The Marq V, Penthouse Env, Sir Thomas’s New Singapore Residence
Friday 31 January 2110, 11:00pm +8 UTC
On the table between us sat a crystal bottle of one hundred and fifty-five year old Macallan Lalique Scotch whisky. It was half empty. The remainder was in our stomachs. We sat side by side looking out over the Topside of New Singapore. The evening was warm and humid. Dark clouds moved level with our view as we sat. Each of us silent with our own thoughts. I picked up the whisky and took another sip. I was not really a whisky drinker but Sir Thomas was an aficionado and had told me the rare whisky cost one hundred and twenty thousand cred. I calculated that I had thirty thousand creds’ worth rolling around in my stomach. But I focused, fighting not to let the whisky take control of my senses. I had to stay sharp.
We had dined together at the now refurbished UNPOL Executive Club. Sir Thomas had eaten there every night since it had been blown up. In defiance of the terrorists, the newsfeeds reported. I had spent a lot of time with Sir Thomas these last few weeks. I’d defended his name, as he had mine, against the crazy, libelous, terrorist. Annika Bardsdale had come out in support of me and announced my decision to work with her and the Social Responsibility Party in stopping the Tag Law. Sir Thomas had used my appointment as Annika’s arbitrator as further proof of his tolerance for difference of opinion and opposition to his view.
Over dinner, in public, we had discussed his memoir. I had fleshed it out since that first draft outline and it now had some meat on its bones. Another fifteen thousand words or so and it’d be ready for sending to Harpers.
Sir Thomas had agreed to go with Harpers as publishers and we’d signed a deal with them for a single book to be released on the 15 March 2010, the day of the Tag Law Popvote.
It was hard writing the memoir because my heart wasn’t in it. I struggled to get a flow. I had sent the first few chapters to Harper’s editor and it came back covered in red changes. They obviously didn’t think much of my writing and if it had been anything less than Sir Thomas’s memoirs, I doubt that they’d have kept me on as the ghostwriter. I told Sir Thomas that the writing was my gift to him, that the memoir would be published under his name.
Initially he had protested. “Nonsense boy. You have to take the credit.” But after just a little persuasion, he accepted.
Gabriel’s letter was dismissed as the desperate ramblings of a wanted man. Slurring two of society’s finest individuals, Gabriel had found little sympathy with his fellow humans. Sir Thomas pointed to the evidence of how he tried to help Gabriel’s mother before she committed suicide and that this had deranged the boy who became an insane driven man. It had also drawn us closer together, in Sir Thomas's eyes.
I was surprised at some of the vitriol that came forth as a result of the newsfeeds’ interest in me, digging up people I could hardly remember from my student days. These old classmates delivered stinging character slurs. More news portraits were drawn by opponents in court cases, especially from my early days, painting me as arrogant and ruthless. I realized this was Gabriel at work. Supporting me with Sir Thomas, making it appear as if I were ‘a chip off the old block’ as he often said lately.
I had gotten into a routine. Up at 4:30am. Fifteen minutes for dressing, stretching and warming up. Then the ten kilom run on the beach. Mariko running beside me. She’d been assigned as my bodyguard, after I asked Sir Thomas if he could arrange it. We ran to Kampung Bugis and back. We had the run down to forty-nine minutes, which on the sand was a fast time. After the cool down, we’d have a swim and sometimes a chat in the cave to catch up on our plans. Then I’d have a coffee and by 6:30am, get to work writing. I wrote solidly until noon. A light lunch of fish and vegetables and I’d go back and edit what I’d written, taking as my examples the chapters heavily revised by Harper’s Editor. By 4pm I’d be done editing and we’d go to a spot we had worn clear in the jungle and spar. Gloves and headgear on, I was still no match for Mariko as we shadow-fought. Getting as close as we could to hitting one another without actually making contact. It taught control, timing and focus.
