Yellowcake Springs

by Salvidge, Guy

  Partly for this reason, she made herself scarce when Peters asked for volunteers to work on the CWS part of the ‘vert. She would have been a logical choice, seeing how naturally she’d taken to CDS over the years, but when roles were being decided, Sylvia was in the bathroom staring at herself in the mirror. It wouldn’t be long before someone would be sent to find her. Then she was crying and she didn’t know why. The tears rolled down her face. What happened to pushing back? Then someone did come in. It was Emily, the new girl.

  “I’m all right,” Sylvia said. “Put me down for the reactor part. I want to learn more about that.”

  Emily surprised her by putting an arm around her. “Are you upset about your husband?” she asked.

  Sylvia straightened and looked at Emily’s immaculately manicured face. “What? What do you know about that? Don’t tell me. I suppose you all like to talk about him when I’m not around.” Emily tried to protest but Sylvia wasn’t listening. She was barging out of the bathroom, grabbing her bag and clomping off down the stairs. To hell with them, she thought. And just to prove to herself that she meant it, she flung open the conference room door, her face still messy, and delivered an outburst. Later she wouldn’t recall much of what she’d said. After that there was nothing to do but leave. At least now they’d have something more substantial to gossip about.

  On the street, Sylvia realised she was smarter than she gave herself credit for. She had wanted a way out, hadn’t she? Being the understanding type, Peters would no doubt ring later, trying to soothe the hostility she felt toward her workmates. He’d assure her that she could come back to work just as soon as she got her personal life sorted out, that he’d consider her to be on annual leave until such a time. That was the kind of boss Peters was. And Sylvia knew she had talent. If Peters wouldn’t have her back, which she doubted, then there were always other jobs. Who said she had to live in Yellowcake Springs for the rest of her life?

  Without having been consciously aware of it, Sylvia had been walking in the direction of David’s office. It was close to eleven now and the sidewalk was bustling with people making their way down from their offices to the various cafes and restaurants.

  The Scimitar thrust upwards in defiance of all of this.

  It was cool in the reception today, the receptionist calmly awaiting her approach. “Can I help you?” he asked.

  “Yes, I need to see my husband, David Baron. He works on the third floor.”

  “Mr Baron?”

  “Yes, Mr Baron. Can I go up?”

  The receptionist frowned. “You are Mrs Baron?”

  “Sylvia. I don’t think we’ve met.”

  “I’m sorry, Mrs Baron, but I’m afraid to say that your husband is no longer with us. He tendered his resignation this morning.”

  “What? How long ago did he leave?”

  “About an hour ago.”

  Sylvia turned and went out. She made her way over to the nearest alcove and rang David. No answer.

  This was all too much to deal with. David losing his job, hers on a knife’s edge, the warning she’d received from Chris Roland. And then there was Rion, who was apparently on his way to see her. On his way here! What the hell was she supposed to do about that?

  Right at this moment, standing on the clean, bright sidewalk, Sylvia realised how much she hated all of this, the details and circumstances she called her life.

  The flip-top pinged. She ducked back into the alcove and opened up her ethereal husband. “Where are you?” she demanded. “The receptionist said you’ve quit your job.”

  “Quit, fired, same thing,” David said. “I was pushed.”

  “Where are you?” she repeated. “Can I see you?”

  “I think they’re going to kick me out of town, Sylvia. I’m having my implants removed.”

  “I might have lost my job too.”

  “What happened?”

  “They were talking about you behind my back and I got angry.”

  “Sylvia. I’m dragging you down. You should get out. Go and see your parents. Wait until all of this blows over. Look, I’ll be home early tonight. Maybe we can go out for dinner? Say seven. It’ll give you time to talk to Chr...I mean, get yourself ready.”

  “Talk to who...did you say? Talk to Chris Roland?”

  “Yes, I was going to say that,” David admitted.

  “And how do you know I was going to see him?”

  “I read the message you sent him. On the console.”

  “But you left before I did.”

