Heaven is a Place on Earth (10 page)

“
We don't need to do this at all.”

“
No, we don't, but from your reaction when you met me, I reckon you're in some kind of trouble and you'd like to hear what I know maybe more than the other way round. Is your job some kind of secret.”

She scowled. “I design soundscapes for worldlets.”

“Soundscapes? So you're not a doctor or some kind of medical professional?”

“
Are you really a journalist? You don't seem very good at this interviewing thing.”

Rafe took a deep breath. She was right. He was making a complete balls up of it. Time to start again. “Sorry. Look, here's the thing. Someone got in touch with me and said they had information about the upcoming cyberterrorism bill. I agreed to meet them here, in Brisbane. They wanted a real, physical meeting. As it turned out, that was so they could hand me some documents. Paper documents, that is. Those documents suggest a connection between my informant and a terrorist group called September 10. They also contained several other names. One of them was yours.”

Ginny's reaction was to stand up and pace away from her chair and then back to it. “I'm nothing to do with terrorists. I don't know anything about it. I did one stupid favour for a friend, that's all. Just one stupid favour.”

“
Which friend was that? Tonia Birchow?”

“
Tonia? That psycho?”

“
So you do know Tonia then? I met her myself yesterday. Charming woman.”

“
Is she your informant? Is she the one in this terrorist group?”

“
How do you know Tonia, Ginny?”

Whatever progress he thought he'd made in gaining Ginny's trust, seemed to have been undone. The woman said, “The problem is, I don't know you, Rafe. For all I know, you're working for the police, or ASIO, or maybe you're with the terrorists. Being a journo might just be a cover. Spooks have cover. Cops have cover. So do criminals. This interview is over. I want you to leave now.”

Rafe didn't move. He'd fought too hard to get a seat to give it up, and he hadn't drunk his coffee yet. “Ginny, I can see you're scared, and, considering what you're mixed up in, I don't blame you a bit. This is scary stuff. To be honest, I'm scared shitless myself. The thing is, we've both got monkeys on our backs now and the only way to shift the little buggers is to share what we know and help each other out.” Even as he said it, he realised it was true. This woman was no terrorist. She had stumbled into something dangerous and didn't know what to do about it. It had made her so paranoid she didn't think she could trust anybody. He was willing to bet she hadn't even told her best friend. What's more, he was in the same position. He needed a friend and confidante as much as she did.

“
You just spent three weeks at your parents' place,” he went on, letting his intuition guide his words. “That was to lie low wasn't it? You were hoping it would all blow over if you gave it a bit of time, right? But it didn't. No sooner do you get home than there's a stranger accosting you on your doorstep, wanting to rake it all over again. Who else has been on at you, Ginny? Tonia and her friends? The cops?”

She turned away from him, shoulders hunched. “You need someone you can talk to, Ginny. To be honest, I could use someone myself. Even the little bit I already know about this is driving me nuts.” She didn't respond. “Tell me about this favour you did. Someone you knew – a friend maybe – dropped you in it, didn't they? Was it Tonia? Or Gav?” Still no response. He took a wild leap. “Was it Cal Copplin?”

She spun round to face him, eyes wide, and said, “How do you know Cal?”

He blinked in surprise. “I don't. He's just another name in the sheaf of papers my informant gave me. But he's an important name. He's of great interest to September 10. They seem to have been tracking him for years. I think they might have recruited him.”

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “Cal's not a terrorist.” But there was doubt in her eyes. She knew something that maybe suggested her friend really was one of the bad guys.

“
But he asked you to do a favour for him, isn't that right? And the favour led you to Tonia. And then...” And then what? He was out of guesses for now, but fortunately Ginny started talking.

“
And then a killer turned up. A man named Dover Richards. He surprised me out in the hallway, just like you did. He wanted to know all about Cal. And later a cop turned up from Missing Persons. Another man in the hallway. He wanted to find Cal too.”

Rafe's mind was racing. “So there's a tagger after him. Cal ditched his tag, right? Gone off the grid? They can do that. They've got a doctor who helps them. I thought you might be the doctor.”

“Me?”

“
It's all I could think of to explain why Tonia had your name in her papers. But you're not a doctor. You're not anyone – if you'll forgive me saying.”

“
Feel free.”

“
So it's something else. It's Copplin. He's the important one. How come you're friends with a terrorist?”

Ginny threw up her arms. “I'm not. Cal's just, like, a normal bloke. I met him. We had a couple of dates. We talked. He seemed nice. He's not a terrorist any more than I am.”

“Maybe you're more of a terrorist than you think you are. What was the favour he asked you to do?”

Ginny scowled at him and walked away, towards the kitchenette. Rafe realised he was hungry. He wished he could find a good restaurant and get lunch but, without a tank, there would be no point eating.

“Have you got any food in the house?” he asked. “I mean, real food?” Ginny scowled at him in response. “Well, do you know somewhere that sells food? I mean a real fast food place or something?”

She turned to the fridge and seemed about to open the door when she stopped. “Are you really travelling on an expense account.” He nodded. “OK, then, you can take me to lunch. There's a place in Toowong that serves real food. Very pricey. For the jaded rich who want to try something different.. They've got a chef and everything. It's only a fifteen minute walk from here. I've always wanted to go and now's the time. Come on.”

Rafe didn't much like the sound of it –  Becky would kill him when she saw the bill – but if that's what it took to get the story, she'd understand. Or, at least, she'd forgive him one day.

-oOo-

“I heard about you,” Ginny said, studying him. “You were on the feeds.”

