Heaven is a Place on Earth (12 page)

Rafe got up and strode across the room. You could go mad wondering what the hell was really going on here. The apartment felt small and claustrophobic. He wanted to unlatch and find somewhere with room to breathe, to shake this feeling of the walls closing in on him. He even thought about going outside. But Richards could be out there, waiting for him.

He went into the kitchen and snatched up the silver cylinder. It looked like a single, seamless piece of metal. He tried pulling it and twisting it. Ginny was watching him from the door. “You should be careful with that,” she said. “What if it's a grenade or something?” He froze, then put the object back on the counter. Damn it, the woman was right. It could be anything, a tube of nerve gas, or a phial of some hideous doomsday virus.

“
The only way past this is through it,” he said.

“
What?”

He tried to unclench his jaw. “We're in this up to our eyeballs and we're stumbling around like bloody sheep. We need to know more. For a start, we need to know who the players are and what they're after. It's only by getting in deeper that we'll ever be safe again.” He looked at the little black box and decided not to touch it. Then he looked at the wad of paper. His eyes wouldn't look at the gun. They kept flinching away from it.

“All right,” he said. “How about this? We camp out here for a couple of days while we put this all together, work out as much as we can. If we need more, we'll go out into QNet and get what we need. We shouldn't be pussy-footing around. We're already in more danger than either of us can cope with. We can't make it much worse, but maybe we can make it better.”

“
You mean we should go to the police?”

“
No!” He took a breath. “No, I don't think the police would be a good idea right now. They'd probably burst in here and arrest us both for aiding known terrorists, or whatever.”

“
But there's that detective, Chu, the tagger. He seemed OK. Maybe if we – ”

“
No. Remember what Cal said. We can't even trust the police.” He really needed to convince her of that. “We need to do this without them. You know what they're like when they hear the word 'terrorist'. We'll be locked away for weeks with no civil rights and no hope of clearing up this mess.” Ginny looked unhappy but didn't argue. Relieved, he tried to give her something in return. “It'll be all right. We'll do this together. We're safe here for now. We've got some time to get to the bottom of it. Maybe the stuff Cal left us will fill in the blanks. Look, I want to show you something.” He passed her the address of his office. “Unlatch and meet me there, OK?”

She nodded and went to lie down on the sofa again. Rafe went to the bedroom and lay on the bed. In a moment, he was in his office, with Ginny at the door. He let her in and stood back to reveal all the whiteboards summarising the information he had from Tonia.

Her eyes were wide as she took it all in. “This was all in that folder from Tonia?”

“
We should read the stuff Cal gave you and see if we can do the same with it, add it into this lot. Then we might see what it's all about.” He explained the name swaps for her so she could make sense of it.

She stood in front of the timeline that showed the progress of anti-terror laws around the world and matched it to the involvement of the various players. He could see her look from the first occurrence of Cal Copplin's codename – Recruit – in the UK ten years ago to the more recent ones in Australia. He sat down in the big, leather swivel chair from which he did most of his work and gave her time to soak it all up. She moved on to another board and then another, eventually returning to the timeline.

“Tonia says the bill won't pass in Australia,” he said.

She didn't turn away from the board. “I'd vote for it.”

“So would eighty percent of the country, according to the polls.” He glanced at the calendar on his wall. “In fact, we'll know in a couple of days. The plebiscite is on Saturday.”

“
Then what? If people say yes, then what happens?”

“
Then it goes to the parliament. The bill is tabled in the lower house for Monday. If it passes, it will go up to the Senate, but that's just a formality given the government has a majority in both houses. It'll be law before you know it.”

She turned to look at him and it struck him that she was subtly more attractive in VR, a better match for her beautiful hands, slightly taller, slimmer, longer legged. He was subtly better looking too, of course, and for the first time felt a little ashamed of himself, a little embarrassed for Ginny. Such a small, everyday deception, and one he wouldn't have noticed except they'd spent most of their time together so far on minimal aug.

“I don't really know what the bill's about,” she said. “I mean, I'm always hearing people going on about being for it or against it, but I don't remember ever hearing any details, just that it's supposed to help government agencies fight terrorists.”

“
Yeah, well, that's what it's supposed to be about, and it's probably a good thing, really, only there's a few clauses in there that have the civil rights people up in arms – and with good cause.”

