Heaven is a Place on Earth (26 page)

“You've missed most of the debate.”

The voice at her shoulder made her freeze.

“But then I don't suppose you're interested in that part, are you, Ginny?”

Dover Richards loomed over her as she turned to face him, standing too close and looking angry.

It took a moment for her heart to slow down and her breathing to come under control. She saw a comms icon appear briefly beside his head, meaning he had probably called for backup. 

“
You don't know what's going on here,” she told him. “And I don't have time to explain it to you.” Richards was such a pig-headed, arrogant man, she doubted she could convince him if she had a week. “But we have to stop this vote, right now.”

She could see the confusion in his eyes. Maybe he could see the certainty in hers.

“We?” he said. “You mean you'd like me to help you disrupt the proceedings of the House of Representatives?”

She could see he was stalling her until his backup arrived. She thought about running into the crowd. She'd stand a good chance of eluding him for a while if she could get away from him. And it would create a diversion so Tonia and Rafe could get in and load the virus. Yet she couldn't help trying again to persuade him.

“It's Cal Copplin. He's behind all this. Well, lots of it, anyway. He set up the Rice Consortium. They're a group of big-shot business types backed by organised crime, and they're working with the Government to take control of the country.”

Now he really did look puzzled. “Last time I saw you, you were being kidnapped in Sydney and bundled into a van. Now you turn up here rattling on about some kind of conspiracy theory. Either your kidnappers gave you some powerful drugs...” He pondered for a moment. “...or you really are working with September 10 and you really did come here to blow up the Parliament.” He grinned. “Like Guy Fawkes.”

Ginny forced herself not to look around, even though she desperately wanted to know if Rafe and Tonia were there. As long as they were free there was still a chance. She needed Richards to think she was alone.

“
What are you doing here?” she asked, the question suddenly occurring to her.

“
It seemed the logical place to find you and your friends working your gunpowder plot.” He looked smug. He'd played a hunch and caught her and now he could amuse himself with stupid jokes at her expense.

A flick of his eyes told her his backup had arrived. She had to act. Ducking low, she sprang past him, parting the crowd with her arms like a diver, pushing against heavy bodies to lever herself away from Richards and his men. With a hand on a man's shoulder, she leapt into the air, scanning the crowd for Tonia and saw her in a doorway, twenty metres ahead of her.

“Everybody inside!” she shouted at the top of her voice. “There's a bomb in the foyer!”

She continued her dash towards Tonia, shouting more encouragement to the crowd as she went. Other people began to run. Men shouted. A woman screamed. People began to pack the doorways, blindly doing what Ginny was yelling at them to do, trying to get into the Public Gallery, away from the bomb. She kept making her way towards Tonia, who had disappeared from view – hopefully into the gallery – but the crowd around the door was dense now and she could barely make any headway. She struggled with all her strength but her own frantic attempts to get through the door incited everyone around her to greater heights of panic and she was soon stuck in a flailing scrum of people fighting and elbowing each other to escape the lobby.

A big hand grabbed her shoulder from behind, bunching up her blouse in a powerful grip, almost strangling her as it yanked her backwards.

“
Don't try to run, or I'll break your fucking neck,” Richards snarled. She felt his breath hot against her ear. His strength was appalling, overwhelming. He spun her to face him and she quailed at the fury in his eyes. He dragged her – one pace, two – out of the thick of the crowd. Desperately, she kicked at his shins, but if he felt it, he showed no sign. Through clenched teeth, he said, “Virginia Dalton, I'm arresting you on – ”

He grunted as something collided with him at high speed, knocking the air out of him and sending him flying away from Ginny. It took her a moment to see that Rafe had barrelled into him, knocking him into a group of frightened people. The group collapsed around the struggling pair in a confusion of flailing limbs and toppling bodies.

People close to Ginny were starting to wink out of existence as they did what they should have done all along – hit their panic buttons and teleport back to the safety of their tanks. It cleared a path to the door and Ginny took it, bolting into the darkness beyond the foyer, leaving Rafe to struggle with Richards on the floor.

She stopped just on the inside to peer out from the shelter of the door frame. Richards had Rafe face-down and was roughly applying cuffs to his wrists. Unlike real cuffs, they immobilised the journalist completely. Another metaphor. Rafe lay still, his forehead against the parquet, his eyes closed. Ginny thought she could see utter defeat in his posture, yet she was elated by the courage he'd shown in attacking the big policeman. She felt proud of him, like a mother whose little boy had finally stood up to the bullies.

She ducked back behind the door frame. Richards had been joined by four others and he was directing them to check the Public Gallery entrances. His own attention focused with laser precision on the door she had run through. She had seconds to find Tonia before Richards would be inside with her.