An hour of sparring and we’d return. Shower and have dinner. Then at 6:30pm I would sit down and turn to the legal case, sometimes writing until midnight. Most nights I stopped before 11pm and got some sleep. I broke the routine, three days in seven, going down to New Singapore with Mariko discreetly armed and by my side. She would leave me alone with Sir Thomas while he recounted his past to me. How much was fiction and how much was truth I had no idea and no way to know. It didn’t matter. The point was to make him trust me. To bond.
The dinner tonight had been his idea. When we’d finished he had taken my elbow in his bony hand and steered me away from the Lev port and back across Topside to his penthouse. His bodyguards in front and Mariko trailing us, we came up to his penthouse to, ‘have a drink and a chat’. Charles had let us in.
The bodyguards and Mariko stayed in the living room while Sir Thomas grabbed the whisky and two heavy lead crystal glasses and led me out onto the balcony.
We sat in darkness, the lights from the city providing enough light to see our shapes but not much else.
He sighed a long, drawn out sigh.
“This has been a messy business getting the Tag Law in place. What have you learned from Bardsdale?”
“She’s planning on using the Rape laws to prevent the Tag Law. The Rape law states no person may be violated without their permission. It’s possible to argue that the injection qualifies as a violation of one’s body.”
“Whose idea was this?”
“Mine.”
“And is it a solid case?”
“Yes it is. There are actually some precedents, which I have shown Annika, that support the position.”
“I see, and — ”
“And it’s solid, but not watertight,” I said, and smiled a low grin at him. He smiled back.
“Go on.”
“The precedents I chose were all individual against individual or corporation, i.e. a private entity against another private entity. And if that were the case, then they would hold up. The problem with the position is that this is not a private entity. It is the will of the people and therefore cannot constitute violation of an individual because an individual is the people.”
Sir Thomas chuckled and took a belt of his whisky, looking at me over the rim of the glass. He glanced inside the living room of his penthouse to see if the guards and Mariko were still sitting in the same place, then he leant closer to me.
“How are you going to disengage from her and the party?”
“I’ll have a change of heart just before the final presentations of the differing sides of the argument. That should be on March 14. Without me, they’ll use their party arbitrator, and your lawyer can tear him to shreds.”
He chuckled and poured us each another shot. Then he launched into a soft-voiced rambling discourse, intermittently pouring us double, then triple shots from the bottle, talking about the Tag Law and the control it would bring. From the Tag Law somehow he segued into Darwin and the natural law of selection. Leaning back in his lounge chair and saying softly, almost a whisper, “Technology has betrayed Darwin’s natural law. Nature needs help.”
His words sent a shiver through me in the warm night air. And then he fell silent, and we sat side by the side the half-empty bottle of Macallan’s between us. I waited, alert, but feigning a sluggish drowsiness.
His voice came out of the darkness. I had to strain to hear what he was saying.
“It took me a long time to be sure that you were ready, but this work you’ve done for me, with Bardsdale, tells me you are. Are you ready, Jonah?”
Clearing my throat heavily and sitting up slowly in the lounge chair I said, “Ready for what, Uncle?”
“Are you ready for power, Jonah. Pure power. The power of life and death. The power to change people’s lives. The power to do anything you want. Are you ready for that?”
I turned my head slowly to look at him. I smelt his excitement and I could see, in the shadow outline, a tremor in his jowls. His eyes caught a glint of the light from the living room, giving them a yellowish glow. The hatred I felt for him put an edge in my voice. I hissed a sharp, cold-voiced, urgent, “Yes, I’m ready.”
“Are you sure? I have had my doubts in the past but lately you’ve shown me a side of you that I hadn’t appreciated. Perhaps because I wasn’t paying close enough attention. But now I feel you’ve become the man I wanted you to be. You’re like me in so many ways, but you are your own man and you’ll make your own destiny. This is no trivial matter. If you are ready, truly ready, and remember what I said about the power of life and death, then tell me so. But think hard before you answer because there is no turning back. If you say yes, you will be asked to take a test of loyalty to me, to us, and failure to pass that test is death. You say yes and then you are one of us for life.”
“Who is us?”
“Are you ready? Life and death, Jonah. Are you capable of that kind of decision? Are you sure you are ready?”
