Here we stand, p.24
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Here We Stand, page 24

 

Here We Stand
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  The trickling sound was rather soothing. It was also a mistake. He started to feel an urgent need to pee, and the longer he listened to the water, the worse it got. He went outside to find a secluded corner and was unzipping when he heard someone crunching across gravel behind him. He paused and looked over his shoulder.

  Damn, why did it have to be a woman?

  Chris saw the big crescent wrench in her hand and a service pistol holstered on her hip before he actually noticed what she looked like, which he realised was a sad indictment of his priorities. Her dark blue overalls identified her as one of Ingram’s crew.

  Why hadn’t he seen her around before? He couldn’t have missed her. She had dark curly hair pinned up in a pleat and ticked every box on his mental list of what would make him follow her anywhere. He instantly forgot that Fonseca even existed.

  “Thank God,” she said, sounding genuinely relieved. She was another Brit. “I thought you were an alien. I was going to brain you with this spanner.”

  Chris was mesmerised. He knew he was going to say something dumb but he couldn’t help himself. “Sorry. I’m Chris.”

  “Ah. You waded into a slurry pit, didn’t you? I respect that kind of thing.” She walked up to him and held her hand out to be shaken. “I’m Ash. Marine Engineering Technician Ashley Brice. I deal with shit too. And water.”

  He shook her hand. “Sergeant Chris Montello. Sorry, I haven’t washed my hands.”

  “It’s okay, neither have I. You can use the heads in the office, you know.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Are you looking for that red teerik? He was sitting on the fence staring at the sky for a while, then he took an interest in the filter beds. I tried to move him on, but he swore at me.”

  “Yeah, that’s Rikayl, alright.”

  “He’s a cheeky little bleeder.”

  “My sentiments exactly.”

  “Come on, then.” She beckoned him to follow and led him into one of the buildings. “Over there. The door in the corner.”

  “Thanks ma’am.”

  “Ash will do fine.”

  The office was decked out more like someone’s quarters, with a few little comforts that suggested she spent a lot of time there — a tea dispenser, a navy blue quilted blanket that looked like a woobie, and a holdall with T-shirts spilling out of it. When Chris opened the bathroom door, there were toiletries on the shelf, and the whole place smelled strongly of perfume. It wasn’t hard to work it all out; long hours, a little too far from the centre of the base to make it worth the walk to the canteen for lunch, and an antidote for the smell of sewage.

  He checked himself in the mirror above the basin as he washed his hands, hoping he didn’t look like a drunk sobering up. When he came out, ready to assure her he wasn’t some kind of weirdo and that he really did have a reason for being out here at night, she was making tea while she watched the news.

  “Depressing, isn’t it?” she said. “Still, at least it stops me thinking about going back.”

  “Not happy here, then?”

  “I thought I’d made a big mistake. Maybe not.”

  “What made you volunteer?”

  “Adventure and a chance to do something significant, I suppose.” She handed him a cup. “Anyway, how are you finding it?”

  “I like it. It beats where we came from.”

  “How worried should we be about the aliens?”

  “Probably more worried than we should be about APS.”

  “Fair enough.”

  Chris had to say it before the conversation got any further. “I wasn’t doing anything weird, by the way. I always walk the perimeter every night and I’d never seen the lights on here before. I thought the place was completely automated.”

  Ash rummaged in a container and picked out some cookies for him. “Here. You can have the chocolate ones, because we don’t get many visitors. But yes, it’s automated, and no, I don’t trust things to run on their own indefinitely. Machinery breaks down. I keep an eye on it. My waders and simple tools stand ready.”

  She had the right stuff. He knew he was going to screw this up, though. “You’re a woman after my own heart.”

  “It’s not glamorous, but if water and sewerage fail, everyone’s going to notice pretty fast. Let me give you the guided tour.”

