Tag

by Simon Royle

  “I think she knew that they would find her, because she unscrewed the cover off the air-conditioning duct and taught me how to crawl inside backwards. She would then hand me you and I would pull the cover into place after us. She made me practice it a few times to be sure I could do it quickly and quietly, and on the fourth night we were there, a knock came at the door.”

  I am not a particularly tearful person, but I had to wipe the tears off my face. The understanding of what would come next was too sad to bear. I blinked to clear the tears from my eyes as Gabriel continued.

  “I quickly climbed into the duct holding, the cover in one hand, getting ready to take you in with me as we’d practised. But you were crying, and Mariah shook her head at me. I pulled the cover tight hiding myself from sight. Mariah went to the door but before she could open it the door handle flew inwards with a great force, hitting her in the stomach. She fell to her knees and it was all I could do to restrain myself with her last order in my ear. Don’t move, no matter what, she had said. The door opened and a man I know now as Sir Thomas came into the room. They argued and he tried to pull her arm towards the door. She struck at him and suddenly he pulled a long blade from within his outers. I saw it flash on the light from the outside of the door and then he struck upwards with it driving it into her stomach. He held it in her and twisted it; watching from my hide I stared in horror as she died there on the floor of that motel. Sir Thomas leaned down and wiped the blade on her before he rose and walked slowly out of the room. A short while later, three men entered the room; putting her in a body bag and taking you with them, they left.

  “I stayed in the hide for another hour and then I left. There was nothing in the room or on me to indicate who I was or what life I had led up to that point. I was alone. I left at night without being seen. By lunch the next day I had reached the outskirts of Darwin and just kept walking. I walked through the day and the night, into the country. The next morning a group of aborigines found me sleeping beside a tree. They talked to me but I didn’t say anything. I didn’t talk to anyone for another five years.”

  Gabriel looked at the Devstick, and standing said, “We will have to continue this discussion another time. We really should begin your training to defend yourself against a mind probe now.”

  I nodded and stood too, looking at him. He was slightly taller than me and his hair was graying at the temples. I walked over to him and we embraced. I hugged him harder and tighter than anyone I had ever hugged. I felt the loneliness of those years that he had been on the run, as I too had been lonely — shunted from one childcare institute to the next throughout my childhood.

  It made sense to me now, that part of my life. I had wondered why there had been that coldness. It had always seemed as if Sir Thomas could not bear to be around me and now I understood why. He wasn’t my uncle. He was the murderer of both my mother and father.

  Gabriel pulled a chair from the table and sat down. I sat down in the Siteazy again and waited for him to begin hypnotizing me. I took a long look at him and he smiled. Once hypnotized he was going to remove all my memories related to our conservations in the White Room and this chat on the Moon. After this he would become the runner again and I wanted to savor my last memory of him as my brother.

  Chapter 15

  In Hot Water

  Nineveh Hot Spring Resort, Shackleton Moonbase, The Moon

  Friday, 13 December 2109 7:35am

  I woke up with a foul taste in my mouth, regretting my impetuous decision to come to the Moon. I could have been swimming in a beautiful tropical sea. Instead I was in a third rate VacEnv with uncomfortable sleepers, at least the one I slept in was, and my back hurt.

  I stumbled out of the sleeper and read the suggestion on the Devscreen beside the sleeper. The hot springs seemed like a good idea to clear the stuffed nasal passages and ease my sore back, so putting on a pair of inners, I walked barefoot down through the carved rock tunnels outside of the room until I came to the hot spring. The corridors from the rooms were laid out like spokes on a wheel, with the hot spring as the hub.

  Lying down in the pool letting the low gravity float my body on the water, I laid my head back on the rock edge.

  Crazy, I thought. Jonah James Oliver, you are completely crazy. You deserve to be recycled for this idiocy. Thinking that a word a runner has said in an interview is a clue as to his whereabouts and somehow you are going to track him down? What were you thinking? It’s OK, I just won’t tell anyone exactly where I’ve been. I’ll tell them I just came to the Moon because I wanted to see what it was like to be in zero gravity. That’s it.

