The Transdyne Awakening, page 6
She had a perspective on what had happened in the wider world, out there beyond Tenacamps, the restricted Citizones, beyond the world controlled by idiot politicos and power brokers. He was fascinated, most of all by her grasp of what he had always dismissively viewed as ‘oldtime’ study-learning. The more she talked, the more he understood her as seeing no division between the old wisdom learning and the best of ‘now’ thinking. To her it was all one, a seamless whole cloth. She talked in definite terms, about what was right and what was wrong.
Clay let her talk at length. He was inspired. He recalled what had overtaken him that day at Ahab’s place, that feeling of having a new kind of thirst to quench. He had made up his mind to drink as deeply as he could from this newfound well. Here he was listening, almost spellbound, to this fascinating person whose cup seemed to be overflowing with the very stuff he wanted.
They were still in conversation as they left the table together. Clay felt at ease with her. She was a lot like John; confident yet unaffected. Pushkin, the dog followed and now and again she would talk to it as if it understood her words. Pushkin certainly understood her tone and responded to her affectionate touch.
It was evening. As they walked beneath the vast camouflaged constructions, the sky on the horizon started to change. Clay became aware of a welcome breeze blowing gently through the place. He had never walked out this far from the main camp buildings. Once again he was overwhelmed at the ingenuity of these people. They passed some of the gardens and orchards where people were unhurriedly going about last minute tasks.
Skye showed him some of the animals. This place was big, Clay thought to himself as they leaned on the fencing to the sheep pasture. Skye said something briskly to the dog. It took off like lightning towards a gaggle of sheep way over on the far side of the grazing area. As Skye gently called commands, Pushkin crouched and silently repositioned himself. He did this several times, until he had brought the sheep from the far side to join the rest, jostling together at the near fence. Clay looked on in amazement. “That’s one more thing I’ve never seen in my life.”
Skye smiled broadly at him. “He’s a wonderful sheepdog, isn’t he?” She beckoned Pushkin over to the fencing. As he bounded up, she knelt down with her face at the dog’s eye level. She cradled his face with both hands and once again, talked directly to him. “You are a wonderful dog, aren’t you, my Pushkin?” she whispered. Clay watched this little exchange in absolute wonder. He was trying, he was really trying, to expand his thinking so that he could take it in.
When they returned to the dining area, John was still seated at a bench talking with one of the crew. Skye said goodnight and Clay took a seat, waiting for the two men to finish their conversation. Usually, when his head was buzzing like this, he would have sought escape with a couple of Neverminds. Tonight, he still felt like company. John was looking tired but stayed to talk with him, drinking coffee.
“You’re getting the feel of the place, then?” he asked.
Clay whistled quietly. “The more I see, the more questions I seem to have!” He was beginning to get beneath the surface of life here. He was beginning to grasp why these people took the risks they did in order to remain outside of the System.
The world in which they now lived had been shaped, carefully and slowly, by calculating political engineers. In the years before Clay’s birth, most of the earth’s population seemed to have been oblivious to the small, incremental steps that had led them into this dark, oppressive age. They appeared to have completely ignored the voices trying to alert them to the dangers of their complacency. The fabric of society that most people knew had begun to come apart from the centre, as the road was steadily paved for the near deification of the World Leader. Where the slide into chaos had needed a little nudging, it had been helped along by thousands of covert operations. Those behind the push for World Government had set up and used dozens of front organizations to fuel the unrest. Having caused the terror and engineered the confusion, they could then offer to restore the stability that the terror stricken masses craved above all else. Over a short period of time, men and women began clamouring for the restoration of some kind of order.
When Caesar Romano had finally stepped onto the world stage, he was welcomed like a messiah. Brilliant minds at work in the shadows had paved the way to his grand entrance. All he really had to do was look good and give out the powerful propaganda speeches put before him.
He was depicted as having brought peace to the most war-torn regions of the world, settling longstanding conflicts with his staged diplomacy. The people got what they had asked for, but at a terrible price. In the Megacities, martial law was enforced. The violent, starving mobs on the streets were simply eradicated. Polibro squads suppressed all opposition. The death toll went on mounting as the New World Order was forced into place. The time when there had been a division between the Military and a Polibro force was long forgotten. A Polibro trooper now saw no contradiction in turning his weaponry on citizens when ordered. Alongside the regular troupers, Trans were employed. By this time people were so confused and weary that they welcomed the strong arm of World Law. Before the big public viewscreens, crowds wept at Romano’s rhetoric.
“You can once again sleep safely in your homes, thanks to World Government. You can buy food from the State Hypermarts, thanks to World Government. You owe your security to World Government. There is only one peace - World Peace. There is only one law - World Law. There is only one way - The Way Of The New World Order.”
As the World Federation came into being, national standing armies simply ceased to exist. There was one Government, one rule, one law for all. To try to live outside this all-encompassing web was to risk death. If you were not in the system, you were an antisocial element. You could not officially buy or sell anything. You had no status. You became an ‘un-person’. The wise few who had foreseen the emergence of the Superstate had made their own preparations. It had taken many years to lay the foundations of a system as massive and overarching as World Government. As these foundations were being put into place, other builders had been at work.
