Freedom Incorporated (12 page)

He sent the
appropriate commands zinging through the wires and trusted the prop
to keep his
hard-won
holes open during his absence. “That should do it.”

“
Good.”
Samantha kissed him, passionately.

Jen was used to it. It
didn’t even make her feel uncomfortable anymore. Besides, she
thought Cookie had earned it. Penetrating another layer was a
breakthrough worth celebrating.

“
We’re close,
you know,” Cookie said seriously. When he’d accepted the challenge,
he didn’t really believe he could do it. But every day it looked
more possible.

“
How long do
you think?” Jen felt her stomach boiling with
excitement.

“
It’s hard to
say, I don’t even know how many layers there are. It depends on how
good their sys-admin is.” He gracefully accepted another kiss,
silencing any more talk for at least ten seconds.

Jen waited until it was
over and said, “You two go, would you? You’re going to steam the
windows if you keep that up.”

“
How about it?
You tired?” Samantha’s slitted eyes peered into David’s bloodshot
whites. She felt guilty for asking because he needed his
sleep.

“
Hell no, I’ve
got hours left in me.” He smiled, scooped the light-framed Samantha
into his gangly arms, and carried her to their bedroom.

Jen was
amused. She knew he’d be asleep ten seconds after his head hit the
pillow and she knew Samantha would complain about it the next
morning. She sat alone, watching the prop
’
s dizzying progress. But moments
later the screensaver engaged and the computer showed a luscious
coral reef. Bright yellow fish hovered around the entrance to a
moray eel’s cave. To the right were more fish with sharp
backward-angled spines along their top ridge. And a myriad of
seaweed swayed in the shimmering slant of light. She loved that
picture – the turquoise water, the brilliant coral, the tiny shrimp
she knew she’d see if she leaned closer. It somehow represented
freedom.
Strange how that
works.

Then it dawned on her –
she had hope. It was fragile, but it was there and it felt good.
And that was enough, for now.

*

Wednesday, September 15,
2066

17:02 Groningen, The
Netherlands

Perspiration beaded on
Hans’s forehead. It trickled past his thinning eyebrows and stung
his sensitive eyes.

Godverdomme.
He blinked and rubbed a
palm across his sweat-streaked temples before smearing it onto his
sleeve.
Yuck.
His
containment field was expanding; he could feel the hairs
on
his
legs puffing
away from his body with the electrostatic charge. He frowned,
wondering if he’d somehow made an error and supplied the amplifier
with too much power.

It’s not
stable.
He shook his head in dismay,
wondering whether it was safe to turn it off so soon after turning
it on.
It’s definitely not
stable.
Hans flicked the switch and hoped
the build-up wouldn’t fry his circuit.
No
smoke, that’s a good sign.
He’d smelled
smouldering silicon twice since breakfast and the acrid smoke was
still burning his nasal passages
.
T
he last
thing he wanted was another mushroom cloud of toxic particles
darkening the walls of his tiny apartment. The neighbours were
already getting suspicious.

With the
device deactivated, he turned off the containment field. The tickle
on his leg-hairs stopped and the buzz at the back of his neck
receded. Hans sighed in defeat and returned to the scratchy pencil
jottings that covered the graph on his clipboard. It wasn’t that
he’d failed – he’d found another way it didn’t work. At times like
this he reminded himself of Thomas Edison inventing the
light
bulb.
But he
didn’t have the fate of the world on his
shoulders.
Hans dabbed at the sweat that was
already returning to his forehead.
Talk
about pressure.

He drank the last of his
beer and grimaced; it was warm.

Hans couldn’t
count the number of laws he was breaking by doing his research. He
scoffed at the stupidity – his own stupidity.
Is it worth it?
He wondered that at
least twice every experiment. Lars Olssen
,
his colleague, close associate, and
perhaps even friend had paid the ultimate price.
How far am I willing to go? And should I even
bother? Nobody else is…

They were all
questions beyond his capacity to answer. Some things just ‘are’ and
he’d learned long ago not to argue with them. Hans van de Berg was
an anti-quark expert. He sneered when he thought about it. His
parents had said it was the field of the future – and they’d been
right. Hans thought of all the parties he hadn’t attended at
university so he could study his textbooks and simulations.
What a waste.
He would’ve
been happier as a carpenter.
Or perhaps a
painter?
He pondered the
could
-ha
ve-beens
with a whimsical smile.
But
no.
The smile faded.
I’m stuck in this two-bedroom shoebox with no friends, no
job, and no prospects.
But he was the top of
his field, wasn’t he? Hans opened his fridge; it was alarmingly
empty. A stale crust of bread and a portion of smeerkaas –
spreadable cheese – were all he had to satisfy the rumbling in his
stomach.

He munched
unenthusiastically and allowed his thoughts to drift again. He knew
why he wouldn’t allow himself to quit, at least not until he ran
out of money: nobody else would bother. Nobody else had the
expertise and nobody else cared enough or knew enough to care at
all.
So that leaves me.
It wasn’t a comforting thought really.
What if I fail?
He swallowed his gooey
mouthful with difficulty.

Quantum
physics wasn’t the easiest arena to learn about the politics of
science
.
Hans had
learned the hard way. Sidelined for his radical – yet correct –
theories, he was quickly ostracised from the men and women he’d
once considered colleagues. He still winced when he thought about
it, even after so long. Isolation was like an icicle in his chest.
Always a social man, the pain became almost unbearable after Lars
Olssen’s assassination.

