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