Rafe nodded and scanned the menu in vain for anything that cost under a week's wages.

“They tortured you or something, nearly killed you. You're famous.”

“
What about you?” he asked, wanting to change the subject. “Written anything I'd know?”

“
I write soundscapes not pop songs. Ever been to the National Museum? You're from Canberra didn't you say? I worked on the Dali exhibition there last year.”

“
Yeah, I saw that. You did that, huh?” He tried to look impressed, but he hadn't really noticed the soundscape. In fact, he'd never really considered that someone actually wrote the ambient sounds he took for granted wherever he went.

“
Not my best work,” she said. “Very conservative bunch at the National Museum.”

He glanced at her, not sure if that was meant to be a joke. He grinned anyway, just in case.

A robot rolled up to them and took their order. Ginny seemed to be intent on bankrupting his employer while Rafe tried to mitigate the damage by ordering the cheapest dishes he could find. If his guest noticed, she did not comment, but chattered away about her various clients and some big proposal she'd just put in to a wordlet design company he'd never heard of. A lot seemed to be hanging on it, so he tried to sound interested and make intelligent comments, all the while trying to get the conversation back to Tonia Birchow and her gang of saboteurs.

“
So, tell me how your meeting with Tonia went,” he said at last, cutting across an ecstatic monologue on the subject of how much better real food tasted than sim food, or printer food, or the processed rubbish they deliver from the supermarket warehouses.

Ginny closed her mouth and looked at him across a spoonful of desert that had been making abortive sorties towards her mouth for quite some time. There was a flicker of defeat across her features and Rafe realised she had been deliberately waffling on about anything and everything to keep him off the subject. She put down her spoon and regarded it for a moment.

“She pulled a gun on me,” she said. “The woman is certifiable.” Rafe swallowed hard. Perhaps he hadn't been so paranoid yesterday when he'd fled Tonia's apartment. Maybe she had been armed after all.

“
Why would she pull a gun on you?”

“
Because I went to her brother's house, to deliver this package Cal gave me.”

“
Her brother's house? You mean Gavin?”

“
I mean, the late Gavin. As in, he was dead in the kitchen, according to Tonia.”

“
Had she killed him?”

“
I don't think so. But who knows? I thought she was going to kill me. She said I was working for the taggers. I didn't even know what a tagger was. In the end she let me go.”

Rafe pressed her for the details and, by the time he'd finished his coffee, he had the whole story. “And you have no idea what was on those data cubes?”

She shook her head. “I should have opened the package. My friend, Della, says all kinds of people might be in danger because of me.”

Rafe could only agree, but he said, “You thought you were helping a friend.”

“But they blow things up,” she said. “They could disrupt services or even kill someone.”

“
September 10 you mean?”

“
Yes, I looked them up after I met Tonia.”

“
I wish you hadn't done that.”

“
Why? The police already know I'm involved. Besides, it hardly looks suspicious if I try to find out what September 10 is. I mean, if I was one of them, I'd already know, right?”

“
Do the police know you met Tonia?”

“
I don't think so?”

“
Or about the package Cal asked you to deliver?”

“
No.”

“
So your sudden interest in this particular terror group might just seem a bit surprising to anyone who's monitoring your Net usage.” She frowned at him, as if trying to work out how serious he was. “Never mind,” he said. “Tell me what you found out.”

A movement near the door caught his eye and he looked up to see a man talking to a robot waiter. The waiter led the newcomer over to one of the many unoccupied tables. “Now there's a coincidence,” he said.

“What?”

“
I know that bloke. I met him just – ”

The realisation hit Rafe like a jolt of electricity. Fear ran through his body like a fire. He stood quickly but as quietly as he could. He needed to act while the man was distracted with taking his seat and dealing with the waiter. He grabbed Ginny by the arm and pulled her to her feet, saying, “We've got to get out of here. Come on, quickly. Don't make a sound.”

She rose, looking around to see what had spooked him, but he hustled her towards the door. A waiter rolled after them and he waved the stupid machine away. The last thing he wanted was any attention being drawn to them. He tried not to look at the man, but he couldn't help stealing a glance as they reached the door. They were OK for a few more seconds. The man was looking at the menu. He hadn't checked yet that Rafe and Ginny were still at their table.

The bill flashed up in his aug as they stepped outside and he flicked it away. They needed somewhere to hide and fast. The restaurant was in a row of what once must have been shops and eateries on a broad street that curved away around a corner to his right. Opposite was a massive building without windows that might once have been a shopping mall but was now clearly a distribution warehouse. Robot trucks of all sizes were driving into and emerging from a wide black tunnel that led to the interior. He considered hiding in there but dismissed it at once. There would be security. The robots would challenge him, perhaps even arrest him. No, his best bet was to escape down the road.

Ginny was starting to resist his tugging and asking what the hell was wrong. “Someone followed us to the restaurant,” he said. “Someone's been following me for days.”

“
Who?”

Then he saw what they needed. “Come on.” He grabbed her tighter and dragged her with him across the road. Vehicles stopped and waited politely for them to cross. He led her to the entrance where the delivery trucks were emerging. “That one,” he said, pointing to a flat-bed truck loaded with large crates. The crates were fastened down with webbing.

They reached the truck just as it slowed to a halt before turning onto the main road. “Climb on,” he said. Ginny resisted and he pushed her forward. “Climb on. It's easy.” It was, too. The electric truck's bed was low and the webbing made for easy hand-holds. At the speed it moved as it edged around the corner, a child could do it. “Get on the truck, Ginny. He'll notice we're gone any moment now and come out to find us.”