I felt spittle hit my hand as he spoke, and used the darkness to hide wiping the back of my hand on my outer leggings. I sat silent, my brain hurtling at maniacal speed with the thought that this was it. This was the moment we’d been working towards since my trip to the Moon. He was asking me to join the Hawks.
Using my hatred for him, I said in an even, soft voice, “Yes, I am capable of a life or death decision. I am sure I am ready. I was trained for this moment wasn’t I? You trained me. All those special schools, the exercise and mental regimes I went through. This is my destiny, is it not?”
“It is, Jonah. It is, and it gives me great pleasure to hear your words. ‘Us’ is the Hawks, Jonah. Not everything in that runner’s letter was a lie. The Hawks are very real and I am a very senior Hawk. Now that I have told you this simple truth, you will die a Hawk. There is no going back now.”
A quiet panic spread through me as his words sunk in. Survival was never a priority but his words squashed that hope with the finality and certainty of their tone. ‘You will die a Hawk’.
He stood up, supporting himself on my armrest as he rose. He said, “Wait here. I have a gift for you.” And he walked around me down the length of the balcony, past the living room and stopped at the large windows of his sleeping room, tapping softly on the clearfilm windows. Someone, I guessed Charles, opened the door from within and he stepped out of sight.
I dared not show any reaction. My mind was racing. I sat up straighter then I reached down and picked up my glass of whisky, taking a long swallow.
Sir Thomas came back out onto the balcony, his silhouette blocking the blood red light of the SingCom sign behind him. He walked over and knelt by the side of my lounge chair obscuring the view of those inside the living room. I turned to face him. I could smell the whisky on his breath. I could see a bubble of spittle on his lip.
“Here, take this. You’re going to need it,” his voice rasped, and he slid something out of his sleeve. Holding the armrest of my chair and feeling for my arm, he slipped his hand down until he felt mine, and placed there something cold and heavy. He pushed my hand away until it was in my lap. He took out his Devstick and used the glow from its screen to show me the dagger in its scabbard.
It was about thirty-six cents long with a silver chain hanging from the cross guard. An SS sign and an Eagle with its wings spread were inset into handle. I was shocked that I was holding something from that evil time. The shadows cast from the light of his Devstick made him look ghoulish as he reached over and, taking the dagger by its handle, slowly withdrew the blade from its scabbard. There were German words written on it. ‘Meine Ehre heisst Treue’.
“What does it mean?” I whispered.
He cleared his throat and spat into a plant pot next to my chair, groaning as he stood up, with one hand supporting his back. “‘My Honor is Loyalty’. On the reverse side it says, ‘With Cordial Comradeship from Heinrich Himmler’. He was a German officer and leader of the SS before and during the Second World war. I was born on the same date — the 7th of October — as him. Over a hundred years apart of course, but I have always admired his strength of purpose. His ideas were extremely advanced for his time. He gave 200 of these daggers to the men who helped him achieve his masterplan. A plan that began with a night called, ‘The Night of the Long Knives’.”
He walked around me and sat back down in the lounge chair next to mine. The thought came to me that he made no sound when he walked. The dagger felt heavy in my hands. Another thought arrived. I felt it come from the dagger. This was the dagger that killed my mother. I was sure of it. I pulled the blade fully out of its scabbard and looked across in the dark at the outline of Sir Thomas. After a moment, I pushed the dagger back into its scabbard and reached for the whisky on the table. Taking a huge swallow, feeling the burn of it down my throat, I slowed my breathing and my thoughts. I could hear him breathing next to me. Another surge of hot hatred came. I took another swallow of the whisky.
The crystal glass suddenly shattered in my hand. I had squeezed too tight. The top half had collapsed into the bottom and I felt blood seeping from my hand. Sir Thomas didn’t seem to have noticed. I put my broken glass back on the table, with a thump.
“Oh damn. Sorry, I’ve just broken your glass.”
“Don’t worry about that. Get yourself another from the cabinet. We have things that we have to talk about urgently.”