  “I came back. I’d forgotten something.”

  “Bullshit, David. You’d better be back at seven. I’m going to find out what’s happening to us, and then we’ll decide what we’re going to do about it. Right? Seven o’clock.”

  “Right.” Her husband de-materialised, and it wasn’t lost on Sylvia that she spent more time talking to him in virtual form than she did in person.

  By the time the evening rolled around, Sylvia had made a number of calls. First on the agenda was Peters, to whom she’d apologised profusely. She also agreed to apologise to Tiffany and the rest of her colleagues. But Peters had insisted that she take the rest of the week off to give everyone a chance to cool down. Good old Peters. This gave her options and a week to decide whether she was going back to her job. Next Sylvia called her mother, to whom she hadn’t spoken for more than a month. She let it all pour out and felt better for doing so, and also secured an offer of a place to stay if required. Finally, Sylvia rang the contact number Rion had given her. She was not surprised to discover that the number was disconnected. Whoever this Rion was, there was something not right about him. She debated whether to mention it to David, but then thought better of it. That kind of marital stress was the last thing he needed at the moment.

  There were still hours to fill, so she filled them drinking a bottle of white wine and fiddling with her CDS profile. Tonight she’d be decked out in a flowing black dress with gold earrings and a hunk of amber around her neck. She also made up her face more than she normally would. These trappings gave her a confidence that was sorely lacking in her real life.

  Chris was waiting for her when she walked into the Chimera Lounge at twenty past six. She sat down. “You look nice,” he said. He was wearing a drab brown suit and there was an empty glass in front of him.

  “I want some answers from you,” she said.

  “Can I offer you a drink?”

  “No, I’m half cut already. I want to know more about your organisation, and specifically how it concerns me.”

  “It would be a good thing if you were to leave Yellowcake Springs, as early as possible. There is a threat facing the town that you would be well advised to steer clear of. I can’t provide more specific details.”

  “You’re going to bomb the town? The reactor maybe? Give me one reason why I shouldn’t go straight to Sinocorp with this.”

  “CIQ Sinocorp is well aware of the dangers facing their operation here. They believe themselves well equipped to neutralise the threat, but they are wrong. By all means alert them, but be advised that in doing so you will become a person of great interest to their security forces. Given that your husband is already under observation, I think this would be a foolish course of action. Your employer is quite capable of detaining you indefinitely. Remember, you are not governed by Australian law here.”

  “Fair enough, but you said ‘their operations here.’ I take this to mean you are in Yellowcake Springs yourself?”

  “Naturally. Misanthropos has a special interest in Yellowcake Springs.”

  “Two questions,” Sylvia said. “First, why tell me? Why not tell everyone to get out? And secondly, what is so special about Yellowcake Springs that Misanthropos wants to destroy it?”

  “I didn’t say we were going to destroy the town,” Chris said in a level voice. “Simply that the town is in danger. To answer your second question first, I believe a demonstration would best illustrate my argument. Will you come?”

 
; “As long as I’m back by seven. I’m meeting my husband.”

  “Very well. Have I your permission to do away with this?” He indicated to the Chimera Lounge, with its plush carpets and million dollar customers.

  “All right.”

  The Chimera Lounge vanished and was replaced by an aerial image of the Yellowcake Springs site. The two of them were hovering several hundred metres above the Red Zone. The reactor itself, and particularly the cooling towers, dominated this visage. The ocean could be seen to the west. It was a brilliant, still morning and there were only a handful of white clouds in the sky.

  “Do you recognise this?” Chris asked.

  “It’s the town, of course.”

  “No, I mean, do you recognise the specific images?”

  Sylvia looked. “This is from ‘Welcome to Yellowcake Springs!’ isn’t it?”

  “Correct.” Chris seemed pleased.

  “And how did you obtain it? It hasn’t been released yet.”

  “We have our sources. We need more altitude to get a bigger picture.” With that, Chris and Sylvia zoomed vertically upward to a much higher point. From here Sylvia could see the entire town-site far below. The reactor cooling towers were mere white blobs on a mostly brown canvas.

