Freedom Incorporated (36 page)

They sealed the doors
behind them.

“
You’ve
heard?” Jackie asked.

Esteban nodded and
occupied the seat the Raven had used. “Michele filled me
in.”

“
I’m declaring
a state of company emergency.” Jackie tapped a fingernail to the
glass-coated table. “Do you understand what that means, ladies and
gentlemen?”

She saw three subdued
nodding heads.

“
Esteban, I
want you to contact your top assassin. Make five contracts. Find
out who these people are and eliminate them. Get rid of them all:
Dan Sutherland, Jennifer Cameron…” She snapped her fingers trying
to recall the others.

James helped, “David
Coucke.”

“
Yes, thank
you James. David Coucke and Samantha Lee.”

“
Who’s the
fifth?” Esteban was using the computer built into the
conference table
to draft
notes.

“
The Raven,”
Jackie answered coldly. “Who did you think? Elvis? He’s too fucking
dangerous to be running around with UniForce credentials. Sooner or
later he’s going to do something we can’t cover up and that’s going
to soil our good name with pig shit.”

Esteban nodded, still
typing.

“
Two million
each,” Jackie authorised. “And five million for the
cyborg.”

If Esteban found the
generosity of the contracts shocking, he made no show.

“
James!” His
quiet moaning was irritating her. “What’s wrong with you
today?”

“
I have a
headache,” he explained as casually as he could. “I’ve been working
on the breach since yesterday morning.”

He shouldn’t
have told her that, it just pissed her off even more.
“
Yesterday morning?
And you didn’t think to inform me sooner?” Her thundering
voice was punishment enough; she could see the pain echoing in his
expression. “Lock it down! I don’t care if you have to do another
all-nighter. You have my permission to authorise staff overtime if
you must. Just get us secure!”

He nodded
mutely.

“
And find out
more about this hacker, David Coucke. I humbly doubt he spent all
that energy hacking our network just to flee after sending one
e-mail. Pin him down, do you understand? I want to know where he
is. I want to know what else he’s hacked. I want to know everything
about him.”

James nodded
again, already mentally tendering his resignation.
I’m not putting up with this
shit.
Plenty of other corporations
would
be thrilled to accept
a job application from him.
Except
ice-bitch here would make that impossible
.
He held no illusions about that. Jackie would ensure he never found
work anywhere in the world if he ducked responsibility during a
company emergency.

“
Now,
Michele,” Jackie said in a softer tone. “Tell me about Dan
Sutherland.”

Michele visibly cringed.
“I noticed a clerical error two days ago. We’ve been selling
exclusive lists to both him and the Raven.”

Very
smooth.
Esteban approved of her explanation
and hoped Jackie would believe it. He thought there was a good
chance, especially since it came from the beguiling
Michele.

“
That’s not
what I meant.” Jackie refined her question, “What information do we
have on him? He’s a top-level hunter so he must be somewhat
dangerous. He’s harbouring a target, is it possible he’s turned
against us?”
How pissed is he that you’ve
been selling his list
s
to a cyborg?

Michele ostentatiously
displayed her mediocre keyboard skills while accessing the database
for Sutherland’s file. Her fingernails scratched against the glass
tabletop and made James wince, Jackie grimace, and Esteban scowl.
“He broke the previous record reaching exclusive level – it only
took him 68 days.” She read aloud the brief account of Dan’s sad
life, the prose dry and unemotional.

Jackie tilted her head
and peered down her nose when Michele had finished. “Esteban,
contract five million for him too.”

Esteban nodded, hiding
the fiendish glimmer in his eyes.

“
I’m
disappointed in all of you,” Jackie said
matter-of-factly.

What an
inspiring leader.
James felt
sick.

“
I don’t want
any more network breaches. And I don’t want any more cyborgs
working for us. Is that understood?”

They nodded.

“
Scan the
files and isolate the cyborgs. If they’re on active duty, retire
them. If they protest, execute them. I’m charging you three to
handle this situation. Quickly. Quietly. But I expect frequent
updates.” Jackie stood, indicating that their impromptu meeting was
over. She waited while the others scuttled from the room before
also marching out.

Now, for the
shareholder meeting.
She wondered how best
to break the news.
At least they won’t
expect me to smile
, she thought. A sombre
backdrop suited her fine.

Jackie did not
intend to do Paul’s job for long. She just needed to find someone
malleable enough to match her needs.
But
until then, I’ll have to do this public relations crap.
She sighed.
If you want
it done right, do it your god-damned self.

*

Friday, September 17,
2066

11:02 Andamooka, South
Australia

The sun was
biting.

Jen’s skin
already stung from the abuse. She just knew it was going to start
bubbling and peeling at any moment. They’d been trekking through
the harsh South Australian desert since eight o’clock, when Dan had
collected them from the Dusty Andamooka Inn. She squinted at him,
cursing herself for forgetting her sunglasses.
Boy, he must be tired.
But Dan showed
no outward signs of fatigue
despite
walking
since six. How he’d covered so much
ground so quickly was a mystery to Jen
,
whose overnight bag felt like a
thousand tonnes of useless junk.

Samantha and
Cookie had barely spoken since Jen roused them from their lumpy,
broken-spring bed. Energy conservation was high on their agenda. It
was a high priority for Jen too, but she’d engaged Dan in
conversation for the first quarter hour of their ordeal. In the end
he’d order
ed
her to
stop talking and save strength
. He’d also
chivalrously offered to carry her bag, though she’d
refused
. Now she was beginning to wonder
why.