I got up from the chair and, putting the dagger on it, crossed to the sliding doors. Opening the clearfilm doors to the living room, I went inside. A single lamp near the door lit the room in a soft yellow light. Mariko, still in UNPOL uniform, didn’t say anything but looked questioningly at my hand. I shook my head softly with a glance to the bodyguards, who watched me when I came in, and then professionally looked away.
I got a new glass from the cabinet and, wrapping a tissue around the bleeding wound, went back out to the balcony. Sir Thomas hadn’t moved. His dark shape stared forward, his back hard up against the chair, arms on the armrests, the glint of a glass in his left hand. I picked up the dagger as I sat down, placing it back in my lap, then I twisted over to take the top off the whisky bottle and poured myself another shot. The little walk had done me good — I was back in control and focused again. The alcohol and my emotions had got the better of me. For a while back there I had come close, too close, to plunging the dagger into his chest. The whisky sat like a smoldering fire in my belly, waiting for the winds of my emotions to fan it. Be cool, Jonah. Stay cool, stay calm, learn and think.
“Jonah,” Sir Thomas hissed.
I jumped in my seat, startled. “Yes, Uncle.”
“I want you to do something for me. It is a test of your loyalty to me and to us as Hawks. Will you do it?”
“Yes. What is it you want me to do?”
“I want you,” his voice changed and he turned and leaned very close, putting his mouth next to my ear, almost a lover’s kiss, “to kill someone for me.”
I sat dead still. His words running through my brain. I felt stone cold sober. I cleared my throat, to be sure that there wasn’t a quaver in my voice, and didn’t turn to face him.
“Who is it that you want me to kill?” As I said this my brain was running through the list of people it could be. For a panicked sec I thought he might order me to kill Mariko in the living room. I sucked in air sharply. If he did that I’d kill him and we’d just have to take our chances with the bodyguards and Charles.
“Someone. Anyone. It doesn’t matter. What matters is the commitment. Kill and bring me evidence of your kill. Then I’ll believe that you can make life or death decisions. The greatest generals all cared for their men, and didn’t hesitate to spend them to attain their goals. This is no different.”
I exhaled slowly. We’ve already committed a crime together, I thought. This. Talking like this is conspiracy to murder. Enough to have both of us put in containment for years. I have to kill someone. Or I will die.
“When?”
“Within two weeks. You have until Friday week. Do it. Don’t get caught and don’t tell anyone what you are going to do. Especially not her.” He tilted his head and rolled his eyes in the direction of the living room. “If we decide later to bring her in, she’ll have to go through the same test of loyalty. But until then. Not a word.”
A test of loyalty or a tool for blackmail? I thought.
Sir Thomas continued with the same breathy quality to his voice: sexy in a woman, scary coming from the mouth of a seventy-five year old lunatic. “Events are moving fast. I need you to get through the test and join me. I want you to be by my side as these events unfold. He paused and leaned closer, reaching out with his hand he turned my face to his. He’s going to kiss me, I thought, shrinking back in the seat. But instead he spoke softly, his sweaty hand tenderly cupping my cheek. “If you can’t do this thing for me, then this will be our last two weeks on Earth together.” His eyelids lowered and he squinted through them looking directly into mine.
“What do I get when I do this?” I said, staring at him hard.
He smiled. “When you do this thing for me, I promise you power like you could never imagine.”
He patted my cheek lightly before standing up with a grunt. I looked up at him, my hands folded in my lap over the dagger. My sight impaired by a stray hair falling down over my eyes. I reached up and swept the hair out of the way, not taking my eyes off him. The reason for the two bodyguards became clear as I saw him shake his head slightly while facing the clearfilm windows of the living room. If I had refused I had no doubt my death would have been a dual suicide with Mariko, off Sir Thomas’s balcony. Or perhaps a staged crash on the Travway. Either way we wouldn’t have survived the night.
He seemed smaller in the dark, and his shoulders were slumped. He turned sharply almost as if on a parade ground. And then stopped and turned to me. “You better hide that,” he said, nodding at the dagger. I rose from the seat and slipped the dagger into the back of my bottom outers and lifted my jacket over it. I rolled my shoulders and shook my hands. He looked me up and down and then sniffed in loudly and tugged at his jacket. Straightening, his shoulders square and with his chest puffed out, he chuckled and clasped my arm.
