A borrower, he thought. That’s what it can be. I can string together a sequence that when activated borrows the code from other code in the Dev. Then it’s just a wait for start sequence code and a sequence code. That would keep it small.
He reclined in the Siteazy and using both hands brushed his hair back and sucked in a long breath. And held it. He closed his eyes and cast thoughts aside as they came. Clearing his mind. He pictured himself with an old fashioned broom sweeping dry leaves off a bare cement floor. Slowly, he exhaled through his nose. More thoughts snuck in. The broom went back and forth, back and forth. Let it go. He opened his eyes and stretched his fingers onto the input tablet in front of him. He began to type.
Mariko lay on the molded plastic sleeper. The room that she was in was two meters long and three wide. It was colored white. It reminded her of the White Room in UNPOL. She’d had a tour when that room was first built. This room had none of the special effects of the White Room but it was still a long time. All she knew was that she had been stupid. How could she not have been more aware? Dumb. She suspected that it must have been Sir Thomas who had grabbed her but she didn’t know. She hadn’t seen anyone. She idly wondered how long it would take for her to go insane if she was stuck in here for a long time. Don’t think like that. Basic crisis training, stay positive and look for a solution. She assumed she was being watched. The meals gave some clue — she knew from her biological clock when she was hungry but as they had drugged the food she had no real idea of time.
She had expected to be questioned. But it never happened. A positive sign, she thought, and fought against the despair that the reason they didn’t need to question her was because she had been eliminated. Pushed into a hole and forgotten. No, they still feed you. Stay positive and in control of yourself. She hadn’t said anything. Hadn’t asked why she was being kept captive. She was following training. Do not provide any unnecessary information unless you really have to. Asking why she was here was irrelevant.
She’d adopted her ‘hard face’ for the benefit of whoever might be watching, and tried not to think about Jonah and how he would be feeling with her gone. She knew he would blame himself for not being able to protect her. She knew that and smiled. Him protect her — it was a funny thought that distracted her from her surroundings for a sec. She felt guilty for not being there to protect him. For exposing him to the dangers of her captivity. Don’t. Pointless exercise. Guilt is negative. Use the time you have.
She closed her eyes to the light in the room and continued to write the poem she had been working on. It was in her head. She carefully thought of each new word before adding it to the ones already there. By her count she’d spent about three hours on the last word and she smiled again. It had been worth it. Torpor. Euphoria in Torpor. A whole new line to think about. The luxury of having an entire day to think of a single word to describe something. Captivity. Bring it on.
Maloo had left Melbourne traveling in the same Levtube but leaving fifteen mins before Jonah’s. He shifted his bulk on the seat and stared at the little white dot progressing its way down a line of connected white dots. He formed an image in his mind. A future bark painting or maybe rock. Yeah, rock.
Maloo was going to Bangkok to set up the Wigley kill. Jonah would be the one to do it but Maloo would prepare the ground. He shifted the backpack containing his clothes to a more comfortable position on his lap and leant his elbows on top, his chin cupped in his hands. His massive shoulders and the look on his face gave him the appearance of a bull about to charge. Yet he hated violence in all of its aspects. It was the only thing he did hate.
A while later, he took a hand off the backpack and felt in the pocket of his bottom outers. The diamonds were still there. All two million creds’ worth. Easily enough to get what he needed in Bangkok and pay so well that no one would say a thing for fear of losing the rich life ahead of them. He glanced around the Lev. None of the other five passengers had noticed his surreptitious feel of the stones.
The painting continued to develop in his mind. Connected white dots, large to small diameter. Two lines next to each other. A white rectangle. A sorry business, he thought in Waalpiri, using the term they use for a funeral. To represent six billion, the stars in the sky as people. He wondered how this painting would unfold.
Cochran landed her new Bell 400 VTOL (Vertical Take Off and Landing) Turbo-charged Heliocopter on the lawn in front of the SingCom residence. The copter’s blades retracted with a whir and clunk into the space behind the pilot’s seat where she sat. She exhaled steadily and softly. Red-lining it all the way in, in a straight line, she’d covered the distance from UNPOL in 1:59 min. Her mind flicked back to Jonah getting into the Lev in Melbourne. An intuitive sense of unease rose in her gut. Something was wrong with him being out of sight for three days with Annika Bardsdale.
She climbed out of the angular nose of the Bell’s cockpit and stood beside the machine. The warm New Singapore night quiet on the dark lawn. Tomorrow, no today, she thought with a glance at her Devstick — it’s 2:18am — I’ll get the little fat Arab girl, Fatima, to run a scenario on Bardsdale and Jonah. Thinking of Fatima made her think of Marty. She looked at the mansion in front of her, biting her lip. Bitch. She felt bested by Marty and hadn’t forgotten any of the slights or her arrogance. But I got you, she thought. I got you good.
No you didn’t. She escaped. You don’t have her. You didn’t think she’d get away. You thought you would pick her up the next day. You failed. Again.
She didn’t like this voice. And it was speaking up more often. The more she succeeded, the more the voice had to say about her failings. She wanted to stop it but she didn’t know how. It seemed it was never satisfied.
You lost. You lost Martine Shorne and you lost Gabriel Zumar. You had them both -
Wait. Shut up. That’s it. That’s where I’ve seen him before. Walking with Bo Vinh. The images that Shorne presented. Jonah James Oliver is Philip Zumar’s son. Gabriel, the runner, is his brother. And Sir Thomas made him his nephew. But why? She chewed her lower lip and folded her arms across her chest. Then, twisting her upper lip between a thumb and a forefinger, she contemplated her revelation.
Cochran strolled slowly across the lawn to the door of the mansion, thinking it would be hard to sleep now, wondering if Sunita would be awake.
Chapter 34
Outskirts of Bangkok, Outside the Residence of Jonathan Wigley
Friday 14 February 2110, 10:25pm +7 UTC
The cicadas sang loud enough to cover the sounds of me climbing over the wall. I felt an urgent need to urinate. A mosquito buzzed around my ear. I felt it land and a moment later took a hand off the ladder that went up the wall in front of me to rub the bite.
I needed to urinate badly. I knew it was nerves but I still needed to pee. I couldn’t. It would leave too much trace. I thought about getting off the ladder and retracing my steps along the bottom of the wall to the Titan parked half a kilom away but dismissed the thought. I brought my bladder under control and took out one of the small sealable bags that Maloo had given me. I took out my cock and put it in the bag. Closing the seal around my cock, not too tightly, I relaxed.
My pee sounded loud to me as I scrunched over, crouching and hanging off the bottom rung of the ladder that went up Wigley’s wall. I changed angle so the splash would hit the side of the bag. It was quieter. I squeezed out the last drop and shook off, taking the bag off my cock, sealing it and placing it in a zipped pocket. On my way to kill someone with a bag of my own pee in my pocket.