BEYOND THE PALE: ( The Outlander ) Page 22

  “I bet he does. I bet he thinks he can infiltrate you into my organisation by sending his regards on this postcard. Anyway false identities don’t come cheap,” Shondran sounded very sceptical of River’s story and dismissive of his needs.

  “I don’t know what your organisation is, but I can see you don’t trust me. However I will owe you a debt if you could just fix this,” River said holding up his right arm and revealing his custody band.

  “Whoa! Didn’t anybody think to check him,” Shondran shouted at the two men whom had collected him. The ex-native who had opened the door ran over to River grabbing his arm and scanned it with a reader. “It is inactive, Boss.”

  “You Idiots,” Shondran decried as he sprang to his feet and grabbed one of River’s earlier escorts by the throat. “You could have brought half the CPS to my door. Next time you forget to search someone, I will make you eat what I find.” The other guy who wasn’t being throttled offered an explanation. “He looked like a hobo, Boss. I checked him for weapons though.”

  Shondran let go his grip and returned to stand in front of River as he keenly looked him up and down. –”Are you Cheyenne or something?”

  “I am Hopi,” corrected River.

  “A half mix I would warrant. You don’t seem to be from around these parts. You seem very green. I can smell the outside off you.”

  “I am from outside. Rangers took me. I have been here for about a month. My name is River; can you help me. I can work for you to repay the debt.”

  “Look son, I don’t want to know your name. A young broke green native like you is no good for me. I was natural born too; I am full Navajo. I would like to help you son, I really would. But even if you looked like our Treyvon over by the door, I couldn’t have you doing security work for me because YOU are the frigging security threat.”

  “Why am I a threat?” asked River.

  “Because, You are an outlander who was processed in less than a month, instead of the usual six to nine. Then you were introduced to me by some CPS security officer that I don’t know; and my common sense tells me that you are a spy. I am sorry son, but I cannot take the risk. You have got to go.” Shondran pointed to two of his men; one of the pool players and one of the other ex-natives. He nodded gesturing to another door which said ‘fire exit’ which was to an outside metal stairwell.

  The two enforcers flanked River from either side and started walking him towards the door. River was just coming to the realisation that Shondran would not help him, when a more pressing realisation sprang to mind. He realised that once he reached that door marked exit, he probably would meet his own. As his fate dawned on him, he reacted instinctively. He moved very fast; almost too fast to see, as he deployed lightening reflexes and mixed martial art fighting skills. In a few seconds, both of his escorts were on the ground, and the guy in the suit was knocked out cold. Shondran’s soldiers watched River’s display enthusiastically at first as if they were witnessing a new sport, but training took over and five weapons were drawn and pointed at River. He just stood there looking at the array of weapons drawn but he did nothing even though he had little option but to surrender. Shondran on the other hand jogged over to his side of the room. He calmly stood in front of River again looking him up and down intently whilst signalling everyone else to lower their weapons.

  “I am growing to like this young man a lot,” he said out loud as if addressing an audience, and thence directly to River, “I can find some work for a man with your talents.” He said this whilst gesturing to his two dropped soldiers, neither of whom had got up yet.

  Chapter Twenty Seven

  Valerie had found some relieve in River’s departure, but she now felt that the onus of responsibility was on her to fix what he had broken, and restore some normalcy to her family. Her first action had been to pack River’s bags and kick him out of her house. Her second had been to rescind her husband’s custodial authority over him so that he could be arrested somewhere else and detained. Unfortunately that had not happened yet. But as long as she made sure that Audrina aborted his unlicensed baby, she had conviction that this would all blow over soon. Right now she was close to achieving this goal. Both she and Audrina were in a waiting room at a medical centre waiting Audrina’s turn to be admitted for day surgery. It wasn’t even surgery; it was just a simple process involving high voltage shock and an injection and the body would eject the dead foetus. She would be out within 40 minutes. The main problem for Valerie was Audrina’s ongoing attitude.

  “I don’t know why you are here at all Mother. I am not a child and I don’t need you to hold my hand.”