A clamour
outside immediately snared Hans’s attention and he darted to the
window, peering cautiously over the sill. He lived on the second
story of a three-story building and he scanned the scene below for
signs of trouble. An unleashed dog was loping down the cobblestoned
street and had spooked a child. Understandably so – the dog was
huge. Hans waited for a long time to make sure nothing more serious
was afoot, smearing his palm across the pane when his breath fogged
the window. It was getting cold. Summer was nearly over and already
the first leaves were turning, carried away by the slightest breath
of air. They tumble haphazardly, spinning and cartwheeling until
the rotting began. He loved autumn; it was his favourite season, a
beautiful death. It brought the familiar smell from the sugar
factory, which settled over Groningen for months. He adored it, but
everyone else complained about it endlessly. The conversion from
sugar beets into sugar emitted an acrid odour that Hans always
associated with home.
Sadly, for him, this
year would be the last. They were setting up a system of baffles to
cleanse the air before it escaped the factory. It was a new design
based on nano-technology and the designers had touted that it would
make factory-emitted air cleaner than ambient air.

Hans also
enjoyed taking long walks through the city, aimlessly wandering
around the market and drifting through the park. He enjoyed saying
hello to the ducks and feeding them freshly baked bread from the
bakery on his street. He clenched his jaw.
But no more. Work, work, work.
It
pained him, but the walks were something from his past. He had to
consider his personal security and meandering aimlessly through the
city was a recipe for disaster. But his memories were alive and
every night he dreamed of a time when he could wander the city
again.

But for now,
the next combination needed testing.
Who
knows, maybe this is the one…

*

Thursday, September 16,
2066

International Portal
Terminals

08:34 Sydney,
Australia

Dan felt the
familiar change in pressure and stepped away from the white circle.
Portaling from the northern hemisphere to the southern hemisphere
always tickled his lungs and he coughed to erase the irritation.
He’d asked about it but nobody else experienced the same sensation.
His doctor had said it was all in his head. He’d suggested that
perhaps the first time
Dan had
portaled,
he’d
gone from high
pressure
to low pressure and the air in his
lungs had shifted. Ever since, his mind attributed portaling across
the hemispheres with a tickle in his chest and reproduced the
sensation because he expected it.

But Dan
doubted it.
It’s real, no matter what
anybody else says
.

He was
irritable from an abundant lack of results
.
O
f the three
original possibilities on his list, he’d already scratched
two
,
but he’d had to
go to London and
Chicago
to do it. The suspects had turned out to be innocent, even the
most rudimentary reconnaissance had told him
that
.
B
ut bounty hunting was essentially a
process of elimination. Less successful hunters shunned the
footwork
,
so
Dan tried never to shy from
it
. It was important. He had to do
it.

One to
go.
He was beginning to wonder whether he’d
made
a
mistake
during his database scan.
Five to one it’s
not her. Surely she’s not in Australia
.
The majority of his targets were
scattered throughout North America and Europe
.
Australian targets were rare, and
he’d never had
two in a row
before
. A dangerous thought hovered on the
edge of his mind.
If it does turn out to
be her, I hope the Raven doesn’t
know
she’s in Australia. He might try
to
economise on his travel.
It brought a chill
to his flushed cheeks and drained the colour from his
skin
.

A squad of
drug police were leading a Labrador through the
terminals
. Despite advances in olfactory
technology that enabled identification of individual microscopic
particles, handheld scanners just weren’t as fun to work with as
dogs.
So they worked side by side.
T
he Labrador’s wet nose sniffed the
air
and the every second the scanner
classified thousands of airborne particles. They were both looking
for anything illicit
.
The dog’s tongue lolled from its mouth and its
big, happy, brown eyes were in stark contrast to
the cold, tense, blue eyes of its handler. And the squad oozed
business. Dan wondered why.

“
What’s going
on, Chuck?” Dan asked
the customs
officer
as he placed his unloaded pistol in
the special tray for inspection.

Christopher
Delaney, or Chuck as his friends knew him, snorted in reply. “Some
arsehole had a condom of heroine burst in his stomach.
He didn’t even make
it to
the counter; he just dropped dead. About fifteen minutes
ago.”

Dan frowned. “They must
be getting desperate.”

“
You’re not
wrong there. We’ve had a threefold increase over the same period
last year.”

“
So I guess
it’s working then?” Dan raised an eyebrow and collected his weapon
after passing through the scanner
. For
once, it didn’t go off
. He had clearance to
carry
ammunition and
an unloaded weapon into and out of the
country
, all
thanks
to the bounty-hunter certificate loaded on his chip. Besides, he
was such a regular traveller that he
’d
become good friends with Christopher
Delaney, and he knew several other
terminal
workers
by name too
.

“
I wouldn’t be
so sure.” Chuck lazily eyed the baggage that scrolled lethargically
across his monitor. “A neighbour of mine had a son who died last
week from the shit.”

“
I’m sorry to
hear that.” Dan didn’t know what else to say. He never
did.

“
Yeah.”
Chuck’s smile looked wan. “So was she. They said he knew what he
was doing too. He’d been addicted for years so he knew exactly how
much to shoot up.” He lowered his voice as if discussing something
taboo. “I guess he just woke up one morning
,
realised what he was, and decided it
was time to punch his own ticket.” He slowly shook his head. “My
neighbour was understandably distressed. She’d been fighting to get
him clean for God knows how long.”