Yellowcake Springs

by Salvidge, Guy

  So she opened the fridge, bracing herself for the flooding light, and ate her fill once again. Then when she was sure that no one had seen her, she turned on the office light and searched for something to carry the rest of the food in. There was a backpack beneath one of the desks, and although she felt a twang of guilt in appropriating it, it was only a twang. Besides, Sylvia had the notion that this place might have been abandoned. Was it because of the attack on the reactors? Could this whole area have been evacuated? If so, was she in some kind of danger?

  She used the toilet and washed her face with cold water. She was wide awake now and there was a clamouring horror inside her, twisting at her flesh. Sylvia looked at herself in the mirror and saw a pale, wide-eyed stranger looking back. What if she really was the only one left alive? How would she manage? She tried to tell herself that it was impossible, that what she was experiencing was a delusional solipsist fantasy. Probably it was a wish fulfillment fantasy. But it was no good thinking like that; she had to be practical. She had to get out.

  It was night, but the full moon made it bright enough to see by. There was a coastal road which she could follow south. The air was cold but at least the wind had dropped. In fact it was probably near morning, as the sky was definitely lighter in the east. Some exertion would help to keep Sylvia warm. She wasn’t sure how far it was to Ridge Point, but it couldn’t be more than a couple of hours of walking. The tarmac hurt her bare feet, so she chose to walk along the beach, down near the black water where the sand was firm. Only then did she become calmer.

  There were lights on the shoreline far ahead. That must be Ridge Point. It was getting easier to see, although the dawn seemed a long time in coming. The lapping of the water at her feet soothed her frayed imagination. Sylvia had a clear purpose and a goal in sight, one that grew larger with every step and more visible with every passing moment. To think beyond her immediate situation would be perilous.

  By the time she reached the outskirts of Ridge Point, the dawn had arrived. Sylvia trekked through the loose sand to the footpath running along the coastal road. This must be Monday morning, which meant that she’d been on the run for more than a day now. All was quiet. Nobody stirred in their houses at this hour, although Sylvia did see a number of cats skulking around. Didn’t some people have to go to work early? She became uneasy as she thought of this. There was still no one around, not even a single vehicle on the road.

  It’s been evacuated, she told herself. Either that or you have gone mad. Both possibilities seemed equally likely. Then she saw that some of the doors to the houses had been left open. Here and there, lights had been left on inside. Some driveways contained cars, others not. One car’s doors were open, the lights having drained the battery. The people had been told to leave in a hurry or had otherwise vanished.

  Ridge Point was a small town, although it was true that it had been growing since Yellowcake Springs opened. It wouldn’t take long to evacuate such a town, and it could have been done on Sunday or maybe even Saturday. Given that today was Monday, there was a likelihood that at least some of the people would be returning today. That is, unless the radiation was worse than imagined. Could Peters have been mistaken about that? Might she have received a fatal dose after all?

  Sylvia sat on a bench in the park. There were birds in the trees; they seemed to be behaving normally. Surely it’d take less radiation to kill a bird than it would to kill her. She threw them some crusts of bread – all that remained of the fish farm workers’ sandwiches – and they crowded around in time-honoured fashion. She sat in the park for a long time, turning over the events of the past days in her mind. Rion’s rebuttal. Peters’ scornful comments. And that fool of her husband, David Baron. Probably dead.

  There was a yawning chasm where her emotions ought to have been. She had come this far, farther than she’d thought possible, but now she was stuck. Sylvia waited a long time for something to happen, and by the time it did, she was ready. What happened was that a car came along the road. Just one car. She turned her attention to it as it pulled into the car park. A couple of men got out. One of them looked familiar. They approached the place where she sat. She did not think to run, or even to stand and greet them.

  “Sylvia,” one of the men, the familiar one, said.

  “You’re one of them, aren’t you?” she replied.

