“Couldn’t you have cleaned yourself up first?” Sylvia asked as they walked over to the bus terminal.
“I’m sorry,” Rion said. “I didn’t realise.”
She stopped and turned to him. “I didn’t catch where you said you were from. It’s in the badlands somewhere, isn’t it? The restricted zone.”
“East Hills,” he said. “I don’t know if that’s in the...badlands.”
Sylvia hadn’t heard of East Hills, but then everywhere that was anywhere was on the coast. He might as well have said he was from Nowhere Town. “Judging by the way you look, I’d say it is,” she said.
“What do we do now?” he asked. He kept looking around in a nervous, furtive fashion. “This is only a day pass? What happens if I don’t leave?”
Sylvia sat down on the hard metal seat. “Then you’ll be arrested. If they can’t find you, I’ll be arrested.”
“I’ll think of something,” he said. He didn’t sit down.
Then she felt sorry for him. He was clearly dead on his feet and yet here he was, trying to justify himself to her. “Sit down, would you?” she said. “I guess you’d like a shower and something to eat.”
He nodded. “Thanks.” He put his scruffy backpack on the ground and sat two seats down from her.
“It’s just a surprise to see you so different from the way you are in CDS,” she said.
“You look different too. But in a good way,” he clarified.
The bus arrived. The day pass got him on without a problem, and Sylvia made a point of sitting at the back so that Rion wouldn’t have to sit right next to her. The bus was otherwise empty. He seemed to settle down as the bus began to move, content to watch the drab landscape passing by.
“Rion,” she said.
He turned to her. He wasn’t so bad looking in this light, maybe. “Yes?”
“You can’t stay with me. I’m married.”
His chest deflated. “Oh.”
“But my husband’s out at work, so you come back to my apartment and get yourself cleaned up. I’m sure I can find you something of David’s to wear. Then you can go to the council and plead your case, I guess.”
“What are my chances?”
How could she break it to him gently? “Not so good, I wouldn’t have thought. But it can’t hurt to try.”
“Okay.”
Silence again.
“Rion, what is your case? You’ll need a damned good reason to get even a temporary extension.”
He looked up. “I had to leave East Hills because of the violence there. There’s no police presence anymore. No electricity or running water. We live on what we can scavenge.”
“Okay,” she said, trying to think. “But there are a lot of poor people in W.A., aren’t there? What makes your case so important? It’d have to be something of direct relevance to Yellowcake Springs. This place is owned by Sinocorp, you know? The Chinese. It’s not a charity.”
“There’s a nuclear reactor here,” he said.
“Sure there is, but who told you?”
“I know some things,” he said slowly. “There’s a militia group in East Hills run by a man called Keith Gillam. A few days ago he and his men derailed a train and murdered the driver and guards. Is that relevant?”
“Was the train headed here?”
“I’m not sure. Maybe.”
“What has this got to do with the reactor?” she asked. He wasn’t making much sense.
“I think Gillam wants to blow up the reactor,” Rion said.
“Really? You can’t be serious.” But perhaps he was. Then a thought struck her. “Rion, this guy Gillam – he’s not a part of a group called Misanthropos, is he?”
“Misanthropos,” Rion repeated. A pause. “As a matter of fact, he is.”
Sylvia told him about her dealings with Chris Roland in CDS. He nodded several times as she told the story. When she was finished, he said, “It all ties together. That’s why I need to speak to your council, to warn them of the plot to destroy the reactor.”
They were on her street. “Come on,” she said. “I should call David.”
“Don’t,” Rion said. “Please, not yet.”
She consented to this without knowing why. Reaching her front door, Sylvia realised that she’d forgotten to remain embarrassed by the dirty man beside her.
22. A New Man
The water cascading down his body felt glorious. Hot water: two words that signified an alien world of pleasure and cleanliness. Rion scrubbed himself with the sponge and gel Sylvia had given him, then washed and conditioned his hair as instructed. The grime and dirt flowed away. Rion felt good. No, he felt more than good. The shower was bliss, and by the time he’d finished, the bathroom was filled with mist.