“Come on. Let’s sally forth, eh?” he said, chuckling again as he opened the door and walked inside. The guards and Mariko came to attention sharply when Sir Thomas and I entered the room.
“At ease. At ease everyone. Relax. No need to be formal. It’s late and we’ve all had a long day. Mark…” I jumped at hearing the name, but realized he was talking to one of his bodyguards, “… please escort Jonah and Operative Mariko to their vehicle.”
“Sir!” The bodyguard, who I now knew was called Mark, saluted Sir Thomas and went to the door. He opened it, stepped outside and closed it after himself. I turned to Mariko and smiled. She didn’t smile back but stood with her legs apart and her hands behind her back in an informal ‘at ease’ position.
“Shall we?” I said and held out my hand to her. She smiled at me then and ignoring my hand walked towards the door. Sir Thomas put his arm out in front of her and clasped her arm as she passed him. Taking her hand in his, he brought it to his lips and said, “My dear, I do apologize for being such a terrible host this evening, but in my defense, Jonah and I had some very serious matters to discuss. I look forward to having the opportunity to address my failure as a host in short order.”
Mariko smiled at him and left her hand in his. “Oh please don’t apologize, Sir Thomas. I think it’s wonderful how you and Jonah get on so well.”
Sir Thomas patted her hand and released it, smiling at her. His eyes puffy and bloodshot in the rimless round glasses. I crossed to Mariko and put my hand in the small of her back as we walked to the door. She put a hand out behind her to hold me back and pulled the door swiftly open, stepping through, her head moving from side to side. I saw through the gap of the door that Mark stood in the foyer next to the Lev port. The Lev door was open and a soft chiming noise came from it.
Mark left us only when we had climbed into our Titan, and Mariko had given him the thumbs-up from cockpit. I had bought the Titan in the week after Gabriel’s letter, worried about Mariko traveling on Levs. I slumped in the co-pilot’s Siteazy, too tired to even think about driving. Mariko took over and I looked out of the window at the world going by. Soon we were clear of the city and traveling up the Intracoastal Travway towards Sisik, still about two hundred and sixty kiloms away according to the Dev on the console.
Mariko was driving fast as we passed long-haulers transporting goods north to the markets of the Thai and China Geographics. My thoughts swayed, from ‘how do I get out of this?’ to ‘how do I choose who to kill?’
“Can you pull over?” I said with some urgency. Mariko glanced at me, her focus on the Travway, and suddenly my weight shifted sharply right as she swung through five lanes of traffic and took the off-ramp, rapidly decelerating. About two hundred meters farther down the road from the off-ramp, she pulled over at the side of the road. I went down the stairs, opened the door and got out into the cool night air. Here, without the heat of the city, the air was about twenty-three cel. I breathed in deeply, the hum of wheels on the Travway loud in the still night. My feet crunched the gravel on the side of the road. The jungle dark in front of me.
Who to kill?
The heat in my stomach boiled up and a surge of liquid rose in my chest. I fought it but my brain took a dive like an out of control Lev heading down into blackness. The heat surged again and I threw up. The dinner and about sixty thousand creds worth of whisky lay on the gravel in front of me. Some of the puke had splashed on my footwear. My stomach heaved again as my stomach muscles twisted and squeezed everything out.
I felt a hand on my back. Mariko. I was bent over my hands on my knees. I breathed in deeply, my brain swooshed again but I felt better and breathed deeply again and again. I straightened up and tilted my head back. Big mistake. My brain did the swooshing thing and I stumbled, losing my balance. Mariko caught me and I found my feet. Gazing up at her I smiled weakly.
“You OK?” she said with an even look.
I breathed heavily, puffing my cheeks out as I expelled the air in my lungs. My mouth tasted foul.
“Yeah, I’m fine. It’s just the rest of me that’s alked.”