  “I know that if it wasn’t for me using my departmental connections with Medicare, you would be waiting over a month for this. They are not used to people approaching them, and at short notice; they have there hands full with their own backlog of mandatory check ups.”

  “Well that would have given me more time to think about what I am about to do.”

  “How could you possibly have any doubts? That is a rapist’s child within you. Worse than that, if you kept that child, you would never be allowed another, and your career would be in jeopardy.”

  “If I abort this baby Mum, they still might not allow me a license to get pregnant again. And…” Audrina trailed off.

  “And what?” demanded Valerie.

  “And I can feel the baby inside me. It is adorable. Part of me wants him to be born.”

  “Audrina, Sometimes I feel like I want to shake the nonsense out of you. You cannot have this child; period! If you do, it will bring permanent shame on you, and on your child, and this family. No one will believe that this was not a pre-meditated unlicensed pregnancy. It will be seen as wilful neglect of your responsibilities as a citizen. This child will be a social stigma that will probably lose you your job and get you kicked out of your professional order. Your father’s career will suffer and so might mine. Our reputation as parents will be tarnished.”

  “Enough Mum, enough; for the love of truth, enough! I am getting it done okay!” cried Audrina in near desperation. She hated being told what to do.

  The air between them remained cold for the duration until a receptionist called out to Audrina. Valerie also rose to her feet but Audrina told her that she wanted to go in alone. She walked towards a nurse who stood waiting for her by the surgeries swing doors, and they walked through them together. Once inside was asked to complete a questionnaire concerning her procedure. She made a point of removing her mother as an emergency contact and ticked a box requesting complete personal confidentiality. When the nurse asked her to come through to the surgery, she excused herself to go to the bathroom where she locked herself in a cubicle. The nurse politely waited 15 minutes before she followed her into the bathroom to hurry her up.

  “Citizen Audrina Carlson, are you in here,” she said addressing the only locked cubicle. Audrina purposely didn’t answer. “Citizen Carlson, you must come with me now or the doctor will have to proceed to the next patient. Are you all right, Shall I get your chaperone?” The nurse was sounding insistent.

  “No don’t get her. I am okay. Just proceed with the next patient. I will be all right. I don’t want to do this today…” - Audrina was crying as she spoke - “…or any day.”

  Audrina waited until the nurse had left and then fixed herself in the mirror. She checked the time and when the full 40 minutes had elapsed, she returned to sit with her mother looking both melancholic and uncomfortable. Valerie struggled to hide her satisfaction in her belief that the pregnancy had been terminated. She told her daughter that she had done the right thing and all would be well. Audrina agreed with her mother but with a different intention in mind. She had taken the day off work just as her mother had, however she did not want to spend the rest of it with her family and so she made a vague excuse saying that she had made plans to visit a friend. It wasn’t really a friend; just a person who she had already had a few appointments with. She was a realtor who was showing her different accomm
odation to rent.

  Chapter Twenty Eight

  Anton didn’t like the way his mother gloated about how she had organized Audrina’s pregnancy termination at the clinic. She was discussing it with both his father and him at the dinner table during their evening meal together. This was the first time she had mentioned Audrina’s pregnancy at all to Anton, but it was symptomatic of the way in which both his parents neglected to communicate with him. In truth, he knew what was going on, and they assumed that he knew, except that no one had actually bothered to discuss it with him. And he had strong feelings on the subject. He felt his mother had many misconceptions which bordered on the delusional. Whilst he listened to her boast about how she was managing against all adversity to protect and hold this family together. He noted the absence of his sister whom he knew was already looking to move out. Neither of his parents knew this, and neither of them knew the truth about Audrina’s affection for River. Although Anton had not had a chance to see or talk to him since he had been thrown out, he just knew that River was innocent of what his mother blamed him for. Anton looked at his mother with fresh eyes following River’s departure. He noted how she had taken control of the situation by dominating his father, his sister, and criticising him for his lack of anger and retribution against his good friend. Anton reasoned that the order that his mother believed that she was engineering out of her perceived chaos was in fact superficial. In reality she had engineered the long term seeds of disruption as Audrina remained more and more distant and sought to move away. There was now disharmony in the family, and he has lost a good friend whose presence had served to bond them all together. His parents were not really on the same page at all. Anton knew his father was not as angry with River as he made out to be, but was really just humouring his wife. Even now, he was letting her manage this crisis situation that was blowing up in his career.