  “One of whom, Sylvia?” Peters said. He had a stern look on his face. It wasn’t a face on which she cared to linger, so she looked away. She looked instead at the grass, at the birds. The wind had dropped and the sun had come out from behind the clouds, warming her face.

  “Get in the car.”

  She stood up and they led her to the waiting car. She offered no resistance.

  “And to think I thought you knew something,” Peters said.

  She looked at him. He was sitting in the back seat with her. The other men were in the front seats. “Have you been following me?” she asked, although she already knew the answer.

  “Tracking you, yes. Although you did have the intelligence to change clothes, which dispensed with one of the devices. But the other one is inside you, Sylvia. I had the idea that you might lead us to something worthwhile, but it’s all too apparent now that you don’t know anything at all.”

  “You said you were part of Misanthropos.”

  “I lied,” Peters said. “You played a role and so did I. I thought you would be able to convince David to abandon his plans, or at least lead us to him. But you did neither. Get out of the car.”

  The car had stopped along an empty stretch of road on the route back to Yellowcake Springs. “Why?” she asked.

  “Just get out.”

  She opened the door and stepped out, puzzled. They hadn’t taken the backpack from her, so she had food and drink to last a day or more, but still no shoes. She looked back through the window at Peters. He waved her on. She began to walk in a southerly direction along the side of the road. She had barely reached her stride when the car pulled alongside her again. All three men got out this time, the driver leaving the engine running.

  “What do you want now?” she asked.

  Peters said: “Sylvia Baron, under the powers invested in me by CIQ Sinocorp, I am placing you under arrest. I am authorised to use whatever force is required in detaining you if you do not comply.”

  “I don’t get it,” she said, but she got into the car anyway. “You kicked me out and now you want me in again. Make up your mind.” They closed the door behind her. The other men, who had been poised to spring into action, relaxed.

  Peters sat back down in the seat next to her and the car began to move. “We couldn’t have arrested you in Ridge Point, as that’s outside the CIQ Sinocorp Protectorate. Luckily we apprehended you within the Protectorate. What a pity for you; had you made it just a few hundred metres further, you’d have been back on Australian soil.”

  Sylvia turned to look at Jeremy Peters, her former boss. It wasn’t a joke and he wasn’t smiling.

  45. Insufficient Funds

  Rion stepped out of the Hub-Nexus office and onto the street, his head spinning. They’d given him a job and a place to live. He could sign out of the hotel this afternoon. And the final words the Hub-Nexus man had said to him were still fresh in his mind: Don’t let Sinocorp get you to renounce your Australian citizenship. There was no way he’d be doing that: he was a free man now. How he’d managed to negotiate the various pitfalls that had been placed before him he’d never know, but he’d done it. Elated was not a strong enough word for how he felt.

  The street was dirty, choked with grime and assorted rubbish, and there were equally grimy beggars propped up against the walls of buildings, huddled against the cold. As he made his way, one bearded man looked up at him from a doorway with so penetrating a gaze that Rion froze on the spot.

  “I need your help,” the man moaned. “I’m hurt bad.”

  “What happened to you?” Rion asked. The man was wrapped in any number of filthy garments, so at le
ast he wasn’t cold. He didn’t look especially thin either, but Rion supposed that by the standards of the city he was a hard luck case.

  “Got rolled last night. Little fuckers jumped me – six on one! Took all I had. You got some funds to spare, man? I need some medicine and shit. They beat the fuck outta me.”

  “Funds? What do you mean?”

  The man coughed and got to his feet. “You know, currency. Money.”

  “I know what money is, of course,” Rion said, “but I don’t think I have any. All I’ve got is this Hub-Nexus card.”

  The man grunted. “That’s a good place to start. So you’re offering me a helping hand? I can see that you’re new here. Let’s go around the corner to the hole in the wall.”

  “All right,” Rion said, not understanding what was expected of him. But he felt so good that it wouldn’t hurt to give the man a little of his time.

  The man walked with a pronounced limp toward the brightly-lit machine embedded in a nearby wall. Rion recognised the Hub-Nexus logo on it.

