The Repossession (17 page)

‘Nope. Not one. No way it’s going to rain, Marshall.’

He could see right across the forest and the power lines that straddled it. ‘Which way is the Fortress?’

‘Due south-east. Behind you. In winter, at night, you can see the light from it reflected on the snow caps,’

Marshall told him.

‘You must be right between the Synchro and the

Fortress buildings.’ Rian was thinking about his previous conversation with Renée and how she said this farm was almost in the middle of the circle.

‘Almost. It was kind of convenient when I worked there. Always had to be in one building or the other.

Come on down, your girl has been squeezing oranges for you. Enjoy it now before she gets bored of you and starts watching the shopping channel.’

Genie turned and kicked Marshall on his false leg.

‘That’s not nice. Don’t listen to him, Ri.’

‘I’m not listening. He’s a bitter man, Genie. Coming down. I think I earned my Spiderman wings.’

‘For that you have to leap whole buildings,’ Marshall retorted.

‘Why didn’t you leave here, Marshall?’ Genie asked suddenly. ‘I mean, when you had your accident?

Why didn’t you just go, live on the islands or someplace? Why did you stay in this old place so far from anybody?’

Rian was down on the ground safely. Genie took him a large mug of iced juice and he drank it all down, dribbling some as he tried to cool off.

‘Ace,’ was all he said as he held it out for more.

Marshall was thinking about his reply, staring up at the mountain.

‘I could never quite see myself leaving the farm. See the mountain? We’re higher up than Spurlake here, on a plateau. Cold in winter but we get the sun pretty much all day long and hot long summers. Important if you grow fruit trees. Farmer who started this place knew what he was doing ninety years ago. We’ve got water from our own reservoir. Soil’s good. Besides, Genie, my son will want this place for himself one day. He loved growing up here. Had the horses then. But of course, he was young and Spurlake was where the action was, and the girls of course. It’s natural he left. Max won’t always be a cop.

No one is ever particularly grateful or respectful. I think he’s finding that out for himself. Also, being honest,’ he scratched his head a moment, ‘I guess I just could never quite believe I was off the project. I never quite understood that they didn’t need me any more.’

Genie turned to go. That was the real answer. Heard it in his voice. And maybe the truth was that he was looking for a way back in. She had no idea why she thought that, but one thing she had learned in her life so far was that what people said and what they did were entirely different things.

‘Hey, where you going?’ Rian asked.

‘Martha’s on TV. Got to learn how to make chocolate muffins from scratch.’

Rian watched her go with amusement. Marshall called after her.

‘You go girl. Muffins are the way to a man’s heart.’ He winked at Rian and Rian just shook his head. But it was true, thinking on it a moment. He could really appreciate some muffins right about now.

Rian watched her walk back towards the farmhouse and he felt real pride in her. She stopped to give him a little wave.

‘Muffins in one hour,’ she declared. ‘I hope.’

He grinned, still couldn’t believe she was all his.

Marshall walked towards the fence posts, stacked ready to go in the ground.

‘We got work to do, Rian. And we still got to smoke the orchards so the wasps don’t take hold there. They burrow into the apples, rot them out. They’ll be ready to pick in about ten days. I sure hope you guys will still be here to help. Be a pity to let them go to waste.’

‘Who picks ’em normally?’

‘Max and his wife used to come up with some friends.

We shared the profits. But they’re busy this year, what with the flood and everything. A pity. Organic apples fetch a premium and it’ll be a good crop this year.’

Rian nodded, looking back at the orchards. There were hundreds of trees. That would be a lot of hard work.

Marshall sure knew how to keep him busy.

Marshall looked up at the sky. Still a perfect blue.

He frowned.

‘I don’t know where the rain is coming from, but it’s coming. I know it. Leg’s never been wrong.’

Genie left the chocolate muffins to cool. It was her first time baking and she acknowledged they could be a better shape, but they sure tasted all right and the smell was divine. She ventured outside, smelling smoke. She could see Rian and Marshall sending a really dense white cloud of smoke billowing up through the lower apple orchard.

