by Guy Salvidge
They could even call their hangout Heaven.
Here was his house and there was his file: PETERS, J: DIRECTOR OF SECURITY. He liked that title. It sounded more imposing than Director of Advertising. The initial stuff was pretty routine. School. Uni. Early days spent working for the Australian Government in Sydney. Poached by CIQ Sinocorp in ‘49. That year, ‘52, spent in China. Posted to Yellowcake Springs when it first opened in ‘57. Promoted in ‘58 and again in ‘59, and then transferred sideways in late ‘61. Not bad for a guy who hadn’t been born in China and barely spoke the language.
There was more, however. This was just the surface. He started digging.
Yang Po had a special file on him. It figured. There was a whole collection of stuff here that might as well be labelled ‘The Dirt,’ because that’s what it was. There was some footage of him drunk out of his skull at a strip club. He was trying to swipe his card across one of the stripper’s chests. Maybe it looked bad taken out of context, but it’d been a joke. Everyone had laughed, even the stripper. Wait a second, hadn’t Yang Po been there himself that night? He had. But no, that slimy fucker had edited himself out of the footage.
They knew about the booze and they knew about the affairs, too. Yang Po and his Security bureau hadn’t missed much. Jeremy was a little surprised to find links to the employee files of each of the underlings he’d slept with here. The files were even cross-referenced. Yang Po knew more about Jeremy’s philandering than he knew himself. But he’d just sat on it all this time. It seemed that drinking and fucking indiscriminately didn’t count against you the way he thought it might. It just made you one of the boys.
He scrolled through the list of his conquests and he felt a swell of pride. But one of the files looked different. There were a whole heap of Security tags affixed to it. Depositions from the employee and an interview with Yang Po! What was her name, that little brunette? Jasmine. Far out: she’d been a Security plant! She’d been transferred from Security to Advertising in May ‘59, and he’d slept with her in July through September of the same year. Yang Po had transferred her back into Security in October. Jeremy had been a fool, a ridiculous fool.
Hell, she was probably at work in the Eye right now.
He needed to delete all this, but something stayed his hand. The Grand Director surely knew about this stuff already. Now it was a test to see just how deceitful he was, and how stupid. The dossier would have to stay untouched. He was the Director of Security now anyway, so it wasn’t like anyone below Li could hold him to account.
Jeremy closed all the files and tried to clear his head. He sat down at the table in the virtual kitchen. It was a shock, but it wasn’t entirely unexpected. All that slinking around hadn’t fooled Yang Po one iota, and it certainly hadn’t fooled Hui. She must be sick to death of him by now.
She was usually in the house at this hour. She wasn’t down here in the kitchen, not that she’d be able to see his ghost form even if she was. Maybe she was upstairs. He could have a quick look.
He floated upwards through the ceiling and popped out in the spare room, next to the bed. He could hear noises coming from the master bedroom. Those kind of noises. He didn’t really want to look, but it was information, and he loved information. He looked.
There was his wife, naked, flat on her back, an Australian man half her age having his wicked way with her.
I will not get angry, he told himself. He forced himself to look away. He forced himself to leave the house without looking up the Australian’s employee file. It wouldn’t be fair. It wasn’t anything that Jeremy didn’t deserve. Hui had probably taken her lead from him anyway. He flew straight through the wall and into the simulated sky.
12. The Big Q
“Where’s all this money coming from, anyway?” Sylvia’s mother asked, sipping her coffee with milk and two sugars. It was early in the morning and for once Sylvia had somewhere to be. Normally her mother was long gone before she got up.
“It’s from the Government,” Sylvia said, not wanting to elaborate further. She felt nauseous from trying to eat so early in the morning. She pushed her plate aside.
“They paid you to go to prison?” her mother asked, collecting the plates.
“No, it’s a compensatory payment.”
Her mother looked up from behind the sink, where she furiously scrubbed the plates under the meagre trickle. “And there’s going to be more?” she asked.
