“That’s it. That’s my lie. It’s a beautiful lie, because it led me to you, but I can’t live with it and with you at the same time. One of you has to go. I hope it’s the lie.”
My mouth had fallen open while she was talking and it remained that way as I looked at her, my head resting in the palm of my hand and the beer swaying gently to and fro. I didn’t say anything, couldn’t think of anything to say. All of a sudden I had no idea who she was.
“Is Mariko your real name?” I finally asked.
“Yes. Look, it was for those hours on the flight back from Shackleton only and my brief was to question you about your activities on the Moon. You set off an alarm in the trace center — it was the link between the Nineveh you booked and the Nineveh in the interview. The transcribe matched the two, but it wasn’t spotted until you were already at Shackleton and so they sent me up to intercept and question you. I didn’t know about the Truth Treatment until we were on the craft and then I received the order through my Devstick.”
I tilted my head to stare at the ceiling, resting it on an arm folded behind me as I took a long pull of my beer. I breathed out heavily and let the bottle drop by my side. My voice flat I turned to her and said, “Did the lie stop when we woke up together?”
Mariko looked at me as a tear rolled from her left eye. Her voice, caught on the edge of a sob, said, “The lie stopped at the Lev port on Changi.”
After replaced the beer in its holder, I reached out with the same hand and held it in the space between us, palm upward, little finger curled in. She took my hand and I said, “Well that’s all right then.”
Mariko sobbed out loud and came out her seat as if ejected from it, throwing herself lengthways on me, her arms encircling my neck as her tears fell on my throat. I pulled my hands from behind my head and placed them on the sides of her face, lifting her gently to look at me.
“Please don’t lie to me ever again,” I said, gazing deep into her tear-brimmed eyes.
Rising up on one elbow, she wiped tears away with her forearm, smiled at me and sobbed at the same time. I leaned forward and kissed her. She opened her mouth and probed with her tongue into mine, holding the sides of my face now and pulling me into her hard as if trying to swallow me. She disengaged her mouth and sat up on me with a wild look in her eye, her hair in disarray as she reached down with her hands and yanked up the chrome tank top.
Chapter 22
The Marq V, Penthouse Env, Sir Thomas’s New Singapore Residence
Tuesday 31 December 2109, 11:50pm +8 UTC
In the bedroom of his Penthouse at the exclusive Marq V Envplex, Sir Thomas stood on the raised Dias next to his enormous sleeper, and looked out over the airships, ocean liners and private yachts tethered to spine-like piers and floating off moorings in the dark of the harbor.
There was very little traffic in the harbor now that the hour was approaching midnight. It wasn’t raining for a change, and he told the door to the balcony to open, stepping out into the warm night and walking to the railing. The view was spectacular, looking out over the South China Sea, the ships with all their lights on in celebration of the New Year, lighting up the pitch black sea, the Moon a sliver of silver. He took in a deep breath of the warm sea air, although at this height the taste of salt was minimal — it had to be imagined.
In another five minutes, his image would be broadcast for the world to see, and the culmination of a decade’s worth of planning would be put into motion. The hole cards were dealt, the river down, and now the betting and bluffing would begin. He clenched his fists in anticipation, turned, and walked along the balcony until he had reached the door to the living room which had been set up for the broadcast.
Dressed in a blue shirt with the collar open at the neck and an old fashioned woolen jumper over khaki pants, complete with suede brogues on his feet and no socks, his ankles felt cool. He went indoors, sitting at the far end of a beige sofa. He checked his image in the Devscreen opposite him and rubbed his cheeks to put some color into them, a rosiness that led to the kind ‘Uncle Tom’ image that they wanted to portray.
He looked at the time on his Devstick and then put it away and faced the camera Dev, smiling. A timer in the camera Devscreen opposite him counted down to midnight and a red light went on at top of the camera.
“Happy New Year, my fellow humans, and welcome to year 2110. I have chosen this time to announce my resignation from the post of Director of UNPOL. I requested that my resignation be accepted by the Board of Governors and they have graciously acceded to my wish. I have requested only that I may be allowed to perform one last task: that of catching and stopping the terrorists who have sought to cast our world back into darkness with their actions in Paris and New Manhattan. My promise to the family and friends of those who were lost in those cowardly attacks will be honored and in this too the Board of Governors has been gracious in allowing me to achieve this last contribution to you, my fellow humans.
“My years at UNPOL have been happy ones for me and I know that I will leave this fine organization in strong capable hands when the Board of Governors chooses its next Director. It is traditional that the departing Director offers words of advice for his replacement. I am going to break with that tradition. Instead, on behalf of the children of the Oliver Foundation, for their future, I am going to offer my advice to all of you out there on our beautiful planet.
“My advice is simple but heartfelt, and please think of it as the wish of an old man passing into the twilight of his years, with no motive other than to see his fellow humans prosper in perpetuity. My wish is that you embrace the new Personal Unique Identification Law. Embrace it as brothers and sisters who have nothing to fear from each other, as it will exclude those who wish to create terror and unbalance this beautiful society we have built.
“Thank you, my fellow humans, for allowing me to contribute as I have to UNPOL these many years. Thank you.”
The clock on the Devscreen read 12:08am as I watched my uncle, my lips moving with the words he spoke.
I lay on a futon in the living room of the beach house watching the Devscreen we had hung on the wall. Mariko lay with her head on my lap, yawning as she flipped the page of a book she was reading. She saw me and turned to look at the screen. She hadn’t been watching, absorbed in her book, ‘A Tail Of Two Zos’ by Nomis Elroy.
She sat up, slapped my thigh lightly and said, “You wrote it?”
“Wrote what?”
“The speech he’s giving. You wrote it, didn’t you? Waving the book at the Devscreen.”
“Er, yes. But that has to be our secret. OK?”
“Yes, of course, but how could you? I mean the Tag Law, you don’t support that do you?”
“No, not support, but then I’m not against it either.”
“Then how could you write that, if you don’t believe in it?”
“Well, Sir Thomas asked for my help, and I could hardly turn him down could I? So I just imagined I was a slightly xenophobic conspiracy theory nut and went from there.”
Mariko gave a full-throated laugh and then said, “That’s kind of cynical wouldn’t you say?”
“I suppose it is, but they’re really his words, not mine. I just made them sound better.”
“Yes, but you’re playing a pretty significant role in this. I mean what if the Tag really gets voted in?”
“There’s a good chance it will from what I’ve seen on the surveys so far. This is just Sir Thomas’s last hurrah, another shining example of civic duty to be laid on the pyre when his time has come.”
“Are you sure? He looks pretty serious about it.”
“Oh he’s serious enough. I just think that it will happen irrespective of the speech. So writing it doesn’t make a difference”