, staring at him. Another tall, thin young man followed, walking slowly towards him, carrying a huge suitcase in one hand. He passed, watching Hardwick out of the side of his eyes.

  Once he was gone, Hardwick checked his watch —a green arrow pointed left up a ramp and into a large glass doorway, lit from the inside.

  “Hey, rich man. You lost?” The high–pitched voice came from close behind, and Hardwick turned to look. The thin man was standing quite close to him, carefully putting his suitcase down on the floor. The man took a step towards Hardwick. He was wearing a thick leather jacket. He had long fingers.

  “You lost?” he repeated. “You got implants, rich man?” He came closer, faster than Hardwick’s slow steps away, looking into Hardwick’s eyes for the glint of implant tech. He had black marks all over his face. “Got some implants in here?” The boy raised a finger and tapped his head.

  Hardwick tried not to flinch, shook his head. “No, no implants,” Hardwick said.

  This wasn’t true, but the emergency GPS and injury–survival implants were, the surgeons had assured him, completely undetectable until activated. This had the advantage that it did not appear to be profitable to street thugs to remove your eyeballs and brain. The man smiled widely but did not move away.

  “I just use a watch. Like yours,” Hardwick said, pointing at the man’s cheap watch. “I’m going to go in, now,” he said, backing towards the library. “I’m meeting some friends.” The man watched him go.

  Hardwick turned and climbed the ramp and pushed through the heavy glass doors, resisting the urge to look back over his shoulder. The air was warmer inside and smelled of cleaning chemicals. He was in an atrium decorated with posters of happy students, a few shelves for returned books, and a ten–foot high painting of Walter Sisulu. The floor was slick and polished. There was an empty desk with a sign above marked Reception in English and Afrikaans. Hardwick checked his watch again —the arrow pointed left at a small doorway; as he got close he could read the small bronze plaque next to the door, Stairs To Levels 1–4. Hardwick ascended the dark concrete stairwell, limping a little from the fall in the grass, still breathing quickly.

  He exited onto Level 1, hoping he wouldn’t have to search through all four levels, hoping Lwazi was there, hoping he wasn’t about to get attacked. The library was wide and dark, with shelving stretching everywhere stuffed with hardbacks bound in dull colours. In the centre of the shelves was an area filled with tables, and around several of the central tables was a small group of seven or eight black students, the only people in the library, talking softly. Several of them turned to look at him, and then they all did and their conversation stopped. Hardwick swallowed and crossed the floor towards them, weaving awkwardly between the tables, resisting the urge to straighten his tie.

  “Hi there,” he said, feeling incredibly old. “I’m looking for Lwazi.”

  One of the students stood up. He was quite short and muscular, wearing a t–shirt and jeans and thick–rimmed black glasses, the latter indicating either fashionable affectation or extreme poverty.

  “So, you’ve come,” the man said, his voice deeper than Hardwick had expected.

  “Lwazi?” Hardwick said. There was too much table and too many students to reach across to shake his hand. The man didn’t indicate agreement, but smiled at him a little, and nodded at a chair that one of the other students pushed out opposite him. Hardwick sat down carefully, setting his umbrella on the table like a gun.

  “Is it raining?” the man said, laughing suddenly, not sitting down yet. His friends laughed too.

  “No,” Hardwick said, forcing a laugh. “Just in case,” he said, lifting the umbrella up and putting it down again.

  Lwazi laughed again. Hardwick felt tense in his chest and legs. Lwazi sat down slowly.

  Hardwick realised these were perhaps the most challenging circumstances in which he had ever entered negotiations. He was alone, improperly dressed, slightly scared for his physical well–being, against a large group of friends with presumably similar aims, on their terms, on their territory.

  He cleared his throat. “My name is Mike Hardwick,” he said. “You sent me a message, I’ve come, I want to hear what you’ve got.” He cleared his throat again.

  “Ah,” Lwazi said. “But I don’t want to sell.” All his friends laughed. “I am afraid your journey was wasted. I have changed my mind.” His friends chuckled again.

  Hardwick frowned.

  “It was you who sent me the messages, yes? An email and then the hand–written note this morning?”

  Lwazi nodded, smiling.

  “That was a good way of getting my attention. Good marketing sense. Now listen,” Hardwick said, “I think you do want to sell. Can I talk openly?” Hardwick indicated the students sat around the table. Several of them were chewing gum.

  Lwazi nodded. “They are my friends,” he said.

  His friends stared at Hardwick.

  “OK. Good. OK. Let’s just assume you have actually built something. Now that’s very good, a very good achievement. But you should know —just because you’ve invented something, well maybe you know this already, but inventing something, it’s just, it’s not even half the battle.”

  Lwazi tilted his head to one side.