“
Like what?”

Reluctantly, he asked his office librarian for a copy of the bill. He didn't want to spend his time educating someone who couldn't be bothered to check on what her government was asking her to vote on. In his view, people should take the trouble to keep themselves across that stuff. It infuriated him that, when it came to elections, his vote only counted as much as some moron's who watched the news once in a blue moon and didn't even know what the issues were, let alone where they stood on them. But that was democracy for you. Half the country thought whatever the tabloid feeds told them to think.

He tossed her the document. “It's clause 23.b.iii,” he said as she picked it up. “Nicely buried where few would bother to look. I forget the wording but it's something to the effect that 'in the national interest' and in matters of 'national security', the government has the right to monitor and filter any information on QNet to prevent the spread of sensitive information, or to modify such information so as to disguise the truth from or to mislead those who might choose to act against the State.”

Ginny shrugged. “Sounds OK to me. What's so bad about that?”

He made an effort not to sound as irritated as he felt. “It's the vagueness. The whole thing is wide open to abuse. A filter on the whole QNet? With the government able to change information to suit whatever it thinks is in the national interest? Doesn't that make you the least bit anxious? You do realise that everything goes through QNet these days, newsfeeds, financial transactions, all our aug and VR? Even the parliament itself meets in VR nowadays.”

“
I think you're overreacting a bit, aren't you? The bill is about stopping terrorists. If the police feel they need more powers to manipulate the information these people are getting, I'm perfectly happy to help them out.”

“
If I may say so, that's a very naïve position. If you give the government new powers, sooner or later they'll start using them. Maybe not the present government – although I wouldn't put anything past that lot – but maybe the next one, or the next. What if, down the track, a right-wing religious party got in power and they thought it wasn't in the national interest to let atheists become teachers? How would we ever find out if the filter changed every atheist's job application to show they had criminal records for child molestation when the interviewer saw it, but then changed it back again when the applicant looked at it?”

Ginny put the bill down on a table. “Now you're just being silly. And paranoid. Is this why September 10 is against the bill? Or is it just because they're terrorists and they're protecting their own interests?”

Rafe gave up trying. He knew this was a no-win argument, having had it so many times before. Besides, he needed to get Ginny focused on the material on the whiteboards and how they could turn it into something more substantial. “I don't know,” he said. “But they've been tracking similar legislation all over the world. It's extremely important to them. Do you know where the name, September 10, comes from?” Perhaps sensing another lecture on its way, Ginny shook her head and looked away. “September 10 was the date of the vote in the US House of Representatives on their own equivalent of that.” He tapped the bill on the table.

Ginny frowned. “That's not what I read. Anyway, if they're a US organisation, what are they doing here?”

“Good question. Let's find out.” He jumped up and blanked out all the whiteboards. “Time we got an expert opinion.” He made a call to the Sentinel office and was routed to Jan, the feed's terrorism specialist. “I've been avoiding making this call,“ he told Ginny, “but it's time to start shaking things up. Jan? How's it going? That's the way. Look, can you pop into my office for a sec.? I need to pick your brains about something I'm working on. Yes, I'm sorry it's so late, but this will really only take a minute.”

A woman appeared at the door, young and pretty, and Rafe let her in. “Jan this is Ginny. Jan is our terrorism expert, aren't you mate?”

Jan looked a bit bewildered. “I wouldn't say expert, exactly.” She turned a self-deprecating smile on Ginny. “I've got the Africa desk, so that kind of thing tends to land in my inbox.”

“
Jan, look, I'm chasing down one of my sordid scandals and someone involved might just possibly have some vague connection to S10. Can you give us a bit of background, like where they come from and why they're operating here in Oz?”

Still looking bemused, Jan said, “Well, they started in the States. Named themselves after the date of some anti-terror legislation – ”

“See? I told you she knew her stuff.”