  Directly opposite the space that I was lying in, a woman emerged from one of the spokes. She laid a towel down beside the spring and, sitting down on the edge, put her feet in the water. Even at thirty meters away I could see she was beautiful. She smiled and lifted a palm from the edge of the spring in greeting. I smiled back and raised my hand in return. She was tall, at least one hundred and seventy cents and slim but not skinny. The white outer she was wearing showed off her long legs and was clinging tightly enough to her body that I could tell she wasn’t wearing inners. Her long black hair reached down to her waist, spanning out in a solid black wave over her tanned shoulders. I guessed Polynesian extraction or perhaps Indian.

  Despite the beautiful woman sitting across from me, somehow my mood just didn’t suit the pool and after just ten minutes, still with stuffed nasal passages and a sore back, I headed up the spoke tunnel of unfinished rock and back to my room.

  Leaving wet footprints on the blue matting that covered the distance to the room I had credded for the night, I checked my Devstick. I hadn’t been able to use it when I arrived here from the Lev port, but it was back up now, with an explanation from the comms team at Peary that sun flares had knocked out the Satcom relays orbiting Shackleton. I did a find on ships leaving Shackleton or Peary for the Earth Orbiter. There was a ship leaving directly from Shackleton to the Orbiter in another twenty-five minutes — if I hurried I could make it. I noticed it was Friday the 13th.

  I quickly threw the spare inners and outers and the ‘Life’s a Beach’ bag I had brought with me into the Virgin Galactic carry on and headed to out to the reception area. I thumbed my Devstick at the Dev on the reception counter and checked the cost had been deducted from my cred. They charged me full rate for the canceled night but I wasn’t going to stick around and argue with them.

  I checked the map to the Lev on my Devstick and got the walkway lights going. I was short of time and I didn’t want to miss that ship back to Earth’s Orbiter. With luck I could be back in New Singapore by before 9pm. The tunnel from the Nineveh to the main walkway tube was quite empty, but traffic in the main tube was busy with people headed towards their contributions.

  Most of the people around me were wearing mining suits with the logos of their respective Ents emblazoned over their right breasts and writ large on their backs. I threaded my way through the crowd, my Virgin Galactic carry on marking me for the tourist that I was, and got to the Lev. There was a queue. The Levs were moving pretty quickly but it was obviously a busy time. Standing in the queue waiting for my turn, I suddenly felt a tap on my shoulder and turned.

  “Hi, it looks like you and I had the same idea,” said the beautiful woman from the pool.

  I noticed the envious looks from the other men standing around waiting for Levs as this gorgeous woman spoke to me. She too had a Virgin carry on and I said, “Yes I’ve only been here for a few hours but the novelty’s worn off.”

  That comment got me a few glares from the people around me, but I didn’t care.

  Deal with it, I thought.

  The woman too noticed the looks and, smiling at me, said, “You think you’ve been having a hard time — the ratio of women to men on the Moon is one to twenty and I’m getting zoned out by all these stares I’ve been getting.”

  As she said this the Lev arrived and we bustled in. I took advantage of the shuffle to move to an area th
at was reasonably far away from the people that had been standing around us while we were chatting. The woman followed me.

  “I think we upset some people,” I said to her as we stood waiting for the Lev door to close. It was standing room only and her face was only thirty cents from mine. Smiling, she had white even teeth in a full mouth set in a strong jaw. Her cheekbones flared up and out in a slash under her green eyes. The green eyes crinkling now at the corners in a smile.

  “I don’t care what those freaks might think right now. I’ve been undressed in so many once-over looks this morning that I feel like I’m walking around naked.”

  “Where on Earth are you going?” I asked, making a very sincere effort not to glance at the breasts that I had admired in my brief glance at her in the pool — instead looking directly into her eyes.

  “I’m on my way to my new contribution in New Singapore. I’ve just finished acquiring a new range of knowledge and my transfer from Geneva came through. I thought I’d check out the Moon because I’ve never been here and I’m glad I did because now it is off my list of ‘Must Places to Visit’.” She tossed the Virgin carry on over her shoulder.