Clay had heard John’s account of his father. He had been an engineer and had gathered around him a team of likeminded men. They knew that they would be marked out as antisocials. Once identified by the new surveillance grids, their spiritual principles ensured them an appointment with the guillotines.
John’s father had been one of the original planning group for The Way. His vision for a free community based on shared principles, along with brilliant engineering skills, had helped shape the scheme. Right from the outset, they had all pooled whatever possessions or real estate they had to invest in their goal. On the road between vision and the present reality, the people of this community had overcome hardship and tragedy. John’s father had been arrested while bargaining for a consignment of off-market electronic supplies. Both he and his contact had been executed as antisocials. The remaining group had continued, building on the template he had fashioned. Soon there were several small communities living outside the scope of the New Society.
Clay turned in very late and fell easily asleep without the aid of any pills. Each time he came here, he knew he would find readjusting to his established work mode more problematic. It really was like shuttling between two very different worlds.
YURI
The heat persisted. It took Clay into its smothering embrace every time he stepped from the terraglide. He was beginning to feel detached from the work of day-to-day deliveries and account collections. He tried to keep up appearances and put the tasks back on, like old familiar clothes.
He was sure of being watched as he approached the palatial double storey building. He slowed to take in the manicured garden space. A blaze of brightly coloured flowers stood out from the background of lush green. A garden sprinkler came on, throwing out a rainbow of spray. The whole place was beautiful. He took his time, enjoying the fragrance of the plants mixed with the scent of damp grass. Yuri was looking down from the balcony above him as he stopped the vehicle.
“You’re late, my little man,” he said.
“Don’t call me your little man!” Clay barked back at him. He detested Yuri and his whole coterie. Only people like Yuri could afford the kind of luxury on display here. That meant that he had standing with a lot of people. To Clay he was just another customer, dependent on Ahab for supplies of his favourite stimulants. Clay didn’t crane his neck looking up at him. Ignoring the two bodyguards, he waited for the big door to open and walked inside. Yuri descended the stairs and said, “Put the stuff on the table.”
“I’m not putting it down anywhere until the account’s settled up,” Clay responded. He knew that would nettle the overbearing peacock. He wasn’t about to lose his temper; he’d been doing this for too long. On the other hand he wasn’t going to take any more of Yuri’s condescension.
He’d tolerated quite enough of that on previous drops. He placed a comp on the shiny table next to a magnificent vase of flowers. He stood back, placed both hands on the case and waited. A flamboyantly dressed male Tran drifted into the room through the inside doorway. Clay didn’t acknowledge its presence but took in the thing’s preening gestures and appearance. It wasn’t hard to guess Yuri’s preferences.
Aside from the protection, he liked to surround himself with sycophants of both the human and synthetic varieties. He watched the closely whispered exchange between Yuri and the Tran. The Tran’s name was Frankie and while it draped one hand over Yuri’s shoulder, it rolled its eyes at Clay. “Look at him… so assertive!” he heard it say. Clay stared a hole straight through its head. Yuri looked at the waiting comp.
“What is this? It has become payment first?”
“Looks like it, doesn’t it?” Clay replied flatly.
As long as he didn’t deliberately mess up, he knew he had a certain amount of leeway in how he conducted these deals. He was going to play that right to the wire in the case of this obnoxious individual.
Yuri was nettled all right.
“Maybe I should have a word with your boss,” he said.
“Of course,” Clay retorted. “I’d advise a personal visit though. He hates electronic communications, even on the unlisted channels. You wouldn’t be popular with him if you started leaving data shadows around.”
Frankie spoke soothingly. “Don’t worry, Yuri, I’ll do the calc.” The Tran minced past Clay in a wave of scent. Clay snorted as the cloud of cologne assaulted his nostrils. Frankie handed him the comp as it bleeped.
“There you go.”
Clay put the case on the table and clicked it open, revealing the stash of ‘recreationals’ for Yuri to check. Frankie checked it for him.
“As usual, enough synthetic fun for everyone, Yuri!”
Somewhere in the back rooms a soundsheet started to play some pounding electronica. Apart from the silent goons, there wasn’t anybody at Yuri’s place now. Clay knew that, after a while, this place would be all colour, crowds and noise as the miasma of a total sense orgy rose in the hot night. Yuri nodded at Frankie and Clay unpacked the merchandise onto the table top. There were no false formalities. Clay shut the case and left wordlessly, breathing in the wonderful natural scent of the garden on his way to the terraglide. As he made his way back down the scenic entrance road, he wondered at his own behaviour. He tried to analyze why he reacted to Yuri and his ilk as he had started to lately. The past few days had been characterized by several such encounters. Was he starting to sit in judgement on some of the people who helped pay his way? All he knew was that he was disturbed on a deep level about what some of these people did to make the fortunes they possessed.