Taken aback by the interruption, Jan seemed to lose her train of thought for a moment, then recovered. “They were US only for a couple of years, then the UK voted on a similar bill and they turned up there, blowing up comms towers and hacking worldlets, nothing very serious. They've never hurt anyone directly, but there have been a few indirect casualties – people who couldn't call an ambulance because the local Net was down, that kind of thing. Anyway, suddenly they were all over Europe and then everywhere – a full-blown international terror organisation. No-one's quite sure what their agenda is. I've never seen a coherent manifesto or anything. There was something a few years ago about governments lying and people being duped. The usual rambling kind of stuff. They just seem to be anti-QNet or something. They started operations here a couple of years ago and their activity has definitely ramped up ahead of the big cyberterrorism bill vote. You've probably seen their slogans geotagged all over the place. 'The truth will set you free.' 'Kill us rather than deceive us.' 'Better dead than led.' That kind of thing.” She gave a sort of giggle and stopped. She looked at Rafe, waiting for questions.

“Do you have any names?” he asked.

“
Not off the top of my head. I'll give you access to the file if you like. There were a lot of arrests in the States and a big trial but that was donkeys' years ago. Is that it?”

Rafe looked at Ginny who shook her head. “Yep, that's it. Thanks, Jan. See? Didn't take long.”

Jan smiled, apologised for not being much help and left, promising to see to that file access as soon as she got back.

“
That was your expert?” Ginny asked when they were alone again.

“
Well, she knew more than we did. Maybe there'll be something in the file.”

Ginny nodded without enthusiasm and sat down, deep in thought.

Rafe brought his whiteboards back to life. In the face of Ginny's obvious disappointment he grew defensive. “I know it's not much yet, but we've got Copplin's stuff and now there's Jan's file. Let's put that together and see where we are then, all right?”

Ginny sighed. “I don't have much option, do I? I can't hide out at Cal's for the rest of my life. And I'd rather be dragged out and shot by the terrorists than spend another three weeks at my parents' house. You're right. The only way past this is through it. What do we do next?”

Sheets of paper were scattered all over Cal's floor and furniture. After a solid hour of reading, Rafe and Ginny began collating the information they had gleaned. They quickly slipped into a method of working which involved Rafe staying in his office, updating the whiteboards, while Ginny spent most of her time in the real world, shuffling documents into different clusters and popping in to give Rafe an update every few minutes.

Cal's documents were something like Tonia's but all in one hand. They were his own notes, diagrams, message printouts, and feed dumps. One document was a list of places Cal had discovered around the city that had weak or limited QNet coverage. One was a list of online suppliers that were “friendly to the cause” – the cause being S10, Rafe assumed. The suppliers seemed mostly to be electronics and computing shops, although notes beside some of them made it clear they supplied all kinds of other things – including weapons and explosives. There was no doubt that Cal was an active and willing member of Tonia's cell.

When this finally dawned on Ginny, she went and sat in the bedroom on her own for a while, but it wasn't long before she was back. Rafe found it hard to make out his reluctant partner. She was bright enough, and quick, but she had that stultifying naivete that afflicted almost everyone apart from his fellow journalists and the people they mostly dealt with – politicians, crooked business people, the police, media-hungry celebrities, and out-and-out criminals. Rafe couldn't remember the last time he'd spent so much time in the company of anyone who wasn't either on the make or chasing after people on the make. It wasn't as refreshing or renewing as he might have expected. In fact, it was a bit creepy. It was as if this woman had a part of her brain missing – the part that was always looking for an angle, always trying to outsmart you and use you. It made him feel uncomfortable around her.

As with Tonia's stash, a lot of Cal's documents related to computer systems design. Rafe knew nothing about the subject but knew a man who did. Unfortunately the man lived in Canberra and there was no way to show him the pages without scanning them into his office worldlet – something Rafe was still reluctant to do. He made a mental note to ask Ginny if she knew a computer whiz closer to home. Yet the diagrams and notes were highly suggestive. References to various “security layers”, “secure worldlet interface architectures”, and “the Parliament worldlet message protocols” made him yearn for more information. The Parliament worldlet in particular could be pure gold. It might be the most secure worldlet in the country, the place in which the Government met. Was there a September 10 plot to disrupt it? He knew hackers tried to bring down the Parliament worldlet all the time. It was a prime target – like the Kremlin and the Capitol worldlets – but to the best of his knowledge, it had never succumbed. Had S10 finally found a way? Hackers in Argentina had brought down their country's parliament once, and kept it down for a week, seriously disrupting the government and leading to a state of emergency being declared. But that was twenty years ago. Surely nothing like that could happen these days?

Still, Rafe set up a new whiteboard he labelled, “Potential Targets” and wrote, “The Parliament worldlet”. By the small hours of the morning, the whiteboard still had only one potential target on it. Rafe was standing in his office frowning at it when Ginny came in.