  “That’s great. I live in New Singapore. I’ve been contributing there for about four years now. My name is Jonah, by the way,” I said, giving her a wai.

  She waied me back and said, “My name’s Mariko. Pleased to connect with you,” and flashed me another dazzling smile that gave rise to two little dimples in her cheeks.

  “Do you…?”

  “Do you…?”

  We broke into laughter as we had said exactly the same thing at the same time, “You go first,” she said.

  “Do you want to travel together? I can brief you on New Singapore, or were you thinking of sleeping on the way back?”

  “No, I mean yes, it would be great to travel with you, and no I wasn’t planning on sleeping. I feel like I’ve slept for a day, and I haven’t really talked with anyone since I left Earth three days ago.”

  The Lev door opened onto the concourse of Shackleton Moonbase and right opposite the Lev doors was the cred deduct point for the JAS ship back to Earth’s Orbiter. We hurried over to the JAS point and the man behind the waist-high Devscreen, which was suggesting flights and tours, said, “Good morning, and how can we at JAS help you today?”

  “We’d like two normals back to Earth’s Orbiter please,” I said, and smiled at him.

  “I’m sorry sir, but all the normals are taken. We only have supers left.”

  “We’ll take them,” I began to say but was interrupted by Mariko.

  “Uhm, I’m sorry, Jonah, but my budget doesn’t stretch to the supers. It’s OK though — you go on ahead. I’ll catch up with you when we get to New Singapore.”

  I turned back to the man. “How much is the upgrade from normal to super?”

  “It’s four hundred and fifty-six units with tax, baggage, alkys and nourishment included,” he said and smiled a very smarmy kind of smile, that said, ‘Let’s see if you’ll cough up those creds mister’. I returned his smug smile and held up my Devstick, “Give me two Siteazys next to each other.”

  It was a bit extravagant but there was no way I was going to let Mariko out of my sight until I had her complete profile in my Devstick. Turning to her I said, “OK that’s settled. This trip to the Moon has been pretty bad for me so far, but,” I paused for effect and giving her my best dazzling smile as I gazed deep into those wide green eyes, said, “things are definitely looking up from my point of view.”

  She tilted her head to one side and studied my face.

  “Are you flirting with me?” she said with a laugh hidden somewhere in her words.

  “I most certainly am, Mariko.”

  “Could you make your way over to the spaceport immediately please?” said the JAS staffer in a squirmy kind of a voice.

  I ignored him and said to Mariko, “Think of it as a 'welcome to New Singapore' gift and let’s just get off this rock. We have six hours to talk through before we reach the Orbiter.”

  Taking her arm by the elbow, I thumbed my Devstick for the lights to the spaceport and led the way.

  Agent Cochran froze frame on the image of Jonah’s face smiling at Mariko, his lips slightly pouted as he had just finished saying Orbiter. It was 8:45am, and Cochran was standing in the center of a Devcockpit in UNPOL’s Trace center in New Singapore. She’d been woken by a call from a staffer in the Center at 7:15am, when Jonah’s Devstick had been traced to a VacEnv on the third level of a place called the Nineveh Hot Springs Resort on Shackleton. At 7:29am she’d walked into the ten thousand square meter sized room, which was one of three primary tracing centers around the globe, and taken charge.

  Either he’s good enough to be starring in the Flicks or he’s innocent, she thought. She’d reviewed the images from the time that Mariko had picked him up at the pool to now. Jonah showed no nerves whatsoever, and seemed blissfully unaware of the strange coincidence of Mariko staying at the same resort and leaving for Earth at the same time. He’d even splurged the cred to have her upgraded, when he had the opportunity to dump her, which he would have if he had something to hide.

  Could he be that good an actor? She looked harder at the screen. Her only contact with Jonah had been on the day that the runner had run. She’d heard about the brilliant nephew of the Director, but they’d never met before. He didn’t move in the usual social circles for one of his level and that she found interesting, but put it down to a ‘loner’ type.