  Chris left his cookies on the desk and followed her down steep stairs and along gantries, surprised by the fact that there wasn’t much of a smell at all. The most noticeable one was her perfume, which reminded him of incense. With the other-worldly lighting and echoing spaces, it gave the underground chambers the impression of cathedral-like serenity.

  Ash walked him through the treatment plant where water from the river was channelled into the base and made potable for humans, and then showed him the sewage plant that cleaned up the waste and processed it into fertiliser before discharging the filtered water back into the river.

  “I thought we’d have time to expand the system gradually,” Ash said, leaning on a rail that overlooked a field of filter beds. “Getting this place ready to handle an extra sixteen hundred people overnight was bloody hard graft.”

  “Yeah, you guys performed some miracles,” Chris said. “Did you start out in sanitation?”

  “No, I was what you’d call a hull maintenance technician. Welding, plumbing, carpentry. Whatever’s needed on board ship. Which includes fixing the heads.”

  “No point inviting you to join one of our self-reliance classes, then.”

  “Yeah, I heard you were running those.”

  “You could do a guest spot on welding.”

  “I might take you up on that.” She started walking back along the gantry to the exit. “So what did you plan to do with your life before Earth started circling the drain?”

  “Geologist.”

  “Not a hitman?”

  “No. I did some pretty rough stuff, but not that.”

  “You’re not offended that I asked, then.”

  Chris shrugged. He had no idea if he’d blown his chance or if there was any chance to blow in the first place.

  “It’s okay. I know what people say.”

  “I’m not judging,” she said. “We’re all in the same line of business, really.”

  “I was going to reinvent myself here and go back to looking at rocks, but the aliens got in the way. I’m going to check out the cliff formations north of here. Eventually.”

  “A trip to the beach. Ooh. A beach without mines and floating barriers.”

  It took Chris a moment. Ash had lived on an island under permanent threat of invasion, and the shore would have been covered by coastal defences. They were two people who’d both been fenced in and now they had the run of an unexplored world.

  “You want to come?” he asked. “I’ve never seen the ocean.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Too far, too many travel restrictions.”

  ”Ah, yes, you’d be a long way from the coast.” She gave him a completely unselfconscious grin like a naughty kid. “Can I bring a bucket and spade?”

  “Sure. Some of the coastline’s sandy.”

  “You’re on, then. We’ve got a whole planet here. We’re free humans again.”

  Chris felt his brain was running at half-speed. It took another moment to realise she hadn’t brushed him off.

  “Tell me when you’re free and I’ll fix something,” he said. Then he thought about the last time he took someone outside the wire, when it was his job to see that Nina came back safely. He gestured to Ash’s sidearm. “I realise you’re trained, but are you confident using that?”

  “You bet.” Then she tapped the giant wrench on her belt. “And this.”

  If Chris got the next line wrong, he’d die of embarrassment. He could have asked Sol, but he had to know right now. “Is there a guy with an even bigger wrench than that who’s going to object to this road trip?”

  “No, but if there was, I don’t think he’d take you on.”

  Chris wasn’t sure if he was meant to deny his hitman image or exploit it shamelessly, but he needed all the help he could get. “Okay, do we exit via the gift store now?”

  “Novelty pens, sticks of rock, and commemorative drain plungers,” Ash said.

  “Sticks of rock.”

  Ash just grinned at him again as if she was charmed by his foreignness and ignorance. “Marc Gallagher hasn’t educated you, I see.”

  “Don’t tell me. I’m going to work it out for myself.”

  Chris quit while he was ahead. He collected his cookies and Ash saw him out, but his exit was interrupted. When he opened the door, Rikayl was sitting under the security light, eating something small with wings, but as soon as he saw Chris he snatched it up and strutted over to drop it at his feet.

  “Wankaaaah!” he said triumphantly. “Fun!”

  Ash burst out laughing. Rikayl joined in, laughing in Nina’s voice, then switching to Jeff’s.

