Tag - A Technothriller (24 page)

“Well, I don’t know about that yet, but I plan to try.”

Sir Thomas stopped eating for a moment and pointed his knife at me. He said, “Write for me then. I’ll cred you.”

I looked at my uncle, my head jerking back in surprise. “Write what?”

“My memoir.” Sir Thomas looked out at the view of thunderous black clouds. “You can keep whatever we sell it for, including the royalties. How’s that?”

“I’ve never written anything other than legal briefs before. I’m not sure that I’m qualified to write your memoir.”

“Neither am I,” said Sir Thomas with a deadpan expression, and the hint of a smile buried in his eyes, “and what’s your point?”

I smiled a wry grin at my uncle and looked at him under lidded eyes. “All right, I can try.”

“Good, that settles it then. As soon as we’ve finished lunch I’ll set up my base Dev to provide you with a secure means of communication with me. I’ll send you a brief of what we need to cover, and provide you with my notes. You must be totally secret and discreet regarding what you write. I am trusting you with a great deal here, Jonah. The fact that you are related to me by blood is the reason behind my offer.”

Saying this Sir Thomas fixed me with a clenched jaw expression that defied any response other than that which he was looking for.

“Yes, Uncle, I understand, and please don’t forget I am an arbitrator, even if an unemployed one at present. You are still protected by client relationship, and disclosure of any sort would lead to me being struck off.”

Sir Thomas relaxed his look, leaned back in his seat and said, “Ah yes, of course. I had forgotten that.”

My uncle never forgot anything. The Devstick in my inside pocket tickled my nipple, vibrating with an incoming call, but I ignored it. My uncle was a formal man and answering a Devstick while having lunch would be frowned upon at best.

“Can I ask about your plans for the Foundation?”

“Hmph,” Sir Thomas half grunted and snorted. “Simply put? Growth. For too long I’ve left a bunch of incompetent fools in management at the Foundation and now is the time to change all of that. We have over fifty Oliver homes around the planet, but I intend to double that figure within a year or two. Children are the future, Jonah, and it disturbs me to see so many of our young wasted with a poor upbringing.

“I’m well aware of what I am, and I am not a charismatic man. I am a not Shaw, or Hei Lin, nor a Bo Vinh. What I am is a student of human nature, and human nature can be trained. I will lead the young children of the Oliver Foundation by example and teaching.

“I won’t bore you with all the theory now. Suffice to say that nature is Darwinian and we must prepare the youth of today to succeed. To take us forward in time, in a way that will best prepare us as a race. My goal is to take the Oliver Foundation to new levels of support for the disadvantaged and appeal to the lowest echelon of humans with ambition: those people who wish to better themselves but do not have the means to do so.”

I had the suspicion that Sir Thomas was practicing his speech on me but felt it would be ungracious to say so. I was somewhat surprised and gratified at the strength of his concern for the orphaned children of the Oliver Foundation. I had no idea he felt that deeply about them.

What shocked me more was that my uncle was being so frank with me about his plans. He seemed to be elevating our relationship to a new level. Perhaps it was my handling of the runner, or perhaps my uncle had been motivated by his retirement from UNPOL, but whatever the reason, he had never opened up to me like this before and that shocked me.

I nodded my head slowly and replied, “Well, those are extremely admirable goals. I wish you every success in achieving them.”

Sir Thomas was picking at his teeth with his napkin, hiding the mining process. He put the napkin down, his tongue making his mouth bulge down near his chin, and then swallowed. With almost an exhalation, he said softly, “Oh I’ll achieve them,” and smiled a quick smile.

I placed my knife and fork in the center of my plate, and sat back, my hands on my thighs resting on the white linen napkin with the UNPOL logo in the middle. Smiling at my uncle, I said, “Thank you for the lunch, Uncle, and for the opportunity to contribute to your future memoir.”

Sir Thomas, rising, said, “My pleasure, Jonah.”

I rose, bent at the waist and gave my uncle a deep wai. He smiled and, coming around the table, took my arm. Leading me back through the scattered tables, he said, “When are you moving up the Coast?”

