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  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.

  UNPOL BLUE NOTICE

  Subject: Jonah James Oliver

  Request Filed by: Special Agent Sharon Cochran

  Requested authorized for Submission: Director of UNPOL: Thomas Bartholomew Oliver

  Request Authorized: Judge Miriam Wu

  Case #2109.

  UNPOL requests immediate assistance by receiver of this Blue Notice, in accordance with UNPOL statute 34 B, D and E of UNPOL code of operations.

  Intervention by actions to be performed by: Margarita Delgado. The intervention requested is for an immediate Truth Treatment to be applied to Jonah James Oliver. The truth treatment is to gather information related to Case #2109.

  Agent Cochran had been extremely busy. Getting the Blue Notice on Jonah drafted and signed by the Director had only taken a few minutes. Finding a recipe for an impromptu Truth Treatment in space had taken a few minutes longer. She hit submit, sending the concoction of several parts of different alkys which were all available on flight JAS1608 bound for Earth’s Orbiter, to be mixed with the drink Jonah would be served.

  Delgado bit her lower lip and pressed her finger on the Devscreen. Confirm.

  At least they only want information, she thought He must be one of those Ent scammers. Her opinion of Jonah had changed radically in the last few minutes. The prepare for take-off light flashed on her console and she quickly sat down and buckled herself in.

  ***

  The craft vibrated slightly as the roar of its rockets increased in pitch. Surging forward, the spaceport on Shackleton slid out of view as we moved off down the runway towards the ramp at its end. The craft picked up speed, occasionally bumping its passengers in their seats as it traveled down the runway, and then the steam catapult took up the pulling, and punched us into our seats for the last two hundred meters of ramp – hurtling us into space at seven hundred and fifty kiloms per hour. The craft left the ramp with a slight drop and then the rockets were pushed to their maximum as we climbed up at a steep angle.

  A tanned hand reached over my shoulder and a sealed container with the JAS logo on it was dangled in front of my face. Twisting in my seat, I reached up and collected it with my left hand.

  “Thanks,” I said, smiling. Intrav Delgado, as her name tag stated, didn’t smile back but turned her attention to Mariko. Mariko took the alky and shared a look that puzzled me. It was as if they knew each other, but I shrugged the thought off knowing how improbable that was.

  Probably something to do with me checking out their breasts, I thought.

  I forced myself not to look at Delgado’s backside as she turned away, as I could see, out of the corner of my eye, that Mariko was looking at me. I smiled at her and she raised the container with the spout first to toast me, then to her mouth and said, “Bottoms up.” I copied her action and drained the Endorpho 80. It tasted a bit different than the one I had at the Polar Nights relax lounge, but that was probably due to the stuffiness I still had in my nasal passages as a result of the Moon sickness.

  I sat back comfortably in the Siteazy and waited for the drink to kick in, anticipating the cool stillness that I remembered from the last time I had it. The muted roar from the craft’s engine suddenly cut off and the craft banked as the Devscreen in the headrest in front of me flashed a warning that we were now in zero grav. I looked across at Mariko and saw that she was also lying back with her eyes closed, giving me an opportunity to really take a good long look at her body. Her outers had the image of a dragon running down the right leg, the colors were bright green and red. Then the dragon’s tail moved, but Mariko hadn’t moved her leg.

  I didn’t remember that about the Endorpho. As it kicked quickly in with full force I felt like I was in a Lev on steroids, dropping through one hundred levels faster than the speed of light. I panicked a little with speed of the rush – it was nothing like what I remembered from my last Endorpho 80 and I might have gone too far with this one. Through wide eyes I looked at Mariko. She still had her eyes closed and seemed relaxed enough.

  She turned her whole body toward me slightly, and I saw her left breast bulge out of the opening in the middle of her outers, the faint outline of her nipple clear through the material. She twisted fully onto her side and brought her hands up palms together, placing them under her cheek as though she was going to sleep.

  I thought of her nipple in my mouth, and I felt myself reacting. Was this yet another side effect of the Endorpho? Obviously the Endorpho 80 was a whole different proposition in space, but as long as Mariko was OK then I was determined just to go along for the ride. I struggled with my senses, trying to get a bit more control, taking several short sharp breaths. The assault calmed down and the cabin took on a rose-tinted hue, my jaw ached a little: I had clenched my teeth too much. I wished I had some gum to chew.

  Mariko opened her eyes slowly, and gazed at me. I was still looking at her breast, but flicked my eyes back to hers and she smiled. “So tell me, what did you get up to while you were on the Moon?” The softly spoken words seemed to journey to my ears one by one. Each traveling on its own, her lips putting each one out softly, slowly, and I could see them flying through the space that separated us until they went past my cheek and into my ear.

  Cool, I thought, I can see speech, and then remembered that I was supposed to answer as I saw the question mark trailing the Moon.

  My tongue felt thick and dry in my mouth. “Um, I didn’t do anything really. I wasn’t there long,” I replied. Thinking about it I really didn’t remember doing anything at all. I remembered leaving the Lev port at Shackleton and using the walkys to find the Nineveh, but then, well nothing. I had been tired. It had been a long day’s trav.