  “Thanks, Rikayl.” Chris squatted to take a look at the small corpse, keeping clear of the teerik’s beak. The unlucky creature looked like a cross between a bat and a frog. If Rikayl had been hunting, it meant he’d left the perimeter, and as that hadn’t triggered Chris’s alarm, someone had set the sensors to recognise him and let him through. “What are you doing out at night? You should be roosting.”

  “Kill!”

  “Yep, you killed it. Go home. Fred’s going to be worried.”

  “Wankaaaaaah!”

  Rikayl snatched up the dead bat-frog and took off. Chris couldn’t tell if the teerik’s offering had been an olive branch, an invitation to play, or just a demo of his hunting skills. Ash was still laughing.

  “I’ll see you when I see you, then,” she said, and shut the door.

  Chris carried on walking the perimeter feeling like a dog who’d chased a car, caught it against all expectations, and now wasn’t sure what to do with it. Okay, he did know what he hoped to do, eventually, but the gap between now and then was a sea of chances for him to ruin everything, and the harsh reality of Nomad Base was that every woman he’d ever meet, suitable or not, was already here. Failure wasn’t an option. As he walked, he worked out what else he needed from Jim Faber in Surveys to plan the expedition. He really did want to check out the geology around here and see an ocean, but he also didn’t want to bore Ash with geology nerdery and blow his best chance.

  Hitman. Maybe I should just have nodded and said yeah.

  When he got home, he logged into the satellite network to see how much of the coastline to the north it covered, and checked the coordinates against the surveys. Yes, he’d be able to see some interesting bays when the sun came up. The infrared option didn’t show him what he needed to find, spectacular views and interesting limestone cliffs that might contain fascinating things that he could talk about intelligently, and not look like a psychopath even tough sailors might back away from. There was a time for that, and this wasn’t it.

  He settled down in front of the wall screen with a coffee and re-read all the survey stuff, planning which features to look for.

  Hitman. There’s nothing wrong with being a hitman.

  Maybe she didn’t think there was, though.

  He was interrupted by a message from Solomon on his pocket screen. It had images in it, so he transferred it to the wall to take a look. It contained four different views of a single piece of grey granite flecked with white, carved into the form of a churning river, the flecks aligned with the swirls and eddies to create an illusion of foam. It looked real but he guessed it was a mock-up. There was a small polished square at the top with an inscription.

  The river returns to the sea

  And the sea lifts it to the heavens

  And the heavens give it back to the land

  To flow again, reborn.

  Chris didn’t recognise the verse, but he felt he ought to. He thought it over for a while. There was a brief note with the images: I can change this if you like. It’s just a concept. He was still stunned. He’d expected something plain, tasteful, but impersonal. This warranted an immediate conversation with Solomon. He put his radio earpiece back in.

  “Sol? Chris here. I just got your photos.”

  There was a pause. “What are your thoughts?”

  “I’m kind of taken aback, to be honest. Outstanding. Great design. What’s the poem? I’m not a culture guy.”

  “I couldn’t find anything suitable,” Solomon said. “So, as rivers have obviously been significant to Marc and his sons, I used the water cycle.”

  Chris looked at the inscription again. It made sense now. “This is your verse, then?”

  “Yes. I think it accommodates whatever Marc believes in. It can be read spiritually, or it can be read as science. Please show the images to him. Even if he doesn’t like it, it gives him a baseline to work out what he’d rather have instead.”

  “Wow, Sol. I’m seriously impressed.” It was a more than that, if Chris was honest with himself. He was in danger of tearing up. “Damn. I’m out of words.”

  “My pleasure.” Solomon paused for that beat again. “I find it harder to deal with deaths now. I’m forced to think about being here long after my friends have gone. So this has been a therapeutic task for me.”

  Humans weren’t meant to live for ever, but an AI like Sol could survive indefinitely. Chris could tell that Solomon had tried to put himself in Marc’s position, and he wondered if Bednarz had designed that into him or if Sol was developing of his own accord.