Take Yuri for instance, he thought. Yuri was rich; really rich. He had the kind of influence that came with financial acquisition. His main trade was human cargo; he was a trafficker. Kids from the Tenacamps who would never be missed or even reported missing, street urchins from the megazones, even kids from other lands: all had their price and could be placed with sexual predators from his long list of clients. A six year old boy or girl from nowhere could be used and disposed of as easily as a pair of cheap socks. To Yuri and his associates, their lives were of no importance whatsoever. These little vermin were just toys for his clients.
He would never have used terms like paedophilia. No, it was just lucrative trade and after all, his best customers were prominent politicos. He even had his own disposal network. He was a master magician. After they had served their purpose, Yuri could make these little ciphers completely disappear. It was smooth and constant business with an endless commodity supply. What could be wrong with that?
‘Yes, what could be wrong with it? Exactly what?’ Clay asked himself.
Up until these last few weeks, he had never questioned the way things were. After all, you couldn’t fight the weather, could you? He realized that he had a nest of cliches in his head. ‘The way things were was the way things were’ and ‘It is was what it is’ and even his denfather’s little homilies like; ‘Life’s a bitch and then you die’. It dawned on him that he’d never seriously thought about things within a moral framework because he’d never had a moral framework. He thought about recent conversations with John and Skye. Maybe he hadn’t got very far in his understanding, but some things had started to come into focus. He’d begun to see that these people were not passive and accepting of the prevailing worldview.
Their whole lives were clearly in opposition to it. They saw things as being either in keeping with the created order or not. Certain actions were not in harmony with the laws of creation and so, for them it was simple; these behaviours were wrong. The more he thought things over, the clearer it became. The reason dealing with Yuri and his associates upset him was because what they did was wrong. Maybe he couldn’t touch or see the dividing line between right and wrong, but that boundary was there nonetheless. Right and wrong were realities. Some things may not have been obvious to his physical senses but that didn’t make them any the less real. Another, higher reality had started to impress itself upon him. Maybe he had tuned it out before, but this previously unheeded force was making itself felt. It certainly wasn’t entirely comfortable, especially when light from this newly discovered window started to fall onto his own life.
WHITNEY
Whitney met him with relief written all over his face. He buzzed Clay inside as soon as he recognized him. “Have you got them?” he asked, wide eyed. “Yeah, sure,” Clay said, opening his case.
“Good,” the other sighed, tearing the cap from a blue biomed container. The sleeveless vest he wore revealed a painful looking wound on the upper side of his left arm. The skin was badly torn and there was seepage around the site. He aimed the aerosol, spraying the area thoroughly. Next he positioned a field dressing, wincing at the sting of the applied medication. Clay helped him secure it in place.
“Why did you call me? Couldn’t you get this stuff anywhere else?” Clay queried, unpacking the rest of the small consignment onto a counter. “The less they know the better,” said Whitney. “It’s a show of weakness if they know you’ve been hit.”
“How’d you get that?” asked Clay looking at the damaged arm.
It had been dark when Whitney arrived at the location he’d been given. He’d slipped from the terraglide and used his electronic foolkey to go quietly inside the building block. A second piece of key magic got him noiselessly past the door of the apartment and he stepped into the gloom. The only light in the tiny living chamber was the faint glow of a viewscreen on a low table. Outlined in its greenish tint he could see the figure on the couch with a pulserod pointed straight at him. “Come to collect?” came a sneering laugh. “Collect this!”
Whitney threw himself sideways, crashing to the floor in a mantle of broken furniture. The first charge punched a half metre gash in the wall above him. He fired back from the floor as the mark’s second charge streaked blue. He felt a shocking burning in his arm before he passed out.
He’d come around in a world of pain. The chair in the corner of the room was smouldering and he gagged on the fumes. In front of him, smoke was also rising from the man on the couch. The figure was now bent forward and he could see that his discharge had struck the man in the abdomen. The smell was awful. Coughing, he reached out and removed the pulserod from the victim’s hand. He clicked the safety on and tried to get to his feet. Waves of dizziness washed over him and he tried to steady himself on the arm of the couch. He had not anticipated this kind of reception. No one was supposed to expect his arrival. He was just a shadow that appeared out of nowhere. Now, he was a wounded shadow and there wasn’t much call for those in his line of work. He had to get out of there fast. The journey back to his den had been agony. He knew that he needed treatment, but that it had better be discreet. If his employers got wind of a hit hitman, he might soon himself be visited by shadows.
Whitney handed the comp to Clay once he’d made settlement. Clay threw it into the case.
“How’d you get into that line?” he asked Whitney.
“What? I just did. It’s what I trained for. I was a Polibro officer for eight tours. That’s a lot of killing; ideal background for this work. Most of the people who carry out these assignments are ex-Polibros. Politicos like proven formulas.”
“Good credits, eh?”
“What do you think? They told me I was doing society a favour… you know, getting rid of antisocials. The reality is I’m just keeping fat-assed politicos safe from anyone they think is a threat.”
