BEYOND THE PALE: ( The Outlander ) (23 page)

 In Holly Bush, River
did not find any better luck. He was getting braver at asking about work and
enquiring about Shondran, but all to no avail. There were many more ex-natives
amongst the residents of Holly Bush and River proffered the name Shondran to
many of them. The only glimmer of recognition seemed to come from some club
doormen, but they still denied knowing anyone of that name. One thing he had
learnt in Holly Bush was that he was relatively safe from patrolmen as long as
he kept the custodial bracelet hidden. He had accidentally walked past two
patrolmen whom had looked right through him. He gleaned from this that his I.D.
bracelet was prevented by the custodial bracelet from transmitting his personal
details. Likewise the custodial bracelet seemed to be inoperative.

River walked the length
and breadth of Holly Bush until he found a quiet spot in an unused plaza to
settle down for the evening. He chose to sit down beside some other vagrants as
this offered safety in numbers. They seemed mostly oblivious to him under the
effects of some narcotic high. There was no opportunity of free food this
evening and no cardboard boxes on offer to insulate against the cold. He
watched the odd police patrols pass by and looked at a local CPS Centre and
considered giving himself up even though Sgt. Scott had warned him that this
would put him in peril. By now he was pretty fed up with both of his quests. He
was ready to give up asking for Shondran, and he was prepared to take up his
employment working for Madam Kashnoggi and her husband, even though he knew that
they would take advantage of him. There was no other option available other
than a harsh daily existence of walking about begging for food and sleeping on
pavements.

River was having a cold
uncomfortable night and resorted to sandwiching himself between some rubbish
bags for warmth. He slept for a few hours but was awoken in the early hours by
two men kicking him, and questioning him whether he was the ‘one’ who had been
asking for Shondran. When he replied yes, they told him to come with them.

The two men were both
burly and looked like the doormen from one of the clubs in this area. River
walked along beside them unrestrained, but also escorted as if their prisoner.
They didn’t offer their names or any explanation at all; but they were taking
him to meet Shondran, and this was a good turn of events in River’s estimation.

The destination was
nearby. It was above a local exotic night club called the Mira Belle. River
hadn’t actually called at this venue during his canvassing because it had been
closed during the day. The men ushered River into the club and then through a
door into a private area and up three flights of stairs to knock on a steel
security door. A stocky ex-native opened the door and River could see into a
large split level room which was part office and part recreational den complete
with sofas, armchairs and a pool table. There were a number of large men in the
room and a few women who looked like off duty exotic dancers. River wondered if
one of the two men playing pool was Shondran. They were both white men wearing
suits and seemed important to him. Most of the other men in the room looked as
if they were most likely door security and there were a few other ex-natives.
River was led into the room as far as the office section. He watched the pool
players and waited for one of them to address him.

“For someone who has
been busting his balls asking everybody about me, you don’t seem that bothered
to talk to me right now,” the voice came from behind River, and he span around
to see Shondran.

 Shondran turned out to
be one of the ex-natives. He sported a close shaven crew cut hairstyle, and was
dressed in sports attire and looked very casual and un-businesslike. He was in
his late forties and although not the biggest guy in the room, he seemed like
he could be one of the most dangerous. He was sitting on the wrong side of a
business desk, and he swivelled his chair to be able to address River.

“I didn’t know who you
were. I was told to ask for you. I was told that you could help me,” River was
at a loss with what else to say.

“By whom?” asked the
big man.

River dug deep into one
of his pockets and pulled out the CPS detention advice card. He handed it to
Shondran who at first read it quickly, but then decided to re-read it as if he
might decipher it by reading it more slowly.

“This script has
changed somewhat since the last time I was arrested” joked Shondran. “Is this
some kind of joke? I don’t know this man. I don’t know any Sergeant Scott.”

“He works for S.O.O.C.,
he probably knows you. He probably reckoned you could help me get a false
identity.”

“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.

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 accommodation to rent.

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.