Towelling himself dry, he turned his attention to the razor and shaving cream. He wiped the foggy mirror with his hand. This task proved more onerous and he cut himself several times in the process. Rion had shaved before, but not in recent times, so his face was full of whiskers. But he’d never had much of a beard and eventually the job was finished. His face was bleeding so he dabbed at it with the towel, partially succeeding in stemming the flow of blood. But now the towel was bloody. Rion washed it under the tap, making an even bigger mess.
“Are you all right in there?” Sylvia said through the door.
“I’m just about to get dressed,” he said. The clothes that Sylvia had chosen from her husband’s wardrobe were neatly folded on the toilet seat. Rion dressed in them, finding the jeans to be a loose fit. He tucked in the shirt. His own dirty clothes were in the bathtub. Now that he was clean, he never wanted to wear those filthy things again.
“There’s a spare toothbrush in the cupboard under the sink,” Sylvia said. “It’s still in the packet. And you can use David’s deodorant.”
Rion found the toothbrush and took it out of the plastic. This was another thing he remembered from childhood: brushing his teeth. From memory, his mother had not insisted on it too often. He found the toothpaste and went to work. When he was done, he sprayed himself all over with the can of deodorant. It made his eyes water.
“Can I come in?” Sylvia asked.
Rion looked at the wet, bloody towel and the grime on the rim of the sink. “Just a minute,” he said, tidying it up as best he could. “Okay.”
“You could have turned on the extraction fan,” Sylvia said, opening the door. “Let’s have a look at you then. Oh, you’ve cut yourself.”
“I know,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
“You go into the lounge room and make yourself comfortable and I’ll tidy up in here. What do you want me to do with your clothes?”
“I’ll throw them out,” Rion said. He didn’t want her to have to touch them. He hadn’t noticed how dirty they were. No wonder Sylvia had seemed so cold.
“Just leave them there for now,” Sylvia said. “You can take them down to the disposal unit later.” Rion went into the lounge room and sat at the table. The delicious smells of cooking wafted in from the kitchen.
“Will you eat bacon and eggs?” Sylvia asked, having finished in the bathroom.
“Of course,” he replied, unable to believe his luck. First a hot shower and now hot food! Did these people always eat like this, or was she cooking it especially for him? When she brought the meal out, Rion devoured the food in seconds, shovelling it in with the knife and fork.
“Shall I make some more?” Sylvia asked.
“No, I’m not used to rich food. Thank you.”
“Fine. We need to talk about why you’re here.”
“All right.”
“You say you’re here because of Gillam and his friends. Is that why you contacted me in the first place?”
“No, not at all,” he said. “I didn’t know what Gillam was up to then. Not until the train.”
“So why did you contact me?”
Rion shrugged. The tall tale he’d constructed was rapidly unravelling. “Just for someone to talk to, y’know? I was bore
d.”
Sylvia nodded. “Okay. But why didn’t you mention the thing about the reactor earlier? I’m a little confused.”
“I didn’t think you’d believe me. And I needed to get out of East Hills.” He told her about the convoy he’d seen on the highway.
“That was some kind of retaliation for the train?”
Rion nodded. “I think so.”
“I see. So you were right to get out when you did. But I don’t think Sinocorp is going to regard a group of hick militants as a credible threat to their trillion dollar reactor, do you?”
“Misanthropos goes beyond just Gillam. He’s just a small player.”
Sylvia’s eyes narrowed. “How much do you know about Misanthropos?”
“Just enough to know that there’ll be an attack soon.”
These were the words she wanted to hear, apparently. Rion was digging himself a deep hole with his reckless words, but what could he do? He was oppressed on all sides. He couldn’t go home and he couldn’t stay here. Perhaps an appeal to her sympathies would help. “I can’t go back, Sylvia,” he said. “There’s nothing left for me there. Do you think I’d be able to get a job here?”