  “What do I do?” Rion asked.

  “Holy Christ! You’ve never used an ATM before? Where you from?”

  “East Hills,” Rion said. “I’d be happy if you could show me how it’s done.”

  “That’s fine,” the man said. “But if you’re going to help me out, the least I can do is put us on a name basis. I’m Frank Parker.”

  “Orion Saunders,” Rion said, the sound of his own name unfamiliar on his tongue. But the sounds were comforting. He was Orion Saunders. He had a job, an apartment, a life. They shook hands.

  “Okay,” Frank said, “hand over the card and I’ll run you through the routine here.”

  Rion went to hand over his card and then stopped. “I can’t give you my card, Frank,” he said. “I can’t afford to lose it. It’s very important, isn’t it?”

  Frank smiled. His teeth were in better condition than Rion’s. “Fair enough. That’s a good lesson anyway. You won’t last long otherwise.” Then he turned to some other men who had begun to gather around, and said: “You vultures buzz off! All I’m trying to do here is show the man the ropes.” The other men stepped back, but not far.

  Rion put his card in the slot as indicated, his elation fast evaporating. He could feel Frank looking over his shoulder. There was something about the man that he didn’t like at all. A red light flashed before his eyes.

  “That’s just the retinal scan,” Frank said. “All right, you want Transfer Funds. Press that button there. Good. Now I’ve got to put in my card too.” Frank shouldered past Rion in a way that Rion liked even less. The red light flashed over him. “What do you say? A hundred dollars? Bandages, ointment and painkillers aren’t cheap these days. Better make it two.” He stabbed at a button.

  INSUFFICIENT FUNDS flashed up on the screen.

  “What does that mean?” Rion asked.

  Frank turned to him. “It means you’re a broke fuck like me.” He pressed the button marked Account Balance.

  $0.00

  “That’s nothing, right?” Rion asked.

  Frank shook his head and the machine gave back both of their cards. Rion put his in his innermost pocket. “Well, at least you know how to use the machine now,” Frank said. “And I appreciate the sentiment. But it looks like you’re flat broke, Orion Saunders.” The other men, who had been skulking nearby, began to disperse.

  Frank made to follow them and then turned back. “Friendly piece of advice.”

  “Yes?” Rion said. This was a day for receiving advice, it seemed.

  “If a guy sells you a story about having been beaten up and needing medicine, keep walking. If there’s a bunch of other guys hanging around with him, run. You got that?”

  “I’ve got it.”

  “And you’re going to need an income stream. There’s no way around it in this world, not even for someone like me.”

  “I’ve got a job lined up at the hospital.”

  “Which one?”

  “Regal Perth,” Rion said. “Pushing trolleys, I expect.”

  “Well, you gotta start somewhere. Come and see me sometime, when you’ve got some wealth to share. I’m always hanging around the Hub-Nexus office looking for easy marks. No offence.” Frank patted him on the shoulder and turned away, leaving Rion standing on an unfamiliar street corner in an unfriendly city.

  Rion made sure to stuff himself with as much food as he could possibly eat before signing out of the hotel. No one asked him any questions at the reception and there was no one for him to say goodbye to. He thought of Sylvia and wondered whether she’d made it out of Yellowcake Springs unharmed. It seemed unlikely that she had.

  The bus, a free service, took him from one side of the city to another, but it was all the same to Rion at the moment. His new place of residence was called Prince Towers, and although it was true that the place towered over him as he stood on the street outside, there was nothing to suggest anything princely about it. The building was a vast apartment complex, with what seemed like a thousand grimy windows signifying each place of residence. Prince Towers was the ugliest shade of brown, and while the building wasn’t exactly crumbling, the brickwork didn’t appear to be in the best of condition. The place looked to be at least fifty years old and probably older. He swiped his card at the door and was admitted inside.

  The reception was dingy, quite unlike the reception in the hotel he’d just left. A very fat woman looked at him from behind a dirty glass window.