“I hope so.” The truth was, Sylvia had no idea whether the hundred thousand dollars was a one-off payment or some kind of salary. Either way, she wanted to do something for her father before the money ran out. Yesterday’s visiting doctor, who’d insisted on upfront payment, had painted a grim picture of her father’s condition. A hospital stay was the only answer.
The traffic was bad, but then it was always bad. The Daihatsu threatened to give up once and for all on the short journey to the train station, but its engine continued to turn over. “What’s this meeting you’re going to again?” her mother asked, turning into the busy train station car park.
“It’s to integrate me back into normal society,” Sylvia lied.
“It might take more than one session to do that. Here’ll do?” The car had pulled up into a disabled parking space. Sylvia opened the door. “You can get the 364 bus from the station on the way back,” her mother said. “It goes right along Warrine Road.”
Sylvia got out. Rush hour. She swiped her Hub-Nexus card at the turnstile and entered the maelstrom of bodies. People bustled to and fro, jamming themselves down the geriatric escalators, plastic handrails worn almost to nothing, and onto the train platform. The line for the lift was just as bad, but there was a disabled access ramp at the far end of the station. Here the glass barrier was so grimy from decades of neglect that it was almost opaque. Moving to Yellowcake Springs had been a means of getting away from all of this. A northbound train rattled into the station but she had no chance of getting on that one. She descended the ramp and stood at the extreme far end of the platform, where the crowd was thinnest. Just as long as no one recognised her or said anything, she’d be all right.
Her mother had been too distracted to see through her lie about where Sylvia was going today: Misanthropos had made contact with her, just as Lyncoln Rose had said they would, and now she was on her way to meet them in the flesh. A rendezvous at a secret location, an illicit meeting with the organisation everyone wanted to know about. She was the bait and the fish was poised to bite.
Another train pulled in, power lines sparking overhead, and this time she had a better chance of getting on. The graffiti-covered train door was just a few metres away, but bodies were clogging the space between and hardly anyone got off here. She pushed forward, at the periphery of the throng, and just as it seemed that her efforts were in vain, she was on and the doors were sliding shut behind her.
No room to move and even less to look around. No need to keep her balance, as the crush of bodies held her tight. She had to get off at the next station, Whitfields, to allow those few who wanted to disembark here to do so. She fought her way back on, copping a stray elbow in the ribs for her trouble. It was just after eight and it seemed that everyone was going to the ‘Big Q’. These days, Perth’s northern satellite city was the place to be while most of the inner suburbs fell into terminal decline.
She turned around to look through the glass she was pressed against, but the train went into a tunnel and the outside turned black. Then she saw instead a harried, unhappy-looking woman crushed against unknown and unsympathetic bodies. The tunnel seemed endless and the train’s whine plaintive, but there was a portal of light ahead. The train pulled into Quindalup station and when the doors opened she was ejected by the force of people pushing from behind.
This was Quindalup, or as everyone had disparagingly called it in her uni days, the ‘Big Queue’. She hadn’t been here in years. The city teemed with life and it looked a shade gaudier and more affluent than she remembered it being. Business was boo
ming and she didn’t see a single beggar on her way to the cafe chosen for the meeting point. She remembered the way from the carefree days and drug-fuelled nights of her early adulthood. It seemed an eternity now, but she had only graduated in ‘49, twelve years ago. What dreams she’d had back then!
There it was, Bo’s Cafe, and it hadn’t changed much in the intervening years. Tucked away in a side street just behind the main promenade, it was the kind of place you’d easily miss unless you’d been there before, which was the way she liked it. They used to do a great coffee here and today she really needed one. Despite it being peak hour, there were a couple of free booths at the back and no one queuing at the counter.
“Skinny long macchiato please, topped up,” she said to the barista, a young man with jet black hair and numerous facial piercings. She handed over her card.
“You’re Sylvia Baron, aren’t you?” he said.