“I'm going to crash,” she said. “I've been running on strong coffee for the past couple of hours and it's not helping any more, just making me feel sick.”

Here in his office, she looked fresh and immaculately well groomed, of course. But, even a few hours ago when he'd last gone for a pee and seen her crawling about on the floor, shuffling papers into new configurations, she had looked like the living dead. “Yeah. Right. You get your head down. I'll just finish up here and I'll join you.” She raised an eyebrow. “Well, not literally, obviously. I meant... Well, you know what I meant.”

She nodded towards the whiteboards. “How are we doing?”

It was a hard question to answer. Rafe looked around the room. There were about twenty whiteboards now, some covered in dense scrawl in multiple colours, some almost empty. Did it all amount to a coherent story? He sighed and took the plunge.

“This is what I think. Twelve years ago, the US put up this really crap piece of anti-terror legislation. Ironically, it seems to have brought a new terrorist organisation into being just to fight it.”

“
September 10.”

“
Correct. S10 then took on a life of its own, continuing to oppose something or other, even after it had won its case and the legislation had failed. When the UK tried to get up essentially the same thing, it gave S10 a whole new lease on life. It went international and never looked back.” He paused. Even Jan had known all that. What had he and Ginny learnt that was new?

“
The story gets interesting when Cal Copplin appears. He's a top-notch systems architect from the UK. He's employed by the Brits to design the systems necessary to support the legislation. From what I've seen, he was the head honcho, technical lead for the whole project. I can't make much sense of what his designs mean but they're impressively complicated and it looks like they worked. There are test results and other documents to suggest that they built it and had it ready to roll out. Unfortunately, the bill was defeated and the systems were never deployed. Score two for S10.

“
Perhaps Cal was pissed off about that because, just a few months later, he turns up in Australia, applies for citizenship and settles here. The interesting thing is, though, that he took a job as a field technician for a computer company.”

“
Why is that interesting?”

“
Because the guy was a major high-flyer. He would have been over-qualified to be Technical Director of any company in Australia. Instead, he becomes a lowly field engineer. I'm thinking that your friend was either very pissed off indeed, or he was deliberately keeping a low profile.” Rafe moved over to the timeline board. “About four years ago, Cal is recruited into S10. That's at the same time the first green papers on the cyberterrorism bill start appearing in Australia. Then, a few weeks away from the vote, he disappears altogether.”

Ginny shook her head. “So they're planning something, probably involving Cal and his specialist knowledge of this kind of security system, and it's all going to happen any day now. Honestly, we don't seem to have got very far. I don't feel the slightest bit safer. Do you?”

Rafe had to admit she was right. “I don't think we can give up though,” he said. The energy seemed to drain out of him as if someone had opened a tap in his ankle. “There's lots of other things we can explore.”

Tomorrow. He couldn't do any more tonight.

-oOo-

The pain in Rafe's back almost made him cry out as he struggled to sit up after a night spent fighting with the sofa. The blankets he'd found in a cupboard were lying on the floor, having failed miserably to stay on top of him as he tossed and turned. He rubbed his sandpaper jaw and padded blearily to the bathroom to see what Copplin had by way of shaving implements. But the bathroom door was locked and he could hear the shower running.

He felt old and achy and made himself a coffee while pondering the fact that there was a naked, not unattractive woman just a few metres away and he just wished she'd hurry up and get out of the bathroom so he could stand under a hot shower and wash the kinks out of his spine.
Old age
, he told himself, but he knew that wasn't true. His mind veered towards his mutilated, scarred genitalia, and he wrenched it away, angry and scared. Of all the things he didn't need to dwell on right now, his future life of certain celibacy was close to the top of the list.
We can fix you up,
the young doctor in charge of his reconstruction had told him, just a few weeks ago. They'd grow new parts for him, new skin, new muscle tissue. He'd be as good as new. Induced pluripotent cell therapy, the doc had said. No worries.

But Rafe had told them to leave him alone. He'd had enough of being cut up and mutilated. He just wanted to forget about the whole thing. And deep inside him, where his inner voice was muffled and incoherent, some dark part of his psyche wanted to keep the scars, wanted to own them.