  “I’m moving in here,” Rion said to her.

  “Card,” she said.

  He gave her his Hub-Nexus card and she swiped it through a reader on the desk in front of her.

  “Okay, Orion Saunders. Hub-Nexus has assigned you an apt on the thirty-first floor. Bond’s four thousand dollars. Rent’s a thousand a week. You pay two weeks in advance.”

  “But I don’t have any money,” Rion said.

  “That’s right,” the woman said. “But as you’ve got a job lined up, Prince Towers is willing to extend you a line of credit. We get a lot of drifters and suchlike here. Not that I’m calling you a drifter. But now you’re six thousand in the red. Says so here on your receipt.” She handed him a piece of paper with his name on it. It read -$6800 in the Account Balance column.

  “I thought it was $6000?” Rion asked.

  “You need to eat, don’t you? The $800 is for food. $400 a week.”

  “I pay two weeks in advance?”

  “You’re a fast learner. You can take the lift up to 31 if you feel brave, or the stairs over there if you don’t. Breakfast is served from five on weekdays and six on weekends. You’ll be out for lunch most of the time, I guess, but it’s served at twelve weekdays and twelve-thirty on weekends. Dinner is at seven thirty, seven days a week.”

  “The food gets brought up to my room?”

  The woman chortled. “Room service? You eat in the canteen.” She indicated to a point behind him. He turned and saw a hall filled with metal tables and plastic chairs.

  “Here’s your card,” she said. He thanked her and walked over to the lift. He pressed the call button, but when the doors opened, he thought better of it. The lift stank of piss, at the very least. If they thought that thirty-one flights of stairs would break him when he’d come so far, then they were mistaken. He could have climbed a hundred flights with the assurance of a door with a lock and a bed with a blanket at the top of the stairs.

  Rion climbed.

  46. Martyr

  Jiang Wei was sleeping fitfully, but Lui Ping saw that there was no rest for him now. The angry blisters on his face had converged into one vast sore that wept constantly. She could see that breathing was torturous for him, that the inside of his mouth was red and raw. Already today he’d received blood transfusions, antibiotics and narcotics. A bone marrow transplant was scheduled for tomorrow, in the event that his euthanasia application wasn’t approved in time. It was Tuesday afternoon, three days since he’d received his dose. They called this the latent
phase.

  But there would be no latent phase for these men. The dose of radiation they’d received was far too high and might even be higher than they’d been told. It did not seem fair that these six men were to die when the rest of the town of Yellowcake Springs had seemingly been evacuated safely.

  A relentlessly recurring thought kept surfacing in Ping’s mind, no matter how many times she tried to push it away. Two thoughts, in fact:

  Why didn’t they give him a suit?

  And:

  Did they do it to him deliberately?

  There were no good answers to these most dangerous of questions.

  The other men had all been bachelors, and although they must have families of their own, no one had been flown over from China to see them. Ping was alone here. She stood by each of them in turn to bear witness to their slow passing. Wang Meng was the worst, having already entered the terminal phase. He had started coughing up his insides, mostly liver and lung. But the machines that tended him scooped it all away, clearing his throat so that he might continue breathing for a few more hours, until his insides were completely liquefied. In Wang Meng she saw her fiancée’s future: to decompose before death, literally to fall apart in the space of hours and days. She no longer tried to convince Jiang Wei to withdraw his euthanasia application. She knew now that his determination to die would be his last and only act of rebellion against an employer that thought of him as an expensive piece of cattle, but cattle nonetheless.

  “I want to hold your hand when the time comes,” she’d told him earlier today. He’d shook his head, his neck muscles being one of the few muscle groups in the wreckage of his body that still worked. He’d explained that if he was going to die, which he was, then there was no way he would allow his unborn child to come to any harm. Even a single embrace could prove fatal to the foetus she carried inside her. In his delusions, he heard Lijia imploring him not to touch his wife in some final moment of weakness.