  “I just wanted to go there, you know. It was a pure impulse thing. I saw a suggestion in the Lev port. I had actually been going to a small beach resort on the east coast of the Southern Thailand Geographic but then I saw this suggestion that was the Nineveh Hot Springs Resort and thought since I’d never been to the Moon I’d try it. It was stupid really. I should have gone to the beach, but then again, I wouldn’t have met you, would I?” I smiled at her, feeling tremendous tenderness and love for her. It welled up in me, and almost made me want to cry.

  She released one hand from under her cheek and held it out to me across the space between us and I reached out with mine and held her hand for the first time. Her skin felt smooth and a little warm under my fingers. With my thumb on top of her hand, I could feel the slight texture of her skin pattern and I stroked the inside of her palm with my fingers. She murmured and smiled, just lifting the corners of her mouth a little.

  “Are you usually an impulsive person?” she asked, still holding my hand in the weightlessness. The words did their float through space. They seemed to be handling the zero grav environment just fine. I thought on that for a couple of secs before answering.

  “No, I don’t think I am normally. In fact you might think I am a very predictable person, boring even,” and gave her a self-depreciative smile in retur
n.

  “Oh somehow I doubt that,” she said with a chuckle. “Did you meet anyone interesting on the Moon? All I met were sex-starved miners and comms geeks.”

  “Uhm,” I struggled to think clearly but then gave up and just said what was in my mind instead. “No, not really. Actually, I didn’t meet or speak to anyone, except you. Strange isn’t it? I mean I was there for at least twelve hours and I didn’t speak to anyone at all. During the whole trip I only spoke with three people. There was a guy on the flight to the Earth’s Orbiter, a woman outside a relax lounge who offered me an orgasm in space and a relax lounge girl who had very saggy breasts with incredibly long nipples that waved around just below her eyes when she talked.”

  Mariko burst out laughing with a ‘hah’, and continued with, “Are you a breast man, Mr Oliver? From what I’ve seen you seem quite fascinated by mine, for example.”

  “Yes, I think you could safely say that I am fascinated by your breasts, and your eyes, and your hand, and your voice, and your bum, and your mouth and – ”

  “OK, OK I get the image,” she chuckled, and gripped my hand a little tighter. A surge of warmth in my groin transmitted a signal through my spine, which registered in my brain as, ‘We’re going to sleep together’.

  “Where do you live in New Singapore?” she asked, our bodies still connected through the tenuous senses of our fingers as we held each other’s hands.

  “I’ve got an Env in Woodlands, but I’ve been thinking of moving somewhere with a view. From my Env practically everything I see has been made by someone or something. I’ve heard that they’ve just opened a new Lev port on Kuantan and if you go about six kiloms east from there you come to a place called Kampung Tanjung Sisik. It’s on a white sandy beach and the cred isn’t too bad, lower than where I am now. I was thinking of getting an Env there. It means more trav time but you can swim in the sea and you have more sky to look at. And you? What are your plans? Have you found a place to be in New Singapore?”

  “No, I’ve booked an Envdorm in Orchard. Thought I’d park near the city center so I don’t have to trav too much, but this Sisik place sounds really good. By the way, what is your contribution?”

  “I’m an arbitrator, both civil and criminal. The criminal stuff is mostly pro bono, and the civil stuff is mostly corporate, but either way I sit in the middle of two opposing forces. I try to help them find the middle ground.”

  “When you’re not contributing what do you do? What do you do with your self-time?”

  I thought, but again I couldn’t seem to establish any coherent response – the images of my life associated with her question came to my brain unbidden, and the words associated with those images spilled out of my mouth. Perhaps it was just that I felt comfortable with her and wanted to tell her the unvarnished truth.

  “I read a lot, and spend a lot of time thinking about things. Flicks, backgammon, um, that’s about it really. Pretty sad isn’t it?”

  “Do you trav much?”

  ‘No, the trip to the Thai Geographic was the first trip out of New Singapore for over a year, and that trip was only to a resort on Langkawi, less than forty minutes by Lev. It’s strange but I seem to spend a lot of time by myself, but then again that might not be so strange. One way or another I’ve spent most of my life alone. My earliest memory, I was four. My uncle had just sent me to an early learning camp in Scotland. It was freezing and the first recollection I have is that I was crying because I was cold and nothing was familiar. I remember the matron telling me not to be such a baby and shutting and locking the door behind her as she said that.”

  “What happened to your parents?” she asked her eyes wide and her voice low at the sadness of my first memory.

  “I never knew them. They were killed in a car crash just after I was born, and my uncle – my father’s brother – became my legal guardian.”

  “Are you close with your uncle?”

  I snorted through my nose in a bitter laugh. “No, I don’t think anyone’s close to my uncle. He’s always been sort of vague. I mean I think he’s only physically touched me maybe less than five times in my life and three of those were handshakes at public gatherings where I’d won something.”

  “Were you a bright student?”