She worried about the bees a moment then realized that they were in the higher orchard. Country life was complicated. Everything was alive and you had to worry about just about every little thing.

‘Come on Mouch, we’re going for a walk.’

Mouch let out an excited yelp and immediately headed for the back field. Genie followed. Marshall had mentioned there were bald eagles flying up by the reservoir earlier and now she was determined to head for the ridge to get a closer look. His field glasses were really heavy around her neck and only moments away from the house she was regretting bringing them along.

She went behind the house, following the dog, and

crossed the hayfield, almost overwhelmed by the scent of wild mint that grew in clumps amid the hay. Moucher jumped and darted this way and that as he spotted rabbits.

No matter how fast he ran, the rabbits ran faster, and he was exhausted just crossing the field, returning to her, panting hard.

‘Foolish hound. I didn’t bring water, Mouch. You’ll have to wait till we get to the reservoir. It’s a long walk, dog, pace yourself.’

On the other side of the field, she found a dry stream bed and followed it up the slope, stumbling over rocks from time to time where exposed lizards would be caught by surprise and scoot for cover. She was thinking that it must have taken a lot of effort and money to build a reservoir up on this ridge. The boulders everywhere were huge. Looking back for a moment she realized just how vulnerable Marshall’s place was if any of them ever got loose.

The walk was tougher and hotter than she had expected, the route practically vertical in places. There would be waterfalls at these spots when it rained, she realized.

Moucher led the way, finding paths where she saw none and they pressed on, the idea of a cool vast expanse of water for a swim more appealing by the second.

It took a full hour climbing, longer maybe. When she

finally got up there, breathless, her chest tight from the exertion and the thinner air, she felt very satisfied however, it was well worth the climb. She looked back at the farmhouse again, a tiny dot in the forest below her, the smoke still rising from the orchards. Mouch ran to the edge, desperate for water, plunging in. Genie splashed her face and arms and cupped her hands to drink, smiling as Mouch tried to lick the whole reservoir dry.

‘Slow down, you’ll get sick, dog.’

Genie wanted to strip off and skinny dip but was scared to. She knew this was Fortress territory and what if there were cameras? There were always cameras now. Probably nowhere safe on earth without a camera pointing to it by now. She decided to wait until she was sure it was private.

She found a rock to lie on and just think a while. Above her bald eagles circled the tops of trees, swooping down and rising on the updrafts. A light warm breeze blew through the forest and Genie savoured the moment listening to the music of gently swaying branches.

Moucher swam noisily behind her, not quite believing she hadn’t leaped in with him or that she hadn’t thrown him a stick to fetch.

Rian was helping keeping the bonfires going, heaping damp leaves on them to generate more smoke. The

purpose wasn’t to burn, but create as much smoke as possible in the orchard to drive the wasps out.

‘You given any more thought to what Genie saw in Synchro?’ Rian asked. ‘She’s still having nightmares about Reverend Schneider.’

Marshall was looking for the wasp hive in the crevices of the trees. He stood up and wiped his forehead, removing his hat a moment.

‘It’s that carbon blowback thing that gets me. I went to look at my notes last night. There’s nothing on it and then I realized why. When we were experimenting we only used inanimate objects. The most daring thing we ever did was try to transmit a cup of coffee from one part of the lab to another.’

‘It work?’

‘It evaporated and the plastic mug melted. Not a huge success. One thing I do know, if they are testing on humans, then there’d be a huge carbon load.’

‘If?’ Rian queried. ‘You don’t believe her?’

Marshall looked at him and shrugged. ‘I haven’t met your friends, remember. I still don’t quite believe that anyone who has been teleported and not survived, can then somehow reappear, like a ghost in my house and actually talk. Never mind make sense. You have to accept that we are made of flesh and blood, Rian. If that isn’t

transmitted and then reassembled, which is the exact purpose of teleportation, then what are you? More’s the point, what are they? Where’s their DNA now? Smeared on a wall in the transmission chamber? Renée and the others are just ghosts and as the servers start to die, so will they. It’s harsh, but you have to know that.’

‘But you accept Genie went into Synchro and saw people.’