She scanned the gallery. It was a vast space, an oval platform of tiered seating above and surrounding the floor of the Chamber. She saw the Speaker at the head of the Chamber and the rows of green leather benches running in parallel to the left and right of him down to the half-circle of cross benches at the opposite end. The Chamber was packed, the benches full of raucous politicians, clamouring to shout down their opponents. Up in the Public Gallery, another kind of bedlam was under way with confused and distressed people demanding to know what was going on and whether they were safe. There were ushers and security personnel, besieged by frantic spectators, some of whom had fled into the gallery after Ginny's fake bomb alert, and others who had been inside already when the commotion erupted. The politicians below were oblivious of the fuss, the gallery not being visible in their part of the wordlet.

Tonia was the one person still in her seat. The one unperturbed individual in the whole mêlée. Ginny moved towards her at once. Tonia had her head down and moved her fingers in the air above her lap, clearly engrossed in a virtual display only she could see.

“
Haven't you done it yet?” Ginny demanded when she was close enough to be heard. “They're right behind me.” A call for order from the Speaker silenced the shouting down below and, just as Tonia looked up at her, Ginny heard him guillotining the debate and calling for the vote.

“
It's all fucking stuffed up,” Tonia said through clenched teeth. The frustration in her voice needed no further explanation. “Get me another minute,” she said. “One more minute.” They both knew they had less time than that. The division bell would sound soon and the MPs would vote, not by walking through doors as they would once have done, but by pressing voting buttons on their private interfaces. It would all be over in seconds.

“
Stay where you are. Put your hands in the air.”

Tonia bent again to her work as Ginny slowly raised her hands and turned to face Dover Richards. He had a gun aimed at her chest and a look on his face that just dared her to do something stupid. Other security people were moving in all around her.

“Tonia,” she said, urging the woman on.

“
Birchow!” Richards shouted, apparently noticing the woman for the first time. “Hands above your head, right now!” As he swung the weapon to point at Tonia, Ginny lunged at him.

It was suicidal. She realised it only after she began to move. She saw Richards turn his eyes her way. She saw the puzzled creasing of his brow. Even he could not understand why she was throwing her life away to give Tonia just a couple of seconds more. His gun swung back towards her. Just a flick, really, moving just a few degrees to line up with her onrushing body, yet it seemed to take forever, plenty of time to realise what she'd done, to realise that she had no regrets. She thought about Rafe, so brave in the end, about Tonia, the evil bitch desperately trying to save them all, and Dover Richards, the cop, the good guy, doing the right thing but getting it so terribly wrong.

Then the muzzle flashed.

Ginny clutched her chest and gasped for air, eyes staring. Above her she saw a low ceiling. Her gaze shifted left and right. She was on her back, on a bed, her own bed, in her own unit in Brisbane. She looked down at her chest. There was no sign of trauma. No blood. No hole. But, then, there wouldn't be, would there? With a start she saw she had on pyjamas. Not her own – she didn't even own any pyjamas. These were pink silk, as light as cobweb.

There were too many questions for any of them to demand an answer above the rest. She swung her feet to the ground and sat up. She felt fine. No pain. No dizziness. She looked at her bare feet, feeling that something was wrong for an inordinate amount of time before she realised she had been given a pedicure. A shiver of fear swept across her skin. She had no memory of having had a pedicure. It was something she would never do. She didn't even own a pedicure machine. Absently, she reached down to touch her toenails and saw that her fingernails were also perfectly trimmed and lacquered.

The horrible thought that she might not be in her own body, drove her from the bed into the bathroom to stare into the mirror. She almost sobbed with relief to see her own face staring back. She went back to the bed and sat down again.

She struggled to make sense of it. Someone had brought her back to Brisbane from Canberra, given her a manicure and a pedicure along the way, dressed her in silk pyjamas and laid her on her bed. She jumped up again and ran to the lounge room. Everything looked normal. She popped up a display on one wall and checked the date. Three days had passed since the date of the vote.

The vote!

She put up a news feed and scrolled back three days. The headline, “Major Upset for Government” was at the top of the most-accessed list. She ran the clip.

“In a major setback for the Government, today,” the presenter said, “the House of Representatives voted by an overwhelming majority to reject the Liberal Party's Cyberterrorism Bill, with over a hundred Liberal Members crossing the floor to vote against it.” Ginny watched in astonishment as various pundits were called on to voice their opinions. She couldn't take it all in. The pyjamas, the toenails, the vote... There seemed such a vicious wrenching of reality going on that everything felt out of shape. She shuddered, feeling menaced and dislocated.

She requested follow-up stories and, from two days ago, found the headline, “Double Dissolution Likelihood Rocks the Country.”

