Выбрать главу

Eighty five measured strides later, she stopped. The Lev said, “Where do you wish to go, Agent Cochran?”

Not in a talkative mood, Sharon tapped the car icon on her Devstick and the door to the Lev slid open, flooding the corridor with a soft blue light. She didn’t sit; the trip would be a short one as her Bulgari T8 was parked right outside the Lev port on level one. Exiting the Lev, a few contemplative moments later, she emerged from the Lev port as the matt black gull-wing door on her T8 rose to the three-quarter position.

Sliding into the custom seat, she tapped manual on the steering wheel. Jurong Island to the southern tip of Sentosa was twenty kiloms. The Travway at this time of night would not be as busy as during the day. For some reason, people still preferred to drive in daylight, but even so, this was New Singapore, and the lion always roared. Her best time was five minutes flat, her new target was four point eight minutes. The barrier light changed and the barrier went up, her foot stamped on the throttle and the T8’s twin turbines sent her airborne as she raced up the ramp, but only for a millisec as the car’s aerodymics came into play, and she was glued to the rubberized surface of the Travway.

Her focus absolute, she allowed herself the luxury of a small smile of satisfaction as the slumbering Devs controlling the norms in their Toyota autopiloted EVs came alive with the computational reality of her velocity among them.

On the other side of New Singapore, fifty kiloms away from where Cochran was weaving through the early morning traffic, a recently promoted level two officer of the Trav Control Center turned to his colleague in alarm. The screen in front of him had swooped from the placid traffic on the Travway on Marina South and focused on the West Coast Travway. The screen flipped image Devs as a vehicle went through their ranges in secs.

“It’s OK lah, it’s just her. She does it nearly every night, and hasn’t hit anyone yet,” his colleague said and turning off the tracker on the vehicle, sat back in his Biosense to watch and marvel at the performance on the screen in front of him.

Sharon glanced at the speedometer and the timer. Speed two hundred and eighty kilos, time at four minutes exactly. She navigated the off-ramp before rapidly decelerating to a hundred and ten kilos for the S-turn that took her into the final half kilo stretch. The ‘Private Road — No Entance’ sign marked her finish line. Four minutes nine secs. A flash of annoyance; it was the S-turn, she could have gone a bit faster there.

Her body massaged by the G-forces exerted during the run from her contribution space, Sharon slowed the T8 to a sturdy prowl as she entered the driveway of her partner’s complex. The Ent residence of the Pres of SingCom was as opulent as one would expect, but Sharon paid little attention to the finely manicured gardens along the driveway nor to the marble fountain she parked behind.

I wonder if Sunita’s awake, she thought. I need her advice.

Sunita Shido had been her lover and mentor since the age of twelve. She hadn’t actually made physical love to her until she was legal, despite Sharon wanting her to, but then Sunita was nothing if not perfectly correct. It had been sixteen years since they had first been introduced.

With a soft metallic click, the gull-wing door shut behind her as she went up the steps, and the Dev, recognizing her, opened the house door without instruction. Never breaking her stride, she marched straight up the steps inside the reception area and at the first landing turned right to walk down the corridor to the master bedroom. Reaching it, the door opened and she walked in.

“You made it so quickly…” Sunita said, smiling and rising naked from the Siteazy; the image of the West Coast Travway on the screen behind her. Her hand snaked around Sharon’s neck and her lips brought the taste of an alky. “I don’t like it when you trav that fast,” she murmured, nuzzling Sharon’s ear.

“It turns me on,” whispered Sharon in a little girl voice, as reaching up with her left hand she found the release strip for her tailored UNPOL outers, just as her right found Sunita’s breast.

Chapter 14

We could talk forever, talking on the Moon

Titanium Mine Shaft, Shackleton Moonbase, The Moon

Friday, 13 December 2109 1:45am

“Jonah, Jonah, wake up.” I felt a hand lightly shaking and squeezing my shoulder. Turning my head away from the wall, I saw Gabriel sitting on the edge of the sleeper I was in. I pushed myself up and lay back resting my weight on my elbows.

“What time is it?”

“It’s 1:45am New Singapore time. You’ve slept for four hours. Here take this, it’ll get you back on your feet.” He handed me a cup, warm on the outside. “We have until 6am. Then we have to get you visible again. Comms are down across the sector but we can only hold that for another four hours, and then we have to put you in a hot tub in the Nineveh,” with this last softly spoken comment Gabriel smiled and patted me on my knee. He crossed the room to a small table in its center.

I looked around the concrete-walled room. It was Spartan: two sleepers lengthwise against each wall, polymer storage racks, black rubberized flooring and next to the small table in the center of the room was a mobile Devcockpit. There must have been at least fifty Devscreens arrayed in a semi circle in front of a Siteazy. It was the largest I had ever seen. In contrast to the setting it was in, it looked singularly out of place. Like a shiny high cred luxury unpacked from a drab package.

Gabriel turned to me, and indicating the Siteazy next to the Devcockpit, said, “Come over here and take a seat. I’ve calculated that it would take me eighteen days, and about forty-six minutes to tell you of all that has happened in the time that we have been separated from each other. Unfortunately we don’t have that kind of time on our hands, so I’m going to have to stick to the problem we have and how we think you can resolve it.”

“Eighteen days, I asked. “Has that much happened since last week?”

Gabriel smiled, his hand resting on the head rest of the Siteazy, but he looked sad to me. “No, I meant since we were parted thirty-four years, fifty-three days, and three hours ago. You were twenty-eight days old, and I was twelve. I’ll tell you what I can in any time we have left over, if we can come up with a solution to our problem.”

I got out of the sleeper and went and sat in the Siteazy. Gabriel sat on the Biosense in the middle of the Devcockpit but turning to the opening of the cockpit put his feet up on the Dev’s manual entry panel, his hands folded into his lap.

I said, “Just do me a favor, OK?”

“Name it.”

“Just speak to me with your voice, OK? No getting into my mind stuff.”

Gabriel laughed loudly and slapped his hand on his thigh.

“OK, we won’t do that.” His face turning serious, he looked me in the eye and said, “But I will have to give you some mental training on how to survive the Truth Treatment and avoid scrutiny from Cochran.”

“Good,” I said, and smiled at him. “Now can you please tell me about this conspiracy, and how I am supposed to save the universe?”

Gabriel grinned a little sheepishly, “Well I might have been just a bit over-dramatic with that one, but then again it depends how you look it, and from where I’m sitting, it’s not far from the truth.”

The screen of the Dev was split into a multitude of past and present images, text and sounds, arranged in a two hundred and seventy degree arc extending upwards at about a forty-five degree angle. I couldn’t see the side nearest me, but on the wall behind Gabriel I could see images of UNPOL units on the Moon.