“If you don't put it in the cup, it just doesn't work.” He jumped and the coffee cube he'd been holding fell from his hand onto the worktop. Ginny stood there in one of Cal's robes, her hair wrapped in a towel, grinning at him. “Earth to Rafe,” she said. “Are you always catatonic in the mornings?”

He tried to force a smile but failed. “Do you want one?”

“Oh yeah.” She bustled in and moved him aside. “Why don't you let me make it. You look like you're in withdrawal or something. Shit! You're not, are you?”

“
No, but thanks for asking. Of all the ways I'm totally fucked up, that is not one of them. I'll be back in a mo.” He went to the bathroom and by the time he came out, feeling only marginally better, the drink was steaming on the coffee table, Ginny was dressed, and she was frying bacon and eggs.

The smell made him realise how hungry he was – and the sight of real food frying in a pan gave the morning a strangely exotic feel.

“This Copplin guy must be some kind of throwback. I haven't seen eggs and bacon since I was a kid. I didn't know you could still get them.”

“
I hope you don't mind everything a bit burnt. I've only ever seen this done in interactives. I've never tried it myself. It's surprisingly tricky.”

“
It's supposed to be really bad for you,” Rafe said, as the plate of scorched eggs and bacon was handed to him. There were fringe types who swore that only genuine food, from plants and animals, was safe and healthy, but Rafe had seen documentaries on modern food production and it seemed clear to him that the more control you had over what went into your food, the more certain you could be that there was nothing dangerous in there. Even so, the smells and flavours that filled his head as he put the first forkful into his mouth made him wonder if health and safety were the only concerns you should have about the food you ate.

“
So what's our plan for today?” Ginny asked.

He looked up at her to see whether she was joking but she seemed genuinely to trust that he would know what to do. It was a little bit scary.

“We're going to visit a computer specialist,” he said.

“
OK.”

“
Only I don't know any. Not in Brisbane, anyway. What about you?”

“
What? Do I know any computer specialists?”

“
Yeah. You must know somebody. Someone who could look at Cal's documents and tell us what they mean.”

“
You know I'm a musician, right?”

“
Yes, but you must know somebody. What about those companies you do soundscapes for? They build worldlets, don't they?”

Ginny looked uncomfortable, a forkful of bacon half-way to her mouth. “Well, yes, but...”

“So they must have computer guys. Good ones. Can't you call one of them and ask around?”

“
Well I could, I suppose, but...”

“
But what?”

“
Well, they're my customers. I don't want to scare them off by turning up with a pile of terrorist documents and some wild story about disappearing people and murderers on the loose.”

Rafe put his fork down and gave her a look. “Seriously? You're worried about losing some work when we're trying to save our necks – and prevent a terror attack on the parliament?”

Ginny pressed the heel of her hand into her forehead as she grappled with her dilemma. Rafe already knew she was hard up and her business wasn't doing well, but she still seemed to be having more trouble making the decision than he thought she should. When she finally looked up she said, “All right. All right. There is a company I know that's big enough to have some good techs.” She pushed her breakfast away from her, obviously no longer interested. “Give me a few minutes to set it up.” She lay down on the sofa and zoned out. Rafe finished his breakfast, along with Ginny's bacon, and took the plates to the kitchen. He had barely begun to fathom the mysteries of the dishwasher – everything he ate came on disposable plates, or was fed into his body through his tank's drips – when Ginny sat up and scowled at him.

“
Everything set up?” he asked. Her scowl intensified. “What? Are we good to go?”

“
Yes,” she snapped and set about putting the paper documents into a neat enough heap to stuff back into the folder.

Rafe thought about demanding what the hell was wrong with her, but left it alone. He picked up the silver tube and the black box from the worktop and studied them. Maybe the computer guy could say what they were. Ginny pushed past him, grabbed up the gun and the spare clips and thrust them into her pockets.

“You weren't going to take it, were you?” she said. “I've seen the way you keep looking at it sideways, like it's going to jump up and shoot you. It scares the shit out of you. Well, maybe you haven't had one pushed in your face lately. The next time we meet Tonia, or Richards, or whoever's lurking out there waiting to kill us, I'm not going to be completely bloody helpless.”

Her lips were hard and thin, her eyes glinted at him as if the whole damned business was his fault. He felt an answering anger surge inside him but he kept himself from snapping back. “Is it far?”