Her heart sank. “I am.”
“You’re among friends here, Ms Baron,” he said, handing her card back without charging her.
She sat down in an empty booth. She had no idea who her contact was and it wasn’t quite 09:00 yet, so she contented herself with the news on the 3V. It was something about CIQ Sinocorp wanting to expand its Protectorate, but she couldn’t get the gist of what was being said before the piece finished.
Her coffee came accompanied by a handwritten note scribbled on a scrap of paper. ‘Too much heat here today. Please come to the warehouse in Mercer Lane.’ This was followed by a small mud-map providing directions, but she knew the general area. It wasn’t far. She sipped her coffee and it was nearly as good as she remembered it being. It was 08:55.
The warehouse in question was an old building with a battered, silver rollerdoor as the only apparent means of entrance. It was in a quiet district. Banging on the door, she hoped for Misanthropos’ sake that this wasn’t their headquarters, or the game would already be up for them.
The rollerdoor opened and there stood a woman a little younger than herself, with black wavy hair and an olive complexion. “Sylvia, you made it,” the woman said, offering her hand. “I’m Tamara Jessup.”
“You’re the person I’m supposed to be meeting?”
“Just me today, yes. Come in.” Sylvia stepped through into a shabby office and Tamara closed the rollerdoor behind them. “Can I get you a drink?” Tamara asked, indicating for Sylvia to sit at an old desk.
“I’ve just had one. What is this place?” She sat down. The room smelled musty.
“Just an old warehouse,” Tamara said. “Don’t worry, there’s no one here.” She smiled intently.
“That’s good,” Sylvia said. “This whole thing is... messy.” She’d better not say any more, else she’d be in trouble with the AFP.
“I’ve heard about David’s sentence, of course. I’m sorry.”
“It’s nothing he didn’t deserve, although the other two should have received the same.”
“Deserve?” Tamara asked, raising her eyebrows.
“I mean he knew what the consequences would be,” Sylvia corrected. “He always knew the risks.”
“Of course. They say he might commit suicide before they can execute him.”
“I’m not sure he’ll go through with it.” David Baron: environmentalist, terrorist, suicidal martyr? She supposed it could happen.
Their conversation petered out.
“Look,” Sylvia said. “Why don’t you tell me what this is about?”
“All right,” Tamara said. “I’m just a concerned citizen worried about the way Sinocorp and companies like it are being allowed to buy up half the state and build nuclear reactors wherever they want. My friends share these concerns and we feel that you might be able to provide a unique perspective on this situation for us, given your past history.”
“These friends: do I get to meet them?”
Tamara clasped her hands together. “First we require certain security measures to be adhered to. We can’t be too careful.”
“That sounds like an excellent idea,” Sylvia said. “You never know who might be listening in.”
Tamara eyed her. “So, with your permission, I’d like to arrange another meeting to introduce you.”
“Fine. Let me know when.”
“Do you still use Controlled Dreaming State, Sylvia?”
“I don’t have a console anymore,” Sylvia said, “and I haven’t used CDS in years.”
Tamara frowned. “Maybe if I was to lend you a console?”
She was about to say something about not wanting to become addicted to CDS again when it occurred to her that the SCA monitoring her every action might not be able to follow her movements in CDS. Only your thoughts are your own, Lyncoln Rose had said, but she hadn’t said anything about dreams. “A meeting in CDS would be fine,” she said. “I can get a new console if lending me one’s going to be a hassle.”
“It’s no trouble,” Tamara said. “I can have one delivered immediately.”
“Shall I give you my address?”
Tamara laughed softly. “Sylvia, we know where you live...”
13. Lydia
They’d been holed up inside the Rusty Swan for two straight days now and Rion was starting to become impatient. It wasn’t until the third morning that he found an excuse to resume his search for Lydia. The three of them were slouching in the dining room, their feet up on the scratched wooden table, when the long-silent radio came to life. Their desultory card game having already been abandoned, Rion was the first to his feet. Marcel turned his ear toward the squawk and Vanya didn’t move a muscle.