She laughed at the look of chagrin on my face. “This is the second time I’ve had to carry you home. I don’t want you making a habit of this, Jonah.” Her teasing smile laid false the rebuke and I took her arm as we walked around to the door of the Titan.
“Come on, let’s get back home, get you cleaned up and into the sleeper.”
I woke up to the sound of my Devstick beeping at me and the light of the sun streaming through the windows. My brain felt like it was too big for my skull. I pushed the heels of both hands against my temples to try and force it back in but it didn’t work. Mariko stood by the sleeper with a container of something orange and green in her hand. It looked like the vomit on the roadside.
“What’s that?” I said between clenched teeth.
“Does it matter? Just drink it!”
I reached out for the horrible looking drink and, staring at it down my nose, hesitated. The Devstick’s beeping was getting louder.
“Just drink and you better answer that. It’s from Annika Bardsdale. It’s the fifth time she’s called you.”
I drank. It didn’t taste too bad, a bit earthy, and I really didn’t want to know what was in it. Well not now anyway, but it went down OK and most importantly stayed down. I sat with my arms around my knees and the sheet pulled up to my waist.
“Hi, Annika.”
“Jonah, I’ve been trying to get hold of you for hours. Have you just woken up?”
“Yes, sorry, Annika. Had a bit of a late night last night and a few too many alkys. Anyway what’s the urgency?”
“You haven’t heard then?”
“No. Haven’t heard what?”
“As a result of the bombings they’ve moved the Popvote day for Tag up.”
“Why? The bombings were a few weeks ago. Why didn’t they move the date forward then?”
“No. There were new bombings yesterday. Geneva, New Berlin, London, Houston, Sao Paulo. All within an hour of each other.”
“Oh shit. I went to sleep at about one in the morning New Singapore time. When did all this happen. Many dead?”
“It started in Geneva, about 7pm European time, and by 8pm all of the cities had been hit. Over two hundred and fifty dead and over a thousand wounded.”
“What date?”
“Feb 15th, Friday week. The General Assembly voted yesterday at 4:30 in urgent session, and in view of the bombings they moved it forward.”
“What percentage was for?”
“Nearly eighty percent. How’s the case going? Will you be ready in time?”
“I’ll have to be, won’t I? OK. Let me catch up with the news. Have a think and then I’ll get back to you with a plan, all right? We may need to meet. What’s your schedule like early next week?”
“It’s a mess. There’s a climate conference that I have to be at till Wednesday. After that I’m booked to speak in Melbourne on GMD.”
“What’s GMD?”
“Global Mother’s Day, Jonah. You should know that. Oh… sorry. That was stupid of me.”
“It’s OK. Forget it. I do know it, just never heard it called GMD before. Where’s the conference being held?”
“That’s the thing. It’s being held in New Zealand Geographic. No Levs there yet. Takes four hours just to fly there from Australia. No sub orbs either. They’re very protective of their ozone down there.”
“Well. OK. Where’s this GMD speech you’re doing?”
“Melbourne, Thursday evening. And then I’m on a sub orb back to London.”
“All right. How about we meet in Melbourne after your speech? Will that work?”
“Sure, that would be OK but it means we lose three, nearly four days.”
“I’ll need at least that much to sort out a response anyway. What we’ve got now is just case history and a law. I’ve still got to construct the argument.”
“OK. Thursday evening, Melbourne. It’s a date.”
“Bye, Annika. See you Thursday.”
The concoction that Mariko had given me really had made me feel better. My headache was gone, and my stomach didn’t feel as if someone had been beating on it all night. And then I remembered. How could I forget? I had to kill someone. The reality of the thought consumed everything I’d been thinking and squashed them with its weight. I had no idea where to begin to even think about how to do it. Selecting someone to kill seemed worse than killing but then again I didn’t have to do that yet. But I did have to choose someone. Who to kill to become a Hawk?
“Come on. We haven’t had any exercise. Let’s go for a swim around the headland,” Mariko said, stripping off her bottom outers. Even the sight of her naked didn’t change the thought. I climbed out of the sleeper and went to get my swimmers. I walked out to the deck and down to the beach and realized that I had forgotten the Devstick. After I went back and got it and returned to the deck, Mariko was gone. I couldn’t see her in the water but then she’d probably already reached the cave.