“Prime Minister Jason Dougherty stunned the country today when he made this announcement outside his Kirribilli residence.” The feed cut to the Prime Minister, looking tired but resolute, saying, “Yesterday's surprise decision in the House has come as a severe blow to this Government and to me, personally. I invested a lot of personal capital in ensuring the Cyberterrorism Bill would succeed and its failure leaves me no option but to resign as leader of the Liberal Party and as Prime Minister. The no-confidence motion tabled by the opposition has found support with a great many of my colleagues, many of whom I consider close friends. It is with some bitterness that I acknowledge that my own leadership has failed my party and failed the Australian people.”

Ginny watched as a tear rolled down the man's cheek. The presenter came back on. “Political analysts are unanimous in believing that a successful vote of no confidence in the Government will mean a dissolution of both Houses, with all seats in the House of Representatives and the Senate to be contested in a general election. Australia has not had a double-dissolution since – ”

Ginny paused the clip and sat back on the sofa, blinking at the presenter's perfect features.
When was the last time you saw a real news presenter?

She felt her stomach knotting. She scanned the news feeds for the past three days, then did a general search. There was no mention anywhere of a terrorist attack at the Parliament worldlet. Nothing at all.

Had it even happened? Part of her could swear she had been there, fighting to stop the vote, just minutes ago. Yet here she was, looking at the evidence that three days had passed since then and no-one had mentioned what had happened in the Public Gallery. And the toenails... And the pyjamas...

Her mind wandered off into a fugue of aimless speculation and random thoughts. In the end, all she could think was that she should call her parents and Della to check that they were all right. And that she was hungry, starving hungry.

She turned to the kitchenette and stopped dead. A vase filled with long-stemmed red roses stood on the counter. She stared at it for several seconds, afraid to go near it. On an impulse, she turned down her aug to minimum. It was still there. Real roses in a real vase. She could not remember ever having seen real cut flowers before. Slowly, she moved closer until she could reach out and touch the cool, velvet petals and smell their thick, rich perfume.

Cal
, she thought.
This is all Cal's doing.

She stepped away from the roses, frightened by what they might mean. She wanted to see Della. She wanted to talk to somebody, tell somebody, have them tell her she would be all right. She hurried out to the bedroom automatically seeking her tank so she could get out of there. She glanced at the news presenter's face, still frozen on the big wall display. She was a beautiful woman, intelligent and serious, but with just a hint of humour about the eyes and mouth. She was a woman you'd like to get to know, a little bit intimidating, perhaps, but someone you could imagine being friends with.

No, not a woman at all. A construct.

She heard Cal's voice in her memory.
You can make the construct as beautiful, engaging, and trustworthy as you like.
With a gesture she killed the feed. Her messages replaced the image. There were lots of them, many were from Della, there was an odd one from Bernard Recszyk, Director of the Australian Chamber Orchestra, which was a puzzle, and one from her bank requesting an urgent interview, which was not. There were also several from her father. Her stomach lurched, imagining the bad news he'd called to share. Instead of viewing any of them, she carried on to the bedroom. She had reached out to open the tank's lid before she jerked back her hand in shock.

It was not her tank, not the battered second-hand unit she'd bought two years ago with her first UnReality pay cheque. This was a brand new top-of-the-range model that probably cost more than she could earn in two years. She couldn't believe she hadn't noticed it when she'd first woken up, but she'd been a little distracted at the time. What else might be different in her apartment that she hadn't seen yet?

She rushed about her two small rooms, checking everything, but the only difference she found was in the kitchenette. A fabulously expensive food printer stood where her old microwave had been, the cupboard below and the fridge beside it were stuffed with goopacks to go in it. Her stomach growled at the thought of food but she kept away from the printer as if it were a dangerous animal.

She thought about leaving her unit, just to get away from whatever it all meant, but the idea of being outside, alone, with nowhere to go was too much to bear. So she lay down on the bed, eschewing the new tank, and unlatched.

-oOo-

When Della came out from her office into the Chastity Mining foyer, Ginny thought her friend looked worn and stressed, although on the surface her expression was one of astonishment and joy. She ran straight over to Ginny and grabbed her in a ferocious hug.

“Oh my God, Gin, it's been five days! Where have you been?”

Ginny clung to her friend for the length of a long, calming breath.

“I – I don't know. I mean, some of it I know. Some of it maybe I just dreamed. But the last three days... And look.” She pulled back and showed Della her fingernails.

Della frowned, clearly concerned at Ginny's incoherence. She said, “Your father called me yesterday, several times. He's been trying to reach you. I had to talk him out of calling the police. Maybe I should have let him.”

Ginny didn't want to deal with that now. “It's probably his job. He probably wants me to help him deal with Mum. I'll call him soon.”