She studied him. It was unnerving. “You look the same as anyone else after a shower and a change of clothes, I’ll give you that. But you can’t just get a job in Yellowcake Springs. You need money to live here.”
Rion nodded. His earlier euphoria had evaporated. “So what do we do now?”
“What do you do, you mean? There’s no ‘we,’ Rion. Maybe I should introduce you to my husband. He might be able to help.”
“I’d rather take my chances with the authorities, if that’s all right,” he heard himself say. What was he afraid of? That Sylvia’s husband would be hostile toward him? Rion saw no reason why he shouldn’t be hostile, given the way he’d acted. But it had been Sylvia who had initiated their online sex, and she hadn’t mentioned that she was married. She didn’t seem to want to acknowledge that now.
“Suit yourself,” she said. Was he imagining it, or was she relieved that he’d declined to meet her husband? “I’ll come with you to the council.”
On the bus, Rion avoided marvelling out loud at the town’s grandeur. He didn’t want people to know he was an outsider, but his open-mouthed gawking must have been obvious. It was a wondrous place – sleekly designed and spotlessly clean, and yet bustling with the colour of life. It was everything that East Hills was not and had never been, all glossy shop veneers and green, intensely cultivated open spaces. There were no roads in the traditional sense – no traffic lights, no intersections – for there did not appear to be any cars. The robot buses kept to a red-coloured centre strip of the pedestrian concourses. There was a constant stream of bodies coming and going through doorways, but the Green Zone did not seem overpopulated. The apartments were two and sometimes three storeys high, but never taller than this.
“You’re very lucky to live here,” he said.
“It’s why we moved here, I guess.”
“Where did you live before?”
“Oh, in Perth. It’s much nicer here, that’s for sure. But… ” She hesitated.
“But what?”
“Sinocorp owns all of this, see? David and I, we’re just employees. Workers. You know?”
“I wouldn’t mind being a worker here,” Rion said. “Have you ever been to the Belt? You wouldn’t believe it. I can’t believe that this place could exist so close to...” To what? The unending nightmare of his own existence? The apocalypse that existed, not in the future, but in the present?
“Like you said, I’m one of the lucky ones. I just forget that sometimes. Life goes on, you know?”
“No, I don’t,” Rion said. “I don’t know.”
They didn’t talk for a while after that. Sylvia folded down some kind of device over her eyes and ignored him. The device looked like a pair of dark glasses but Rion knew it was something else, for he could hear faint music and see flickering lights on the device’s exterior.
The entire bus passed through a red scanning ray that washed over them abruptly. It was over before Rion realised what had happened. Now the bus was moving again and the landscape of apartment buildings and parks had given way to larger, more outlandish structures. Each building was a statement – some brazen, others vulgar – but no two were alike. This was the Amber Zone, where these people went to work. Rion’s sense of incredulity gave way to anger. How much money had gone into sculpting these structures? It was stupendous.
“Here’s our stop,” Sylvia said. Rion hadn’t noticed her emerging from her own world.
“What is that thing you were using?” Rion asked.
“It’s my eye-gear,” she said. “You can borrow it on the way back, if you like.”
But now they were at the foot of the council steps. The building was remarkable only in its comparative austerity – it was a monolithic, rectangular structure without turrets or balustrades or towers. Whatever scheme his subconscious was furtively devising, it surely wouldn’t work here, at the seat of CIQ Sinocorp’s power. He was making a mistake, but it was too late to back out now.
“Imposing, isn’t it?” Sylvia said.
He could do nothing but nod and follow her up the steps. The council chamber door was a tinted, revolving maw. There he lingered for a moment, unable to enter, but Sylvia tugged at his arm insistently – their first physical contact, a part of him noted – and he followed her inside.
