It took me an hour, but I told her everything. Right up to the point that I’d been hypnotized by Gabriel and was thus able to avoid the consequences of the ad hoc Truth Treatment which she’d told me about.
She let out a deep breath, her cheeks ballooning for a moment, then she turned her face to me and said, “Wow Jonah. You really know how to show a girl an exciting time, don’t you.”
“You believe me then?”
“Yes, of course I do. I wish I didn’t, but I think everything you’ve told me happened as you’ve said. I can see it too, the planning, the execution. I was pulled off the Gabriel case after my meeting with you, and when you were cleared of any involvement. Since then I’ve only seen the updates on the feed, but there’s always some level of rumor within SOE, and the rumor was that the runner had gotten away clean, not traceable. But yes, I see your part and why they need you.”
“Sir Thomas’s move out of UNPOL, and the revised Tag Law — the things I penned for that eloquently delivered resignation speech — it’s happening now. They’re making their move.”
“Yes, but from where I sit, Gabriel’s made his move too. Look, you’re in, you’re your uncle’s writer and have a secure line into his base Dev. That puts you in his inner circle first degree, right?”
“Yes, it does. I’ve got no idea where to start.”
“We can work that out. But I think the first thing we can do is to review the information that Gabriel put on your Devstick and tell Gabriel that you’ve remembered.”
“Won’t that be risky?”
“Not if we just reply that you’re awake.”
“Thanks for using ‘we’. You’ve no idea how good that makes me feel right now.”
She smiled and, leaning forward, kissed me. She said, “Look, we both know this is really serious, but we can work this out.”
“You can’t tell anyone at SOE about this. We have no idea who we can trust and who is a Hawk.”
“No, I won’t tell anyone. If Cochran and Sir Thomas are Hawks, you can bet that UNPOL and SOE are riddled with them. It wouldn’t be hard to manipulate the selection boards. I’ll have to stay clear of Cochran though. With her telepathic ability she could probe my mind and discover what we know.”
“Gabriel said that telepathy works best when both subjects cooperate and are within a few meters of each other. That doesn’t mean she couldn’t probe you without your knowing. It just means that you’ll have to try and avoid her and think innocent thoughts when she’s around. When’s your next security clearance check?”
“Not till March,” she said, frowning, thinking hard. “And that’s our deadline. The Popvote for the Tag law comes then. March the 15th, right? So that’s the time frame. We’ve got at least two and a half months and during that time I can be in SOE, working on the inside. After that and before my next security clearance check, I’ll take leave.”
“Won’t that be suspicious?”
She smiled at me with a sideways look over her shoulder. “Not if I’m pregnant. I love your new, well, old, name, by the way. Mark Anthony Zumar. It’s beautiful.”
I smiled back. “You better keep calling me Jonah for now. If anyone heard you calling me Mark — ”
She cut me off with a finger to my lips and a stern look on her face. “Don’t worry, when we leave this cave, you’re Jonah, but we’re going to have to get you trained up in some of the basics of my craft and we’re going to have to get you fit. No more croissants for you.”
“After today, OK. After today.”
“Sure, we’ll start tomorrow. And then I’ll set you up with a routine to follow.”
I nodded and said, “OK. Come on, let’s get out of here. I’m getting cold,” and folding the Devstick, the cave plunged into darkness — a thin sliver of light coming from the underwater entrance to the sea. I heard her slip into the water with a small splash, and slipped silently into the water next to her. We kicked off together and dived down, back into the light. Coming out of the cave I almost swam into a black-tip reef shark, which quickly swam away, frightened of me. Swimming with sharks, I thought. We’re swimming with the sharks.
Chapter 24
SingCom Residence, North Palm Beach, Sentosa Island, New Singapore
Wednesday 1 January 2110, 6:50am +8 UTC
Cochran woke but didn’t open her eyes or move. It was a trained habit of hers, the chance to observe through sound what was happening around her without changing what was happening around her. Once, when she was still a little girl, she had fallen ill with a high fever and had spent a few days in the infirmary at the Dorm where she and other gifted orphans were housed when not engaged with the acquisition of knowledge or skills.
Two other girls had visited her. She could see the outline of their bodies through the transparent plastic oxygenated tent that she was kept in, but could not make out who they were. She was drugged and hallucinatory from the drugs and fever, but while she could not see clearly out, neither could the two girls see clearly in. Although they had told the matron that they were her friends and the matron had believed them, she did not have any friends and the two girls, in the manner of little girls, who can be extremely cruel, had come to be mean to her in her moment of weakness.
She hadn’t moved, and had listened. The plastic tent muffled the sound of their voices at first, but she could gradually make out that they were gloating at her, joking about pulling out the oxygen tube to the tent. She was not concerned about that. If they did pull the tube out she was sure an alarm would go off. What she was concerned with was finding out who these two were. She had strained and focused her hearing, as she had been taught, and narrowed down the choices by process of elimination. First there were the visual clues, height and size. She dismissed more than half of her class. Hair color eliminated half again and then she had heard the name, Sally, and confirmed one of her choices. Knowing who Sally’s friends were narrowed down the remaining teaser to one of two choices. The teasing girls finally left, bored with being mean, when the recipient didn’t respond. As their heels had clacked across the floor of the infirmary, Cochran had opened her eyes. The girls left without ever being aware that she had in fact heard, and been hurt by, everything they had said, although she would have denied both vehemently.
She occupied the rest of her time in the infirmary planning how to exact revenge on the three girls. The fact that one of the three was innocent of doing her wrong didn’t factor in. By the end of the year all three had gone. Two for cheating in knowledge retention tests, despite swearing their innocence, and the third paralyzed from the neck down and destined to spend a year in regen, when the uneven bars that she practiced on for hours in the gym alone strangely collapsed as she performed a Korbut flip.
This morning, Cochran sensed nothing other than the chirping and singing of birds outside, the metronomic tick-tock of the grandfather clock in the room and the steady breathing of Sunita next to her in the sleeper.
She cracked an eye open and saw that Sunita was still asleep. She rose and walked to the en-suite, stripping off the inners she had slept in and dumping them in the sanitization unit. She stepped into the shower and said, “Auto pulse stream”. The hot water cascaded down and she smoothed her hair with her hands, thinking that she must look her best today, for the images that would be broadcast would be of the new Director of UNPOL.
Although the selection committee consisted of five, the outgoing Director, Sir Thomas, had great influence and had assured her, before leaving, that he would support her nomination as his replacement. She would be the youngest person and first female ever to occupy the role in UNPOL and its predecessor Interpol. She jumped at the feel of hands on her back, lost in her thoughts and her hearing impaired by the stream of water splashing on her head.