  “I’ll augment this vision a little,” Chris said. Now the vision was overlayed with coloured rings – red, amber and green, denoting the boundary fences of Yellowcake Springs’ various zones. The outer ring dwarfed the other two in diameter. “These are the exclusion zones,” Chris said. “Their dimensions were calculated based on the amount of radioactive fallout deemed acceptable from a postulated fission release.”

  “Such as a meltdown?”

  Chris laughed. “In the event of catastrophic meltdown, we’d need to draw a much bigger ring than the ones you see here. No, these exclusion zones refer to a fission release on a much smaller scale. Of course the actual radioactive fallout would be dependent on environmental factors, most notably the wind. But there is usually a strong westerly here, as you well know.”

  “Why are you showing me this?”

  “For perspective. Look how small the town seems from this height. Most of the so-called green zone isn’t particularly green, is it? It’s mostly empty bushland.”

  “The town is new,” Sylvia said. “It’ll grow.”

  “It will grow indeed,” Chris said. “Growth is assured. And so this region, more than a hundred kilometres north of Perth, will become a city in its own right.”

  “And you don’t like that, do you?”

  “No. Our aim is not to destroy Yellowcake Springs, but to remind CIQ Sinocorp and its employees of the tenuous nature of their existence here. Here you have a sea wall on one side and a whole swathe of checkpoints and guardhouses on the other to keep the unwashed masses out. But you don’t know a great deal about that, do you Sylvia?”

  It was true that she rarely gave much thought to such matters. “No.”

  “If we had more time, I’d like to show you a little more of this great state of ours. I think you’d find it enlightening to see how poorly many of your fellow citizens live. You don’t fully appreciate it, Sylvia Baron, but you are part of a very small minority. You are part of the elite.”

  “And you hate me for it?”

  “I don’t hate you, Sylvia, but you’ve been asleep for too long. You need to wake up and see what’s happening all around you. But it’s almost seven. It seems our time is finished for tonight.”

  “I still don’t understand why you are warning me and not anyone else,” Sylvia said as the aerial vision was replaced by the Chimera Lounge once again.

  “You’ve got friends in high places,” Chris said. “Someone who wishes you to come to no harm.”

  “You must mean David?”

  Chris Roland nodded. “David Baron is well known to our organisation, even if he is not fully aware of our aims. I can say no more than that.”

  “Another thing I don’t understand: why not destroy the reactor entirely? Wouldn’t that hasten the end of human life, in this region anyway?”

  Chris nodded. “It would, but think of the environmental impact. There are more than a thousand functioning nuclear reactors in the world, and many more that have been decommissioned. Each of these reactors is an environmental legacy. Imagine for a second that humans died out now. What would happen to those reactors without electricity? Without maintenance? They wouldn’t be safe for hundreds of thousands of years.”

  “Safe for who? I thought everyone would be dead?”

  “Safe for animal life. Safe for the planet. The very existence of these reactors – these monstrosities – is a crime. Do you know how much it costs to decommission a nuclear power plant once it has stopped generating electricity? It costs billions. Do you know how long the process takes? It takes decades. And more reactors are being built all the time. We’ve got to stop this madness now.” Chris suddenly halted his speechifying. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ll be in contact in the coming days. For David’s sake, please consider what I’ve said.”

  David wasn’t in the apartment when she disconnected. The clock read 7.05. It was 7.15, just when her anger began to rise, that he stepped through the door.

  19. Tim and Eleanor

  On Monday morning, after a night spent on Tim Kennedy’s couch, Rion woke to the sound of young Eleanor playing with her dolls nearby. Her singing woke him, but he didn’t mind. He had the idea that Tim wouldn’t try anything with his daughter in the room, and possibly not at all, but Rion was wary nonetheless.