  Anton listened with interest at the dinner table while his father recounted what Sgt. Scott had told him about how Internal Security had searched his office and taken various items of removable data storage and communicators. Although his father had been replying directly to his mother’s query, Anton felt the need to satisfy his own curiosity.

  “What exactly did they take Father; was it stuff to do with River?”

  “No it was just stuff connected with work. Anything to do with River can be accessed through my personal data uploads, which they are probably looking through now.” Nathan noticed the look of concern on his wife’s face, “They won’t find anything improper or incorrect,” he stated to reassure her.

  “Did they take any data storage or communicators which you carried beyond the city walls?”

  Nathan thought about it. “Yes they took the holo-messenger which I left behind when I had my accident.”

  Anton had been fishing for this piece of information, “River told me about that. He said that it had been moved some distance.” Anton was trying to warn his father that the holo-messenger which had been found by Hassun had been taken back to his community before being returned to him. River had told him this.

  Nathan had picked up on the words ‘moved some distance’ and realised that his son was asking him a coded question. “That messenger had no messages when I last checked,” he said to re-assure his son that it was safe.

  It wasn’t safe though. The holo-messenger compromised the location of River’s hidden settlement, and incriminated his father. Anton had worked this out, but he was frustrated that he couldn’t warn his father confidentially about this without their conversation being recorded. Anton was fully aware that all his father’s communications and audio-visual records were more than likely being scrutinized right now. River had told him about how his father had managed to over-ride this system in the past with either a taser shot to the leg or else employing a legitimate reason to handicap the audio-visual recorders. Anton knew thought that both of these methods were basic and crude. He had devised a better method which employed better stealth and would be unidentifiable. However this would have to wait in the mean time until he recovered that holo-messenger. This was crucial because he knew that it stored its GPS locations. These were encoded in its hardware bios, to help identify it remotely if lost. Thus it would reveal the hidden location of River’s community, probably condemning them to a raid by Rangers. If the community was small, the Rangers would most likely process them into citizens; if large, they were more likely to exterminate them. He would not let this happen for the sake of his friendship and respect for River. Also because this holo-messenger had been returned to his father, it also incriminated him. It implied that that he had been in contact with other outlanders besides River, and that he had not only failed to arrest or report them, but had also tried to cover this up. This could be the single damning piece of evidence that an Internal Security techie might find that would end his father’s career and probably lead to his imprisonment. Anton knew exactly what to do, and resolved to manage the situation. He would have to be both bold and brave, but he would draw on his ability to muster his confidence; something which River had taught him.

  Alone in his room and working at his work station, Anton had everything he needed to proceed. The first step was to remotely logon to the main admin server of the Marekh Guild using the credentials of one of the mentors. His name was Oliver Basson and he intended to borrow his profile and identity over the next 24hours. He pulled up a list of apprenticed technicians working in the CPS HQ. He was looking for any technician who was preferably working for Internal Security. He found one guy by the name of Richard Stevens to whom he then sent a notification that Oliver Bassoon would be taking over as his guild mentor. The notification stated that Bassoon would be visiting Stevens tomorrow in order to evaluate his work placement. He also used this remote console to book a full access day pass for the CPS Headquarters.

