Jeff let his contacts guide him towards Mitchell’s coordinates, which ominously enough indicated somewhere inside a huge cemetery sprawling across the grassy lower slopes on the far side of town. As he walked along neatly mown paths laid out between the rows of headstones, his contacts identified the coordinates by means of a giant cartoon arrow hovering straightad and pointing downwards. Before long Jeff came to a small fountain, ringed by wooden benches. The arrow remained directly overhead, but there was no sign of anyone else around.
Nearly twenty minutes had passed before he spotted a lone figure making straight towards him down an alternative path, the newcomer’s face largely obscured under the broad hood of a hunting jacket. As he came closer, one grizzled hand reached up to pull the hood back, and Jeff saw that it was Mitchell – looking just as bruised and battered as he himself felt. He swallowed hard, more relieved to recognize the man than he was prepared to admit even to himself.
‘I’ve got to be honest,’ Jeff began, ‘there’s a part of me that’s not sure if you’ve really come here to help me or . . . or to kill me.’
Mitchell regarded him with unwavering pale-blue eyes. ‘Why would I do that?’
‘I’ve learned to become paranoid over the past couple of days.’ Jeff glanced around. ‘Why here? Why a cemetery, for God’s sake?’
Mitchell shrugged. ‘There’s good all-round visibility, and not much in the way of public surveillance. If anyone comes looking for us, we’ll easily see them first.’ He looked around. ‘Where’s Dan?’
‘He . . . Dan’s dead.’
‘Dead?’ Mitchell’s gaze became suspicious. ‘How?’
‘There were people trying to kill us.’
The frown on Mitchell’s face deepened. ‘I don’t understand.’
Jeff quickly explained the events of the last few days. When he got to Lucy’s death, Mitchell closed his eyes and inhaled loudly.
‘And all of this made you think I might want to kill you?’ he asked, opening his eyes again.
‘You’re still part of ASI. And we stole those files.’
‘Jesus!’ Mitchell clasped his head in a gesture of despair. ‘Who the hell do you think got Lucy access to the security deck in the first place?’
‘I don’t know. I guess I assumed she and Farad found some way of hacking it remotely.’
‘We had a thing together,’ Mitchell replied. ‘Me and Lucy. I guess you didn’t know.’
At first, Jeff couldn’t think what to say. ‘I . . . didn’t,’ he finally stammered.
‘She knew I was sympathetic, and I helped her out. She took a big chance through confiding in me, but I knew how badly things were being run. So I gave her my access privileges – it seemed the right thing to do.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Jeff, his face flushing with embarrassment. ‘You didn’t say anything when I told you Lucy had . . .’ He paused as he remembered the look on Mitchell’s face when he had told him.
‘It’s not the first time I’ve lost someone close to me.’ Mitchell put a hand on Jeff’s shoulder. ‘Look, you’re not the only one on the run. They were planning to take me apart just so they could figure out what happened to me in that pit, and they were very clear about me not being expected to survive the experience. That’s why I contacted you. I badly need your help.’
‘Of course. But you still haven’t told me what exactly happened to you.’
‘When was the last time we spoke to each other, Jeff?’
‘You mean before I met you here?’ Mitchell nodded. ‘I guess . . . back at Tau Ceti, just before we set off for Site 17.’
‘And when was that?’
‘Several weeks ago now.’
‘What would you say if I told you it’s been a lot longer than that for me? More like the better part of a decade?’
Jeff stared at him, clearly perplexed. ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about.’
‘I’ve got a lot to explain once we have the chance.’ Mitchell glanced around. ‘But first we have to do something about your contacts.’ He pulled a foil blister-pack out of a pocket. ‘These are fresh ones, registered with false UPs.’
Jeff stared at the blister-pack. ‘How did you get hold of them?’
‘I worked in security for fifteen years, Jeff, so I know a lot of things you don’t. Now take out your own contacts, before your friends with the guns catch up with us.’
Jeff hesitated, then reached up and delicately pinched the contact out of one eye, dropping it into the palm of his right hand before repeating the operation with his other eye. He then fished out a plastic case with his other hand, and carefully placed the devices inside.
‘You did remember to deactivate your UP before you took them out, right?’
Jeff nodded.
‘Hold on to them,’ advised Mitchell. ‘You might need them later.’
Jeff accepted the blister-pack from Mitchell and popped one of the bubbles open, dipping one finger in to lift out a contact. He leaned his head back and dropped it on to one eye.
‘I’m surrised they haven’t caught up with us already,’ Jeff remarked as he opened the second blister.
‘Trust me, they won’t be far behind. But as long as we don’t use our own UPs for now, it should be a lot easier to stay out of sight.’
Jeff dropped the second contact into position, and blinked a couple of times. A manufacturer’s logo appeared briefly in the lower right of his vision, before fading to nothing.
Instead of asking him to register his current UP, the new contacts informed him that his name was Eric Waites, and he was a native of Connecticut. As info-bubbles popped up here and there, he discovered that Eric possessed a big enough bank balance to keep himself comfortable for at least a couple of weeks.
‘Okay,’ said Mitchell, ‘let’s start walking. The sooner we get out of here, the better. How did you find your way here, exactly?’
‘I had to pay for a bus ticket.’ As they rounded a hedge, Jeff glanced ahead and spotted another exit from the cemetery, not too far ahead.
Mitchell eyed him sharply. ‘Didn’t you tell me you stole a car?’
‘Yeah, to get away from the cabin. But it was just sheer dumb luck I didn’t get caught once they managed to track it down.’
‘Buying a bus ticket made you just as easy to find,’ Mitchell said reproachfully.
‘To hell with that,’ said Jeff, feeling irritated. ‘I’m here now, so the most important thing to worry about is getting back to Montana and retrieving that database.’
‘You’re kidding.’ Mitchell raised an eyebrow. ‘Unless I heard you wrong, you went to hide out in a cabin that you owned under your own name. Could you have made it any easier for them to find you?’
Jeff felt his face burning. ‘I guess I hadn’t thought of it that way.’
Mitchell gestured dismissively. ‘Well, you can forget about going back there. My guess is they’ll have the whole area well covered, in case you try to do exactly that.’
They were almost at the cemetery gates now, Jeff noticed. ‘Then what the hell do we do? What’s the point in even meeting like this if we’re just going to do nothing?’
‘You at least want to stay alive, don’t you? What’s the point of charging back up that mountain, the two of us against the whole ASI? How do you think that would pan out, seeing they’re already hunting you?’
He was right, Jeff realized; but even worse was admitting to himself that Lucy and Dan’s hard work stealing the Tau Ceti databases might well have been for nothing. He stood there, feeling utterly impotent, and for a moment saw himself as Mitchell mus see him: idealistic, naive and foolhardy.
‘The best thing we can do right now,’ Mitchell continued, ‘is just keep ourselves alive. Doesn’t anyone else have a copy of that database?’