“
Here we are.”
The strain in Dan’s voice betrayed the fatigue that the rest of his
body didn’t show.

“
Where?”
Cookie swept the horizon but saw nothing that reminded him of
civilisation.

“
Home, sweet
home.” Dan showed them to a flight of marble steps that descended
into the ground.

“
Down there?”
Samantha’s eyebrows shot up.

“
Uh-huh.” Dan
nodded. “Didn’t you guys know? Half of Andamooka is
built
underground. It
protects us from this intolerable heat and the chill of night.
Earth is a wonderful insulator.”

“
How much of
this is yours?” Samantha asked. There weren’t any
fences
.
She
distantly wonder
ed
whether they’d been
walking
past
invisible
houses for the past
three
hours.

He shrugged.
“Over to the main road, a few hundred metres that way,” – he waved
to the east – “about a kilometre that way” – to the west – “and
about two kilometres back from the road. Some orange poles
designate the boundaries of local properties. We’ve never bothered
with fences. The soil
can’t hold
crops anyway so it’d
just
be an expensive waste of time.
Besides, this way the wildlife can come and go as it pleases, which
is especially important for the great reds.”

He did it
again,
Jen thought, wondering why she wasn’t
used to it yet.
He surprised me again. Who
would’ve thought wildlife conservation would concern a bounty
hunter? I thought only activists harped about stuff like
that.

Sweat was
pouring off Cookie’s forehead and dripping onto the arid ground. He
was ready to drop his computer and he was glad Dan
had carried
his duffel bag
or he’d never have made the distance. “Can we go
inside?”

“
Sure.” Dan
skipped down the steps. “Careful, watch yourselves.”

His front door was thick
wood impregnated with the Vacuum Rubber, the best insulating
material industrial scientists had manufactured since the
health-hazard asbestos days. He ushered them in and invited them to
dump their bags wherever they found space on the floor.

It was cool
inside, especially when stepping from the oven-like desert. The
colours Dan had chosen were tranquil and the ambiance from his
lighting soft.
The
lights
illuminated automatically when he
unlocked the door. Thirty square metres of thermo-cell generators
powered all his electrical appliances. He’d erected them at a place
where the shape of his land radiated the heat to a perfect focal
point, half a kilometre away. Thermo-cells were similar to solar
cells except more efficient – they could generate 1,000 times the
power under the right conditions. Dan had buried a
battery
reservoir to store
the excess electricity. It was big enough to meet his energy needs
if the sun spontaneously switched off for three days.

Jen noticed
how spacious it was, not the cramped quarters she’d
expected.
Not a bad
idea,
she admitted reluctantly. Living
underground saved space and minimised the human impact on the
environment. She approved.

“
You want the
tour?”

“
Yeah,
thanks
,” Jen said, speaking for herself.
The others had crashed onto the first couch they’d found and were
politely declining the offer with exhausted waves.

He steered her
from room to room, playing at tour guide in a way that made her
smile and occasionally even laugh. Jen could clearly see that no
woman had lived in the house for a long time. The arrangements were
neat
and efficiently
, but simply not the way a woman would put things. It made her
wonder who the beautiful woman in the photographs on Dan’s mantle
was. She stood transfixed by them while Dan uncomfortably mumbled
something about the fireplace beneath and hurried her toward the
next room. She was excruciatingly curious, but too polite to ask.
He’d been smiling in those photographs, a warm smile that radiated
happiness – nothing like the twisted smirks and joyless curling of
his lips that she’d seen from him. She looked happy too.
Whoever ‘she’ is. His wife
perhaps?
Jen
noticed
Dan’s wedding band for the
first time.
Hmm… it must be. Another
marriage that turned sour and ended in divorce.

“
And this
shall be your chamber.” Dan waved her into the final room with a
flourish of his hands.

It wasn’t a large room,
but neither was it small. A comfortable bed occupied the middle and
a recessed wardrobe fit snugly into one corner. He’d obviously
spent quite a bit of money on the digital window that covered much
of the far wall. With bevelled edges, just like a real window, it
displayed a magical scene of lush fronds and ferns. The foliage
swayed with a simulated breeze and the sun filtered through a
canopy of tall gumtrees.

“
It’s from the
Daintree,” Dan explained. “Before it was destroyed.”

“
It’s real?”
Jen staggered forward, wishing she could open the glass and step
through to smell the aroma of damp forest. She couldn’t believe
such a landscape had ever existed. It was too perfect. Surely it
had come from an overpaid animator’s imagination.

“
It was real.
The picture anyway. The processor’s creating the breeze and using
an algorithm to calculate the movement of the sun. It depicts true
light angles and absorption rates on the various textures. I
believe you can watch the sun set through this window.” Dan pressed
a button on a wall-mounted control panel and the sun arced
gracefully across the sky, lowering over a digitally created
horizon with an orgy of pinks, oranges and reds.

Jen was mesmerised. She’d
seen digital windows before but she’d never experienced one so
intimately. It felt as though she was gazing at a rainforest rather
than a few coloured pixels on a screen.

Dan reset the sun and it
leapt back to its 11 o’clock position. “If you watch for long
enough you’ll see a flock of lorikeets and maybe a kangaroo. I
think one of them has a joey.” He pressed another button and the
scene shifted. “Or, if you get bored, you can try an underwater
landscape.” A myriad of colourful coral sprung to life in a vibrant
aquarium that teemed with fish. “But they’re the only two I
have.”