  Doug said Reverend Berry thought Solomon had a soul. If Chris believed in that kind of thing, he’d have agreed with the minister.

  * * *

  Two miles off Town Beach, Port Macquarie, Australia: October 12, OC.

  Stu McCabe stood on the deck of his gin palace and indicated the sea all around with his outstretched hand still clutching a beer. “This private enough for you, Tim?”

  “So this is where you hide from the missus.” Pham opened the esky and rummaged around in the ice for a cola. “Beats a garden shed.”

  “I did half the coastline last year. She worries, but she won’t come with me. She’s always hated boats.”

  It was a warm spring day, but not warm enough. Pham still preferred to keep his sweater on. He hadn’t seen Stu in person for a very long time, but now he had both an excuse and a pressing reason. If he trusted anyone, and that was debatable, it was Stu. The man knew an awful lot of people in most of the ports and harbours, not just in Oz but across the Pacific islands, which wasn’t because he’d been a spy for thirty years but because he was an affable bloke who got on with everyone, a useful talent in his former line of work, and one that Pham had tried to emulate.

  Nobody ever really left the intelligence services, though. Stu had retired early on health grounds but there wasn’t much evidence that he’d actually stopped doing the job, except for this small boat that was basically a floating platform for getting drunk and staring out to sea. Pham never saw the attraction. The sun and sound of lapping water were nice in small doses, but the sea went on to infinity and made Pham feel lost. He needed to see dry land at all times, even if it took binoculars to find it.

  “Okay, we’ve been keeping tabs on your guy for a month, since he made a run for it,” Stu said. “Do you need to tell me why you want him? There’s such a thing as knowing too much, even for us.”

  Pham almost chickened out of telling him what he’d come to reveal. “Stu, if I’m the only person with this knowledge, I need someone else to understand it, just in case something happens to me.”

  Stu gave him a dubious look. “And is something going to happen to you?”

  “No idea. Just covering myself.”

  “Okay, start with the truth about where you are with APS now. Nobody demanded your resignation over that Mother Death woman.”

  “Yeah, that surprised me, too. Which is why we’re having this conversation out here.” Pham preferred even his handful of friends to know as little as was practical, but he couldn’t pull this off on his own. “I don’t know how much longer I’m going to need APS’s love and approval, but I have it for the foreseeable future because the President’s balls are safely in my wallet.”

  “Oh, yeah, you catalogued all Terrence’s dodgy deals, didn’t you? Still, how else can a guy be expected to get free use of an aircraft carrier, no questions asked?”

  “There’s that, but I lied to him too. He laps up plausible deniability. He wants to be lied to. And he’s so far up APS’s arse that it’s all he deserves. But now he’s stuck with me.”

  “But he’s happy because you got him the FTL data.”

  “Yeah. But you can bet that Britain’s got it as well. It’ll be a case of who can build it to ship-scale first. I mean, even if there wasn’t a joint project between Ainatio and the Brits, Gallagher would have given them all the data by now.”

  “Maybe he hasn’t. Private contractor.”

  “But payment means nothing outside APS borders now. And what sort of bloke with a service record like his would withhold strategic information from his own government?”

  “Oh, I dunno, the same kind that withholds it from APS even though he’s in a senior cabinet position, I suppose.”

  “You can be a real bitch when you try.” Pham gave in and laughed. “The data Ainatio gave me is the monkey model, even if we develop something useful from it. The good stuff’s still under the counter.”

  “So what’s the full-tar version like?”

  Once Pham told Stu even a fraction of this, the guy’s life would change, and possibly not for the better.

  “Before I tell you anything, Stu, I need to warn you that you won’t be able to un-know this. Be sure you want to be lumbered with it.”

  Stu snorted his way into a laugh. “I didn’t work in a supermarket for thirty years, mate. We always knew more than we wanted to. Well, the normal ones did. Some buggers get off on collecting secrets.”

 
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