  His backpack was where he left it, its contents apparently untouched. Rion got up slowly, his neck stiff from the way he’d eventually slept, and made his way into the messy kitchen. Eleanor paid him no attention. There were cardboard boxes lying everywhere, on the kitchen surfaces and on the floor. Most of the boxes were empty, but one on the kitchen table contained cartons of cigarettes. Light was streaming into the room through a glass patio door, which was filthy with grease and grime. Tim was sitting at the table, eating a bowl of cereal. The cereal box and cardboard milk container were on the table.

  “Fresh milk,” Tim said. He was wearing the same clothes as the previous night, but now they were more crumpled. “You wouldn’t get that in East Hills, would you?”

  “No, never,” Rion replied. “I’ve never had fresh milk. Only powdered.”

  Tim smiled. “Well, here’s your chance. I got a bowl out for you.” It was on the kitchen bench among the piles of papers. Rion picked it up and held it gingerly in his hands. “I don’t eat like this everyday, but today’s special,” Tim said. “In fact it’s gone a little stale.” He poured Rion some cereal – there wasn’t much left – and milk, then indicated for him to eat. Rion complied, tasting the food. It was sweet and lumpy, but he didn’t want to be rude so he said it was fine.

  When he had finished, Rion asked where he should urinate.

  Tim slapped the table hard and let out a sharp sound that was presumably a laugh. “You really are from East Hills, aren’t you? The toilet’s through there on the left.” He indicated to a corridor. Rion got to his feet.

  “You’ve got to press the button to flush it,” Tim called after him.

  Rion urinated into the bowl and pressed the button. He knew how indoor toilets worked, but he hadn’t used one for a long time. He even washed his hands in the basin and dried them on a grubby looking towel. Then, not knowing what to do with himself, he sat back down at the table in the kitchen.

  “Nice place, eh?” Tim said. “Running water, cold milk, the works.”

  “Have you lived here long?” Rion asked.

  “Not too long. You may have noticed that there aren’t too many people in Manjaring these days. The whole area is a buffer zone now. People aren’t allowed to live here anymore since the farms closed down.”

  “What about you and your daughter?”

  “Well, we’re a special case. You see Rion, it’s a good thing for you that you ran into us when you did. I
don’t suppose you know a great deal about this area, but we’re only about five k’s east of a big checkpoint. Guards, fences, guns – that sort of thing. There’s no getting through without a pass, and you haven’t got a pass as far as I can make out.”

  “I didn’t know,” Rion said. “I’m just trying to get to Yellowcake Springs. I’m meeting someone there.”

  “Yeah, you said. But travel’s restricted. And you my friend, without wanting to be rude, have the appearance of a vagrant. They’d most likely shoot and ask questions later, if at all. See?”

  “So I have to go back?”

  “No, but the highway’s a bad choice. Okay, so you want to go to a particular place – which is entirely your business – but you haven’t got the ways or means to get there. I understand, life’s tough. There’s a fair few places I’d like to get to as well.”

  Tim lapsed into silence.

  “Rion, you didn’t ask me why Eleanor and I are a special case. Don’t you think that might be important? You need to start paying more attention, buddy. Just saying.”

  “I didn’t ask?”

  “No.”

  “Why are you special?”

  “Normally I let Ella do this part. Come in, sweetheart.”

  The girl stood in the doorway scratching one bare foot with the other.

  “Now before Ella says her piece, I want you to remember that I’m armed and very fucking dangerous, all right?” Tim said. “You can’t see the gun right now but you can rest assured that I’ve got it. If you go for me, I’ll put a bullet in your brain. If you go for her, I will incapacitate you, break every bone in your body and then put a bullet in your brain. Am I making myself clear?”

  Rion said nothing. He wondered if the door on his right led to another external door.

  “Okay Ella, let’s not leave the poor man in suspense any longer.”

  “We’re black market traders,” the little girl said in a formal voice, obviously by rote. “Cigarettes and alcohol mainly. Sometimes we sell information to the auth...or...ities.”

  “Ask her what kind of information,” Tim said.