23. Level Two
Jiang Wei felt nervous sitting at the front of the room alongside Yang Po as the recruits filed in, their eyes downcast in submission. It didn’t seem right. They took their seats just as Wei himself had done only days before. Wei wasn’t listening to Yang Po as he ambled up to the podium and launched into his opening tirade; he was watching the unmoving faces of the recruits. He counted fifty-seven of them. They betrayed their nervousness in a myriad of ways – from hands clenched into white-knuckled fists, to eyes that darted around the room, to legs that shifted uncomfortably beneath the tables. They were frightened, but Yang Po either didn’t realise or didn’t care, for he was still droning on about the wonderful opportunities that lay ahead.
What followed next was the drama of the white envelopes. Wei watched dispassionately as they scrambled for position, for leverage, yearning to discover what fate had befallen them. The looks on their faces as they opened the envelopes ranged from delight to surprise to dismay, and some expressions were indescribable. They quickly moved into their new groupings – old friendships severed and new ones hastily conjoined. Wei could not help but notice a cluster of dumbstruck men in the far left corner, comparing their slips of paper. He counted seven of them. These were his new co-workers. His subordinates.
“Come and introduce yourself,” Yang Po commanded as the other recruits began to file out. Wei sat down next to Yang Po. There was silence. Everyone was waiting for him to speak.
“I’m Jiang Wei,” he said. “I’ve been here a week, and I’ve been working on the Controlled Waking State trial.”
They nodded but said nothing. Yang Po cleared his throat. Wei was to continue.
“My job will be to guide you in beginning your experiences in CWS. CWS is like nothing you’ve ever experienced. It’s hard to explain. You’ll find out soon enough.”
Yang Po cut in: “Jiang Wei is very experienced in this area. You will be in good hands with him. I want you to regard Jiang Wei as your superior officer. He will be your first port of call for problems, concerns and questions. Jiang Wei will refer directly to me. Am I understood?”
The men nodded, not willing to speak. Yang Po seemed impatient to leave. He was, Wei knew, a busy man.
“Jiang Wei will show you to your new quarters,” Yang Po said. “Lunch will be served shortly and thereafter you will begin your initiation.” He drew his heavy bulk out of his seat and left the room.
Another uncomfortable silence. “I’m just one of you,” Wei said. “Just a recruit. So don’t thin
k I’m anything more than that.”
“Please, what is Controlled Waking State like?” one of them said.
“What is it like?” He swallowed. “It’s like a dream you can’t escape from. You wake from one dream to find yourself in another, and another, and another. After a while you forget that it isn’t real.”
The recruits nodded again, like puppets.
“Look, the technicians will explain it better. Let’s go back to the dorm, okay?”
They followed him.
After lunch, the new recruits began their initiation. It was all Wei could do to try to remember their names, as they tended to blend together. Cao Ren was the only one whose name he could remember for certain, for he was fatter than the others. Now that the ranks of Controlled Waking State initiates had swelled, so had the ranks of the technicians that would manage them. They did not necessarily know how to do their own jobs yet, so the process was time-consuming. Wei found himself in the position of supervisor, skirting from room to room, advising the men how to pull on the bulky suits and affix the helmet straps. He discovered that there was a whole series of interlocking rooms dedicated to the CWS trial, more than enough to accommodate them. Finally the initiates were ready for their first foray. Wei was wondering whether he’d be expected to don a suit himself when a technician took him aside.
“You watch today,” the man said. “I’m Mo Chen. Head technician.”
“Jiang Wei. But I suppose you know that?”
The technician nodded. “Come on, we’re going to the control room.”
The inner sanctum required a pass card; Wei had walked past this unremarkable door several times without wondering what was behind it. What he saw when he stepped through after Mo Chen was a long, dark room filled with screens and monitoring equipment. Technicians sat at each station, intermittently speaking into their headsets. Each station had two screens. The first depicted empty rooms of a kind to which Wei had grown familiar. On this screen the technician could see what the user himself was seeing. The second screen showed the rooms as they existed in reality, from a wall-mounted camera. It was unnerving to see the men blundering around like that.
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