  “I don’t want to hurt your feelings, but I would honestly say, and I think most successful people would agree, that the invention is five percent of success. Just five percent. Maybe even less. Look at Coca–Cola. Their product is basically worthless in itself. At least now it doesn’t have actual cocaine in it. Their product isn’t what makes them rich – what makes them rich, the ninety–five percent, is the hard work of marketing and selling it. That’s the expensive part, that’s the part that needs hundreds or thousands of people working full–time for years and years, that’s the part that actually brings in the money which validates the whole enterprise.”

  Lwazi’s smile was gone. He appeared to be staring at a point on the table. The table was covered in tiny ball–point wr
iting and drawings. Hardwick tried to remember where he was going with this.

  “That’s where I can help you. That is what I do, what I’ve done my whole career. I invest in new technology, yes, I provide or find funding for it. But I also help to manage the businesses I invest in, help them succeed. And I’m very good at it. My results prove that. Most of my projects do succeed, make money for everyone. I think you know that, that’s why you invited me here. So if it does work, that’s what I can do, I can help you actually make some money from it. So I’m here. So I want to hear what you have got to say.”

  There was an extended pause. One of Lwazi’s friends coughed into his hand, away from the group, a hacking cough.

  “I do not want to work with you,” Lwazi said. “We have been reading about some of the things you have done in your career. The net you have paid to be cleaned up, but you cannot do that on the darknet.”

  “What you’ve read on the darknet?” Hardwick said. “What have you read?”

  “Yes. You buy people’s work for very cheap and sell it very high. You leave people out in the dirt. You would do that to us. So I will not work with you.”

  “That,” Hardwick said, “Is wrong. I am always honest and fair with people. Always, I have been my whole career, for fifty years, before you were born I was working, maybe when your parents were young or not even born I started working. I always tell people exactly what they’re getting into and what they’ll get out of it. Now listen, I couldn’t have been as successful as I have been if I wasn’t fair and honest. It just wouldn’t have worked. When people have lost out it’s because of their own dishonesty, sometimes people have tried to take without working, without contributing, or tried to go to my competitors and get more money – and that’s fine, that’s business. But if they try to do that I won’t help them any more. I’ll use what power I have to get rid of them. That’s business too. Those are the people who write the bad reviews. But I have made a lot of people very rich. You should know that too.”

  Despite his fear, Hardwick felt a little righteous anger within him. “If you listen to the sort of people who leave reviews of their colleagues on the darknet – well you deserve to be deceived. Do you have a patent?” Hardwick said.

  Lwazi said, more firmly, “I do not want to work with you. We do not want to work with you.”

  “Without the patent you’ve got nothing, nothing at all. Is there even really a prototype?” Hardwick said. “If there isn’t, you’ve got nothing anyway, I’ll happily leave right now, if you don’t have a prototype.”

  “There is a prototype, I wrote it in the email that you ignored,” Lwazi said. “You will leave anyway. This invention, this technology, is to help my community. It’s not to help white people. White people have enough, they’ve taken enough from us already. I want this to help my community, my friends, my home. Not you. You will use us and take from us. Your words are just empty. You only care about money.”

  “No,” Hardwick said. “You and your friends will screw yourselves over. You will. However smart you are, without experience, without investment, without the advice and protection that I could offer, you will lose your invention almost straight away. The government will take it, or other businesses will just steal it and copy it, people less honest than me – and there are many. Many of them in this country. The Chinese will copy it anyway, and you won’t know how to deal with that. No, you will screw yourself over. I want to see the prototype in action right now.”

  “Mr. Hardwick, you are starting to upset me,” Lwazi said. “I want you to leave now. We have been polite, I am sorry you have wasted your time, but it is time for you to go now.”

  “Do you know start–up survival rates? Especially ones started at university, especially those started by, excuse me, poor blacks? The business side is the hard part, the expensive part. That’s what amateurs just don’t understand, at all.”

  “Mr. Hardwick, my friends are getting very tired of you.”

  Hardwick glanced up at them. Some of them did look annoyed. Last chance.

  “The reason I came,” Hardwick said, “To this middle–of–nowhere meeting, at night, is that I have heard of a technology that can do this. The Chinese have it. It will be released very soon. And then your technology will be worthless, and your community will get nothing for your work. You will get nothing. So your only chance, and my only chance to make money here, is to act very quickly. To release first. Your only chance is to go in with me.”

  “And you say you are honest?” Lwazi said, rising to his feet. “You are not honest. That is a lie. You must leave, right now, now, now.” His friends rose too. Hardwick stood up, picking up his umbrella.

  “You’ve got nothing,” he said, but Lwazi was ignoring him, looking at his own large, cheap–looking watch, blinking through his glasses. Hardwick shook his head and turned away.

  He had crossed halfway to the stairwell when Lwazi called out behind him.

  “Hardwick,” he said. Hardwick looked back.

  “Your pocket, eh?” Lwazi said, face serious, patting his own left pocket. “You have ink in your pocket. It works, you know? And you cannot have it.”