“I’m leaving today. I’ve got a car coming to the Woodlands Envplex at 4pm, and then I’ll drive up there. I’m looking forward to it. I haven’t really driven a car since I came here.”

We walked out onto Topside. The sky had turned into a mass of churning grey, mustard and black, and sheets of rain could be seen in the east, hitting Orchard in great walls of water, and in the west just as dark a mass. “Well, we better be getting indoors. It looks as if there’s going to be a thunderstorm. Drive safely, the long-haulers on that Travway are known to be faulty on occasion and results are always messy.”

Chapter 21

It’s a Beautiful Lie

UNPOL Complex, Topside, New Singapore

Friday, 27 December 2109, 2:15pm +8 UTC

We parted, Sir Thomas striding away to the nearest Lev port and I walking along the edge of Topside. The UNPOL Complex was the highest and the Topside landscape flowed down through a series of steps and arching walkys, each swooping down and rising as they reached the West Coast before rising again and topping out over the hill of Clementi’s image-conscious Entplexs.

The green spaces of Topside hid their color in the midday darkness but I walked with purpose in the direction of the West Coast. I didn’t plan to walk all the way to the West Coast, but heading in that direction, nearer the center of Jurong Island, was a Lev port that was vertically over the part of the UNPOL Complex that Mariko was contributing in. If I hurried I could catch her before she left for Woodlands.

Taking out my Devstick, I saw the missed call that I’d received when I was having lunch. I’d forgotten all about it in my haste. I saw it was from Mariko and hit reply. The Devstick held an image that I’d taken of her yesterday, sitting cross-legged, straight-backed, reading a paper book, with the book in her lap and her hands on her knees, her chin sharply angled downwards and her belly sucked in. She said it was a way for her to exercise her brain and her abs at the same time.

She came on and I saw in the inset map on her image that she was at ground level at the Jurong island exit.

“Hi, I see you’re Topside,” she said and smiled. “What are doing there? I thought you’d be back at the Env packing.”

“I thought I’d come and collect my damsel in distress.”

“In distress? Why my knight in shining armor, you must be looking at some other damsel on your Devstick. I’m not distressed.”

“You must be,” I said. “You haven’t seen me since last night.” I grinned at the Devstick, walking faster.

“Oh please spare me,” she said, laughing.

“I’ll be down to see you in about five mins. I was thinking I’d watch you eat and have an alky or two and then we could head back to the Env and take off. What do you think?”

“Sounds good. How has your day been? Did you enjoy my rose?”

“Day’s been good, apart from the freezing jet of cold water this morning. Everything has been just great since then. Look, I’m at the Lev port and it’s a little crowded. I’ll tell you my news over an alky.”

“Great,” she said, and waving with her left hand, signed off.

A few stops later the Lev reached ground level and I stepped a few paces out of it and looked around. The rain over Orchard had moved south and now it was slashing down in the uncovered space in front of me, splashes reaching the new footwear I’d credded at Smooth. About thirty meters away I saw Mariko walking through the rain towards me. Even from this distance I could tell she was angry about something.

She looked around at something and then saw me and with a last glance flung over her shoulder she walked straight across, chin down against the rain.

I put my hand on her arm and said, “Hey, are you OK? What’s the matter?”

She shook her head brusquely. “I’m OK. Let’s just forget it for now. I’ll tell you about it later. Can we just go? Skip the alkys and get on the trav? Would you mind?”

Shaking my head, I said, “No, of course not,” and seeing how troubled she looked I took her arm and steered her back to the Lev port.

Fifteen minutes and two Levs later we were back at the Woodlands Envplex. I used my Devstick to tell the car to come earlier and Mariko went to take a shower and get a change of clothes. She had hardly spoken since we left Jurong. I let her have her space – she’d said she would tell me later and I was sure she would. Instead I focused on packing the remaining items and called up the Envplex’s autotroll. The autotroll arrived with a beeping on my Devstick indicating that it was ready for use and waiting outside of my door.

I’d stacked the plastic boxes, each about a meter long and half that wide, on top of each other. Apart from the ones loaded with books, they hardly weighed a thing and I loaded the autotroll in the time that Mariko was still in the shower. I flashed a note to her Devstick telling her that I was headed to the Envplex lobby to load the car. It had arrived in the same manner as the autotroll except that it was waiting for me at ground level just outside the southern Lev port entrance.