‘Astral travel is well documented. Shaman can do it moving through space and time. Genie’s got a gift. I believe that. But I’m having a harder time accepting the others as being “alive” by any acceptable definition.’

‘We should get Denis and Renée to talk to you.’

Marshall smiled. ‘Well, put it this way, I’m prepared to suspend my disbelief. A good scientist must accept the challenge that one day everything he believes in could be wrong. Besides, there’s something to this. You say that Renée told you she was maintained on at least ten thousand servers.’

‘More, probably.’

‘Well, it’s true. That’s what the Fortress project was designed to do. First you digitize the subject, store it on memory, then transmit. That was always the really hard bit, getting the DNA sequencing correct. Billions of calculations just to make an ear appear in the right place.

Now imagine just how much storage and energy it takes

to keep you intact after you’ve been turned into basic atomic particles. Every time you see one of those kids, it has to be draining an ocean of power on the system.

You have no idea how much memory it must take to maintain the kids intact so you can just see them, let alone talk. That’s why I’m a sceptic. It’s been the holy grail at the Fortress since I can remember. You’d think they’d notice something like that was happening.’

Rian mused on that.

‘I just don’t understand how they think they can get away with it,’ Marshall added. ‘If they’re using kids for real? It’s abominable.’

‘Why don’t you confront them?’

Marshall looked at Rian through the smoke. ‘They’re dangerous people, Rian. Ruthless. There’s billions of dollars tied up in this project. Somehow they’ve rationalized this. Maybe they tell themselves these kids don’t matter, they’re loners, drifters, no one will miss them. But confront them? First you need evidence.

Evidence people would believe. That’s harder. Remember the Fortress is one of the best kept secrets of the century.

You try telling anyone about teleportation and before you know it there’s a man with a white coat behind you ready to lock you up forever. They will do anything to keep it secret. Absolutely anything. Think on that.’

*

The reservoir was a huge manmade lake, kilometres long.

It occupied a natural dip in the mountain and there were giant rock and earth walls built up to retain the water runoff from the slopes above. Genie realized she’d have to walk to the other side of the reservoir to get a good view down the valley where the Fortress was situated. The eagles were circling a distance away now and even from this distance looked huge. Any one of them, she realized, could swoop down and grab Mouch if they wanted.

‘Keep your eyes on the sky, Mouch,’ she warned him as they set off again. ‘We’ll swim together when we get to the other end.’

She was sweltering now, but feeling good about it. Fall weather wouldn’t be far off and she wanted to enjoy all the hot days they got. Her skin was improving day by day out here, but she was still resentful that she’d been cheated out of a whole summer by her mother.

It was unforgivable.

She finally got to the edge of the reservoir, the water held in place by deep giant boulders and a vast sloping concrete wall. She realized that whoever built it had only to seal off this narrow section and they had a natural lake, as the rest of the water was contained by the mountains on both sides. She felt like some pioneer, gazing down the

steep valley for the first time – the green forest sweeping down far below her into the distance. A bird shrieked somewhere, alerting others to her presence.

She found a huge warm boulder to perch on, right on the edge, Mouch lying down in the shade below her at the waterline, panting loudly.

She trained her field glasses on the bald eagles and although it was hard to get used to observing them and getting the focus right for both eyes, it was amazing to watch them in flight. She felt she was right there and could see the updraught lifting their feathers. ‘Wow, Mouch. These are amazing. You can see forever.’

She lost the birds for a moment as she was on maximum close-up and found she was looking at a bus stop.

‘Huh?’

She steadied herself, lying on her stomach, and found the bus stop again. It was some distance away, far down the valley beside a narrow winding dirt track that snaked through the forest. No one even lived out here, so how could there be a bus stop? It made no sense. The birds swooped overhead, but she lost them and when she searched she found she was looking at the bus stop again and there appeared to be a kind of shelter there, and if she wasn’t mistaken, a vending machine.

Even more strange.

Then she saw there was someone, possibly a kid, hard to judge at this distance, walking along the road towards it. She could just make out he was wearing a backpack.