“
You ran off,” Della said. “We were going to – ” She glanced around and lowered her voice. “You know what. But when I came home you were gone. Did you do it? Did you find anything? Of course, it doesn't matter now, I suppose. Maybe it's best if I don't know.”

Did any of it matter now? “You heard about the vote?”

“Heard about it? It's on all the feeds. No-one's talking about anything else, what with the election and everything. Who'd have thought, after all you went through? And S10 and Detective Chu and the Consortium, and all for nothing. No terror attack needed. They just voted against the bill and called an election. Your friend Tonia must be over the moon.”

Ginny heard Della's words like a broadcast from another planet. “Is that what happened?”

Again, Della frowned. “We should get you to a doctor or something. You seem a bit...” She looked hard into Ginny's eyes for a while, perhaps trying to read the mind behind them. In frustration, she said, “I've got to get back inside, Gin. There's this meeting... Look, where are you right now? Your body, I mean. Are you somewhere safe?”

Ginny nodded, although she wasn't sure. Are you safe in a home where people come and go at will, replacing your appliances and laying you out on the bed in pink pyjamas? “I saw Cal,” she said, remembering the roses in her kitchen. “We talked. He told me he loves me. I think he might be...” What? Insane? Running the country? A delusion?

“OK, listen,” Della said. “I want you to go back to your unit. Get out of the tank and lie down on the bed.” Ginny didn't bother to explain that she was avoiding the tank because it wasn't hers. “I'm going to call your friend Babs – she lives in Brisbane, doesn't she? – and tell her to get round to your place. I'll get a docbot to pay you a call too, and I'll call your dad and tell him you're back. You just rest, and don't go anywhere.” She took Ginny by the shoulders. “Promise me you'll stay home.” Ginny nodded. “I'll get rid of this damned meeting and then I'll come and see you. OK?”

Ginny forced a smile. “OK. Thank you.”

“Go on, now.”

Ginny left Della in the lobby of her building, looking worried, and went back to her unit. She got off the bed, took off the pyjamas and took a shower. She dressed in her overalls, dismayed to find that all her clothes had been laundered and pressed and hung neatly in her wardrobe. Then she went to the kitchenette and stared at the food printer. She was starving hungry or she never would have touched the thing. She popped up the interface and flicked through the extensive snacks menu, finally choosing a meat pie. When the printer pinged, she took the pie and sat down on the sofa with it. It tasted good, really good, and she felt better for having eaten. The world felt more solid, less like a dream.

While she made herself a cup of coffee, she rang her father.

“
Ginny? Where have you been, darl? I was worried sick.”

“
I'm fine, Dad. I was just visiting a friend.” She bit the bullet. “How are you and Mum?”

“
That's why I've been trying to reach you. You wouldn't believe what's been happening here in the past couple of days.” She steeled herself for the news. “I got a promotion,” he said, announcing it as if he'd won the lottery. “They've made me Regional Manager. I couldn't believe it. You know I was down to part-time working and, what with all the layoffs and all, I was expecting the worst. Then, right out of the blue, we've been awarded the biggest contract in the company's history and it's all hands to the pumps. The GM called me in yesterday and said how much he valued my work and would I do them the honour of helping steer the company through this massive expansion? His exact words. I didn't even think he knew my name, but it turns out I've been 'on the executive team's radar' for some time now.” He shook his head in bewilderment. “It's like a miracle.”

Ginny tried to smile but couldn't. She managed to say, “Mum must be relieved.”

Her father guffawed. “Her? She's to busy with her own miracle to even notice me.” He seemed very pleased about it.

The pie she'd just eaten felt heavy in her stomach. “Her own miracle?”

“She's only gone and got herself a new exhibition. Got a call from the Australian Museum of Art this morning. They're putting on a series of events honouring underappreciated modern artists – or somesuch. They practically begged your mother to display her stuff there. Well, you've never seen anything like it. She's strutting around like a queen telling anyone who'll listen that it's about time she got the recognition she deserves.” He chuckled. “She'll be impossible to live with now. You'll see.”

She let him ramble on about the incredible timing of it, and the incredible luck of it all, just when things were looking so bleak, and how happy they both were. She tried to look pleased for him and to urge further details out of him, but all she could think was that the timing was, indeed, incredible and that she didn't believe it was luck for one moment. By the time he had hung up, anger and anxiety were gnawing at her insides as if she'd eaten a stew of them cooked up by that infernal food printer.

She looked at her message list, still displayed on the wall. Her eyes were drawn to the one from the Australian Chamber Orchestra. It was a day old and marked urgent. Reluctantly, she told it to play. The face of Bernard Recszyk appeared, familiar to her from news items and ACO concert program notes.