I walked to the entrance and looked back at the apartment. The last time I had done this I had walked out with a carry on and left the apartment practically empty. This time I was leaving a woman in the shower getting ready to join me and an autotroll full of clothes, images and books.

Progress, I thought, and laughed to myself as I remembered the punk rap song, ‘Progress is a Bitch’, and decided not to tell that one to Mariko. I felt happy but at the same time I was concerned about Mariko. She’d been on a kind of monosyllabic auto response mode since leaving Jurong, and I’d never seen this side of her. She was obviously working something really serious out and I had to wait until she was ready to talk. I hoped with all my heart that she wasn’t having second thoughts about moving to Sisik with me.

The Toyota Titan I’d rented was a mag/offroad hybrid. It was also all-terrain and ocean, which had pushed the cred up another thirty-five units a day, but I figured that we’d come in off the sea and drive up the beach to the house. It would save us lugging the boxes through the four hundred meters of jungle that separated us from civilization. I had no plans to change that amount of separation. In fact I was already thinking about how it might be increased.

There were a few people standing around looking at the Titan and I nonchalantly thumbed my Devstick approaching with the autotrolly. The door slid open in the sixteen meter vehicle - to call it a car was a bit of a misnomer. It took up a lot of space in the lobby, and with its wheels set well inside the squat body shell, it looked like a very shiny, dark titanium box with a huge cockpit of swept black glass floating on air. I saw the manual on the stairs leading to the top cockpit and picked it up.

One of the males standing looking at the Titan smiled at me reading the manual. It was pretty obvious this was my first time with this kind of rig. I smiled back and shrugged my shoulders.

A quick scan of the manual and I located the loader door panel button on the bracing column of the door. Pressing it caused a pneumatic hiss out of the belly of the beast that made me jump and then laugh at myself as I saw a side panel slide back in the hull. I loaded the plastic boxes into the cargo hold. The four lights that defined its corners were orange and casted a revolving glow in the dim of the lobby. Then I walked up the stairs and into the tan expanse of the primary cockpit. It had a high-end Devcockpit done in black with adjustable screens set into a dark grey interior with red piping. The twin drivers' seats allowed for observation or participation, meaning they were adjustable from extreme comfort to the pragmatic of reaching the controls. The steering column arced its way out from under the front shield in functional titanium, drilled out to reduce weight. Hanging off the end of the column, two thick black rubber grips with a face in between them of an array of multi-colored buttons.

Manual in hand, I sat down in the comfortable Siteazy behind the wheel. I looked at the black grips and opened the manual to find where the On switch was. My Devstick vibrated and I dug it out of my lower outers pocket. It was the car rental company. I hit accept.

“Good afternoon, Mr Oliver and thank you for making us your choice for vehicle trav. Welcome to the Titan. My name is Cindy and I’ll be taking you through the start-up routine. I am now turning on the interior systems – we recommend fully automatic trav out of New Singapore and collision avoidance systems will set to auto when you switch to manual.”

The automated recording from the rental company played on as the Devcockpit came alive with color and images. I looked away from the little Chinese-looking girl on my Devstick, reciting the Titan’s features and systems. Instead I studied the Dev. I caught Mariko walking out of the Lev port, her Devstick to her mouth. I couldn’t hear what she was saying but while she didn’t seem angry, she still seemed serious. She stopped when she saw me sitting up in the cockpit, waving at her. She had no idea I was going to rent something this huge. She probably thought we’d just go up in a standard cab but I had gone with a trav liner and a top of the line one at that.

Mariko turned her face sideways but kept her eyes on me, now smiling. She took the Devstick from her ear and walked over to the door. I leaned forward so that I could see her face down the half spiral stair. There she stood, her cloth bag over one shoulder, holding the Devstick in her hand.

She looked up at me and smiled. “Let’s go,” and grabbing the hand rail walked up the stairs and plonked down in the seat next to me. She pursed her lips together in a pout and made a sucking noise with her tongue.