  “I don’t know if I was bright. Well yes I was, but it was more that studying was all I did. I went from one fast learning curve to another, and I’m lying here wondering if I’ve learnt anything at all in all those years.”

  I smiled at her. I was fully aware that this was the most I’d ever revealed about myself in a personal way and of my own free will to anyone in my life, but I didn’t care. I’d known her for less than an hour and a half, but time didn’t matter – her eyes told me that I could trust her. I felt sleepy, my eyelids drooped but I kept my eyes open, barely.

  “I’m twenty-six. How old are you?” Mariko said. She was still holding my hand and now she stroked the inside of my palm with her fingers. I let my hand lie still in her touch.

  “Thirty-four. I’ll be thirty-five next July. When is your birthday?”

  “September, September the 15th.”

  “You said earlier that you had just spent some time in Geneva. What knowledge were you acquiring there?”

  I closed my eyes, the effort of holding them open was just too much. I heard her say something, but it was as if the sound in my ears was being turned down, slowly. Her voice faded until I felt a deep sense of ease and fell into a deep sleep.

  ***

  Mariko kept holding his hand with hers, and with the other reached for her Devstick, lying beside her cheek where she had been able to keep an eye on it.

  She said softly, “He’s asleep.”

  Jonah grunted and moved, his hand slipping out of hers. She wanted to grasp it but was too late, and now it swung slowly towards the edge of the Siteazy Jonah was in.

  A new data stream came through on to the Devstick at the top of a long stream of data from Agent Cochran, the UNPOL officer she was reporting to. She read the reply from Cochran.

  “I’m surprised he lasted that long, but anyway we found out what we needed. Thanks for your help. You can dump him as soon as you reach the Orbiter. He’s not hiding anything.”

  Mariko looked across at Jonah. She felt relieved and she felt dirty. Undercover was not her thing, she didn’t like deceit, and although most of what she’d said to Jonah was the truth, the reason that she had met him was a lie. Yes, she could dump him now, and that is what she should do. Mariko lay back in her seat, staring at the ceiling of the spaceship. She didn’t often feel confused but now her thoughts ran in a jumbled mess of emotion.

  Looking at Jonah, fast asleep, drugged, she thought about what to do. He’s a really nice guy, and he is attractive. I don’t want to dump him and I don’t want to have lied to him, but it’s too late for that. How can I ever tell him? Well maybe there’ll be a way, when he’s cleared and contributing again. I can take him out for a dinner and explain. Explain what? That you lied to him and interviewed him while under a Truth Treatment? That you arrived at the Nineveh three minutes after he’d entered the pool? She had no ready answers.

  A mind that is clouded with feelings and one that has been touched by what she has heard, is not a mind that will make rational decisions, and although she knew that the best thing for her career was to dump Jonah at Orbiter, she also knew that she wouldn’t.

  Chapter 17

  At the End of the Day

  Titanium Mine Shaft, Shackleton Moonbase, The Moon

  Friday, 13 December 2109 10:15am

  Gabriel flipped back and forth between the image of Mark lying in the Siteazy, and the image of Sharon Cochran in the Trace Operations Center on Earth. The images were slightly delayed given the distance between them, but Gabriel had a complete dataset for the entire time that she had been logged in.

  “And as for you, Cochran, I’m going to burn your mind out before this is over.”

  Gabriel was tired, he hadn’t slept for over forty-
eight hours, but still he refused himself the sleeper against the wall a short distance from the Devcockpit in the room where he and Mark had spoken. He was tired but satisfied. So far his plans were succeeding. Some things had gone awry but for the most part everything had worked out. Mark, as Jonah, was primed. He hated putting his long-lost brother in this situation, but he really didn’t have any choice.

  At their last meeting Maloo had asked him, “Would you hesitate if it was not Mark, if it was another human so well fitted to this task?”

  And Gabriel had known the answer before Maloo had opened his mouth, taking his indecision as doubt. There was no doubt in Gabriel’s mind that Mark had to be the one, was in fact the only one who could get close enough to Sir Thomas and had the skills, whether he knew it or not, to survive the encounter and achieve the task. At least Mark had a slight chance: anyone else, including himself, would be a complete failure.

  Mark’s hypnosis had gone well. It had been exhausting for Gabriel, constantly checking on the Dev for the cues and memories that he had to erase for Mark to stand a chance with Cochran or Truth Treatments. Mark had to be a Hawk, and his memories had to be perfect. It had been a painful process and doing it had drained Gabriel.

  Maloo had taken Mark to the Nineveh before they’d put the comms back online. He’d wiped the last remaining images of Mark being helped to his VacEnv through the lobby of the Nineveh, and then he had waited for Mark to leave. He needed Mark to leave quickly, didn’t want him hanging around on the Moon for two reasons. The first was that he had a flight to catch. With Mark on Far Side, UNPOL security would be tight – too tight to move – and it would greatly increase the risk of their capture. The second was for Mark. If he returned immediately, Gabriel would be able to at least keep an eye on the first part of the journey, and if required, could be in a position to intervene.