“Come in, Outpost. Outpost, are you there?” the radio said. It was Turley.
Rion picked up the receiver. “We’re here, go ahead.”
“Rion, we’ve found something. I want you to check it out.”
He tried to speak clearly into the hissing receiver. “I’m listening.”
“I want you to go to the swimming pool on Mission Street and recon the site. I’m hearing reports of something there, and it isn’t water.”
“I thought you wanted us to stay put, sir?”
“That’s right, and now I’m asking you to take a walk. Is that going to be a problem?”
“What about the observers in the mill, sir? We don’t want a repeat of the other day.”
“Leave a man there and take the other along with you. I want a full report by 12:00. Is that understood?”
“Yes, sir. Can I ask what we’re looking for?”
“Bodies,” Turley said. “Now get to it.”
Rion put his cards on the table. “Okay, who’s coming for a walk?” he said.
“Did I hear right?” Marcel asked. “We’re looking for a grave site?”
“That’s what he said. You coming?”
Vanya snapped out of his reverie. “No, I am. Marcel can stay here this time.”
The big man shrugged. “Suits me right down to the ground. I might even try me a hand of solitaire. You scared those bad men might come back for you, Vanya boy?”
Vanya said nothing, but Rion knew that the earlier incident had shaken the young man. He’d been in a panicky state when Rion and Marcel had finally made it back to the Rusty Swan the other day. A group of people, presumably the local militia, had been banging at the gate and demanding to be let in. Vanya had since clammed up about it, but Rion got the sense that they’d taunted him almost to the point of breaking him down. The men had only taken off when they’d spotted shotgun-wielding Marcel and Rion in the distance. Luckily, no one knew about the rubber bullets yet and a direct confrontation was thus avoided.
“Come on, Vanya,” Rion said. “It shouldn’t be too hot out there yet.”
“I’m not worried about the heat,” Vanya said.
Marcel started gathering up the playing cards.
“You’re just going to sit there until we get back?” Rion asked him.
“Can you stop by the bottle-o and get me a six pack?” Marcel replied. “All this sitting around i
s making me thirsty.”
Rion slapped him on the shoulder and went into the kitchen after Vanya.
The young man was pacing around, shotgun in hand. “You ready?” he asked.
“Just calm down,” Rion said. “It’s all right to be scared. Even Marcel’s scared.”
Vanya nodded to the open doorway into the dining room, where Marcel was laying out a hand of solitaire. “He looks real scared.”
Rion picked up the other shotgun, checked that it was loaded, and walked out to the carport. “Just don’t shoot if you don’t have to. We don’t want to be giving away our trade secret.” They stood at the metal door and looked through the mesh. Seeing nothing untoward, Rion unbolted the door.
“You think your friend Lydia might be dead?” Vanya asked him.
“The thought had crossed my mind,” Rion said. He pushed open the stubborn door, which was impossible to do without it making an awful racket. “You might get a visitor,” he called back to Marcel. “Hurry up and lock the door.”
“In a minute.”
It was about ten in the morning but it was already getting hot. Nothing stirred in the windows of the mill across the riverbed.
“We can take the back way,” Rion said. He led the way along a gravel road and Vanya followed closely behind. There was no sound except for that of the cicadas. There was a cluster of abandoned houses here, and further along a half-empty housing estate filled with weeds and sand.
“Did you ever swim in the pool?” Vanya asked.
“Hell, no. The pool had already closed down when I was a kid.” There hadn’t been enough water in East Hills for more than the basics of hygiene, let alone recreation, and now even the basics had gone by the wayside.
“I always wanted to swim,” Vanya said.
The pool was just up ahead and they hadn’t seen sign of anyone. Rion crouched down in the shade of a gum tree in view of the entrance. “See anything?” Vanya asked.