  Hardwick flushed, blinked and walked away from the most valuable business opportunity of his life.

  Lily

  Lily crept down the corridor, heart beating hard. They were all in the ink barn, but there was always the possibility of someone coming back to the house. She pushed open the door to Brian and Annie’s bedroom. It was stuffy inside. The curtains were still closed. She crossed over to Annie’s side of the bed, the little bedside table covered in hairclips and textbooks. She opened the drawer and rifled through, bits of electronics, a manual on bovine breeding, a tube of moisturiser. Nothing.

  Voices in the courtyard. She turned and ran across to the wardrobe and pulled open the top drawer – underwear – the second drawer down – more clothes – the bottom drawer. More clothes, but on the left a plastic box. She prised off the lid. Inside were boxes of painkillers, anti–histamines, a tube of suncream – and a single cardboard box labelled surething. She grabbed it, pressed the lid back on the plastic box, closed the drawer with a bang that made her flinch, and crept out of the bedroom, closing the door softly behind her, shoving the pregnancy test in the pocket of her jeans.

  She went downstairs, retrieved her backpack from the shelf and took the back door out of the farmhouse, Brian’s voice still echoing in the courtyard. She left through the small front gate and was halfway across the grass when she heard a shout behind her. She turned. It was Tom, waving at her. He ran down to her.

  “Hey, wait up a second,” he said. “I’ve got something for you. I got it in Glasgow last week but I forgot all about it – look.” He held out a watch. It was like the ones she’d seen people wear on VR movies, but bulkier – a black strap with a dark screen running all the way round the wrist.

  “It’s a darknet watch,” he said. “I got it pretty cheap off this guy I was selling the ink to. You won’t be able to pick anything up out here, but it’s got a bunch of stuff on it, lots of encyclopaedias and stuff. Very illegal. Don’t tell the cops,” he said, grinning.

  She took it gently. “Thanks,” she said, blushing from the thought of the pregnancy test in her pocket and blushing more at the thought of blushing.

  “Just tap it to turn it on.” He tapped the screen and it glowed orange. A message appeared —No Signal. He tapped again and the little screen went black again. She pressed the watch carefully onto her wrist and felt it gently tighten to fit her.

  “Ignore the “No Signal” bit,” he said. “Just ask it to look things up for you and it will, it’s got lots in its memory. It can take photos and stuff too. Ask me if you get stuck. See you for some food later, OK?”

  “Sure,” she said. “Thanks.”

  “No worries,” he grinned, ruffling her hair. She grinned back.

  He went back to the farmhouse and she ascended into the woods without looking back, bearing left this time,
heading for a secluded place. As soon as she was sure she was too far for anyone to find her, she sat down on the trunk of a fallen tree and pulled out the pregnancy test. She opened it and pulled the thin black tube out. She shook it a little.

  A green arrow appeared on the side of the stick. It spoke with a female voice, making her jump – “To test for pregnancy, at least one week must have passed since conception. Press the end of the device with firm pressure against any point on the arm and hold for ten seconds. You may feel a slight pinprick.”

  Her heart pounded. She pressed the tube against the inside of her lower arm and counted slowly. She felt nothing. She counted all the way to fifteen and then pulled it away. The tube lit up. “You are pregnant, with ninety–eight percent certainty,” the voice said happily. “You are pregnant,” it repeated. “This pregnancy test cannot be reused. Please recycle responsibly.”

  Lily shoved the test into her pocket, grabbed her bag and ran up the hill, jumping over roots, scrambling through the leaves and pulling herself up past tree trunks. The ground was wet in places but she ignored it, her boots keeping the worst out. She ran and climbed until she was gasping for air and her legs were screaming for her to stop. Finally she slumped down onto the ground, sitting looking out through the trees. She was about half way up the hill that dominated the centre of the island. Everything was lit by a thin winter sunshine. Across the bay she could see a few houses, lights on inside. A sailing boat with a tall mast was moored just offshore.

  Visitors passing through.

  She was pregnant.

  Four years ago, when she arrived, they had told her clearly that she could not leave. She had stowed away in the back of Tom’s van, a stupid plan to get her next hit. He had found her when he arrived at the jetty on the mainland, and taken her over to the island, not knowing what to do with her, unwilling to leave a thirteen–year old girl alone in a strange place. Brian had shouted at him for hours. She had heard it from in the kitchen while Annie fed her hot chocolate. She had seen too much; if she left she would speak of the place where the ink came from, and ITSA would come and destroy everything, probably kill them all. So she had to stay, until she was old enough to keep her mouth shut, if such a time ever came. At first she hadn’t minded. Brian gave her all the ink she wanted, Annie all the food, and the island was very safe. The nightly dream of the sealed room continued, but she had had that every time she slept inside since her parents were taken. Sometimes she had watched the low black Royal Navy battleships slink past along the Firth of Clyde and fantasised about escape. Until recently she had mostly been content.