  She stared hard at Jonah’s smiling face, the angle of the image just catching Mariko’s lower jaw, just the shadow of bottom of her chin seen occasionally brushing the edge of the image. She felt a little spike of… what… was it jealousy, as she saw the look in his eyes when he spoke to Mariko?

  Well Jonah, you and I are going to be having a most interesting chat over the next six hours, she thought smiling to herself. Let’s get to really know each other.

  Settling into our seats we were separated by a meter of space which was currently occupied by the JAS Intrav staffer who was helping Mariko to buckle in. Take off and ascent from Shackleton out of the Moon’s weak gravitational pull would be much less strenuous than it was on Earth.

  I buckled in and was waiting for the staffer to get out of the way so that I could talk to Mariko. I didn’t want to lose the warmth that we had seemed to generate this morning.

  I looked at my Devstick, and thumbed up my POS. Scrolling out on the image I saw our path from the Moon to Earth. From the blue dot that was me, the craft would fly in a straight line to edge of the Moon’s gravitational pull, and then turning right would catapult itself around the Moon and head straight for the Orbiter. The ETA on the track display showed we’d reach the Orbiter around 2:15pm, and with luck I could be back in my Env by 6pm. With even better luck Mariko would be with me.

  Out of the window on my right, I saw what looked like a heavy metal box about four meters long and six wide on large rubber wheels with a pole sticking out of the end of it and rapidly approaching the craft we were in. A clunk signaled its coupling with the craft, which jolted forward a little.

  The staffer stumbled against my arm and turning to me, said, “I am most sorry, sir, usually the drones are bit more gentle than that.”

  I looked up at her. She was attractive, probably of Hispanic origin, I guessed by her features and her accent. She had large breasts and a generous cleavage which the JAS Intrav suit was displaying to full effect. My eyes flicked from her cleavage to Mariko’s, and I thought, I like hers better — not as big, but a really cute perky shape. I turned my eyes to find those of the staffer fixed on me and I knew exactly what she was thinking. What she was thinking was she knew exactly what I was thinking, and I smiled at her. She was exactly right.

  “Would you two like an alky before we take off?” she asked, returning the smile. I leaned around her also-generous backside and asked Mariko.

  “What do you think? Do you want to go for an alky?”


  She smiled back at me, and staring directly in my eyes, said, “Sure, why not? Order me something relaxing and smooth.”

  I looked up at the Intrav staffer and asked, “Would you happen to have the Endorpho 80?”

  “Yes, I think I can find you a couple of those.” And with another smile, she walked back to the prep area between Super and Normal.

  I turned, continuing to look at Mariko. I couldn’t get enough of looking at her. She was almost too attractive. She stopped doing what she was doing with her Devstick and glanced at me.

  “What?” she said in a soft voice, and her eyes smiled at mine.

  “I can’t stop looking at you,” I said, and felt like an idiot the minute I’d said it.

  She chuckled and said in a teasing way, “We’re all beautiful, Jonah.”

  I laughed, and said, “OK,” but perhaps I should have said, ‘Your physical features are a perfect match to my aesthetic taste’, and smiled back at her.

  “I feel the same,” she said returning my smile. To my eye, her smile held a deeper promise. I wanted to kiss those wide lips. I knew that our mouths would match in size and it would be a perfect kiss.

  Chapter 16

  A Down to Earth Chat

  JAS Flight JAS1608, Runway, Shackleton Moonbase, The Moon

  Friday, 13 December 2109 9:00am

  Sharon Cochran knew that the Staffer Margarita Delgado had been an Intrav for six years. She’d qualified on the Hydroships traversing Earth’s oceans and had qualified for space three years previously. She loved what she did. Her life was good — she met many nice men, and women, had a good balance of contribution and self-time, and had visited every major city on Earth and in space.

  In all that time she had never received an UNPOL Blue Notice, and had to think hard to recall her training as to what it meant, especially as her brain had sent a typical panic response to the unusual notice spelled out on the Devscreen in the galley. An UNPOL Blue Notice requests immediate assistance to gather more information about an individual who may or may not be about to cause themselves or others harm. The receiver in their official capacity, and acting on behalf of the state is obliged to comply.