  There was another technical project which Anton wanted to start working on that same evening. This was to set up a search for his friend. He had managed to analyse and copy the hardware encoding and attributes of River’s latest security bracelet. He had done that when River had spent the day at work with him at the Office of City Planning. Anton now wanted to set up a network sniffer to search for any credit transaction that used the same unique IMEI hardware identity and also for a couple of unique attributes that related only to that bracelet. This would work only as long as River’s bracelet remained activated. However this search would require time as well as access to a very large range of credit transfers. Therefore once he had compiled this program, he installed the sniffer to work on the Marekh Guild’s main outbound internet router. Any routed packets that contained his targets would forward copies to him. Now it was a matter of waiting.

  Chapter Twenty Nine

  Every day, Nathan carried out his duties as usual, but his situation was far from normal. These days he was more likely office bound, and both he and Sgt. Scott found themselves restricted to non contentious routine police work. Internal Security was still targeting both of them as potential corrupted assets. Citizen Naighal in particular seemed always present in the direction of Internal Security’s actions against Nathan personally. Sgt. Scott on the other hand had incurred the wrath of both parties for his inept loss of the previously apprehended River in District 18. It was really a question of evidence, and presently, neither party seemed to have enough to suspend Nathan or Ray Scott from duty. The other looming question was the current whereabouts of River. Nobody knew, not even Sgt. Ray Scott, and even if he did know, he wouldn’t have been able to talk to Major Carlson about this. This was due to the nature of the constant monitoring that they were now subject to. It was hard some days for them not to be down hearted about their current predicament. However this was not the case on the particular day when Ray Scott got access to the security files that were circulating around all divisions of CPS Headquarters. It was one of the most inept security breeches and the worse security camera footage that Ray Scott had ever seen. The files showed video and stills of an u
nidentifiable intruder who had managed to gain access and work half a day with the Internal Security branch. He was an imposter who had used the fake credentials of a Marekh Guild mentor. Despite gaining unrestricted access to the evidence control rooms of Internal Security, they had no useable audio-visual evidence on him, no fingerprints, and no leads. The Marekh Guild had point blankly refused Internal Security access to their servers. The whole debacle had led to a series of hostile exchanges between both parties, and the CPS Command had to intercede to calm things down. The main embarrassment for Internal Security was that they could not identify what evidence if any had been tampered with. They had been left with a sizeable portion of egg on their face and Sgt. Scott took such comfort from their misfortune that he had to go get his friend and boss to come see the files and revel also in a bad day for Internal Security.

  Nathan did share Ray’s comforting sense of schadenfreude. However, he also felt another uncomfortable sense which was that of recognition. Despite the blurred and fuzzy footage, he recognised his son through his gait and general body language.

  Chapter Thirty

  Shondran and his entourage became a much friendlier bunch once you got to know them. Shondran was very laid back and his soldiers imitated his calm relaxed attitude when they were amongst their own company. The women who worked for Shondran in his clubs were also comfortable around him and his men. However there was an unspoken air of violence that was residual which meant that there must have been sporadic eruptions of Shondran’s temper now and again.

  However that same night when Shondran asked River to work for him became his introduction to the good life. Everyone was seemingly his friend. It was the middle of the night but this was the start of party time. Night clubs and security seemed to be the core of Shondran’s business and as these clubs closed down for the evening, more and more door security staff were passing through to check in with their supervisors and maybe party with them. River found that he had acquired his own entourage of one. She was a mixed native girl by the name of Dakota who would become inseparable from him over the next couple of days. The first thing that she did for him was find him a private bedroom in the same building. She ordered two dinner trays to be sent up from the kitchens even though it was nearly 4am, and she sat and joined him for dinner which he ate and drank as if he was ravenous. She then ran a bath for him, and he realised that this was because he smelt pretty bad after living rough for only two days. While he languished in a hot soak, she somehow mustered up a collection of clothes to provide him with a new temporary wardrobe until he could purchase his own. She helped him dress when he was finished with his bath, and he felt shy of her seeing him naked but she just brushed her hand in a dismissive gesture like a doctor who had seen it all before. She never directly propositioned him, but her body language and free attitude towards touching him left him in no doubt that this was available. River was not stupid, although he did like Dakota’s company, he had the impression that she had been instructed by Shondran or one of his lieutenants to stay close and look after him.