I jogged down the beach a little to reduce the distance I’d have to swim. Then I cut in to the edge of the surf and dived in. The water felt good, cool and alive against my skin. Pulling against it I made up for missing the run this morning and went for it, striking hard, hands cupped to get maximum pull. Dipping my body through the larger waves, I was at the headland and took a dive. Going deep, using the breathing technique Mariko had taught me, I aimed for cave, swimming along the bottom of the ocean three meters deep and pulling strong for the opening of the cave. I was through the entrance and my world went black.
The sound of my breathing echoed with the slop slosh of the water in the cave. I swam to our ledge and felt. Nothing. I reached along the ledge further, and further until I came to the wall. Nothing.
“Mariko!” I shouted, although it didn’t matter. All I got was my echo. My heart raced and my breathing was more like fast sips of air as I pulled myself up onto the ledge and fumbled for the Devstick in my pocket. Don’t drop it — slow down, I told myself. Finally I got it open and the weak white light from its screen washed into the cave. What I knew became true. She wasn’t here.
I dropped off the ledge, taking a deep breath as I went, and hit the water with my knees tucked under me, diving immediately for the entrance. As soon as I was through I came up and swam as fast as I could back around the headland to where I could see the beach. Hope and panic. Oh no. Oh no. These were the thoughts that came the strongest.
I stopped and scanned the beach. Far down toward Abdul’s restaurant there was a person but it was a man. A fisherman by the look of his outers.
I swam. The Devstick a hindrance, I dropped it. I had two more back at the house and now I just swam as fast as I could thinking, It’ll be all right. She changed her mind. We passed each other swimming. While my logical brain dismissed my hope with ease: you would’ve seen her. No, I ran down the beach. I cheated. I’ve never done that before. You still would have seen her. No! Suddenly my hands were scraping sand. I lurched to my feet, lost my balance and hit the water again.
I got up and started running for the house, powering through the powdery white sand. I hit the deck running and shouting, “Mariko, Mariko.” I went inside and said, “Mariko,” in a slightly softer voice. I went down the stairs to the ground floor but she wasn’t there. I went out the door facing the jungle and only the Titan was there.
I ran back around the side of the house and out onto the beach again. I stopped. Footprints in sand are easy to spot and usually the only footprints on the beach in front of the house were ours and usually they were made with bare feet. These were footprints made with a boot of some kind. Thick zigzag tread evenly spaced down to the heel. I followed them. It looked like there were two people, maybe three, but it was hard to tell as in some places they were scuffed and hard to see clearly; the sand was deep and soft. They led to the deck of our house.
My heart racing, I searched for other signs but there were none. That was it. I looked down the beach and walked out of the line of the jungle to see more clearly. It was empty. I turned back to the house, walking and then running. Back up to the steps through the open doors. It was the same as I’d left it moments ago. No. No. No. Think. Do not panic. Think. Call Sir Thomas. I went to the sleeper side table and grabbed the Devstick that was lying there. Turning it on and thumbing for contacts. 10:35am.
“Get me Sir Thomas!”
The Devstick’s screen changed to the image of Sir Thomas sitting by his desk and I noticed that I had a message from him received at 10:31am. While waiting for him to pick up I opened the message.
Jonah,
Good morning. Hope you’re feeling all right after all that whisky we consumed last night. I’m off traveling on official business for a few days. Attached you’ll find a file with images and archive footage of me when I was younger. Please discuss with Harpers whether they can handle the new launch date. I expect they’ll need at least a week to take care of things but at least they can get the packing done in advance. Good luck with getting the memoir finished — at least you won’t have any distractions to tempt you away from your duty. Mariko sends her love, says she’s fine and will see you as soon as you’ve done what you have to do.
My Honour is my Loyalty.
Your Uncle, TBO
Cancel request.
I sat on the sleeper. Oh fuck. What have I done?