Chovnik ushered them into a long, rectangular room painted in hospital-cream, and pretty much what they expected to find underneath an old train station. The large whiteboard was fixed to a wall with a speaker box mounted either side of it. The wall at the far end was lined with shelves that were filled with books.
A long table ran the length of the room. Around three sides sat fifteen men and women in animated conversation. When the men walked through the door, they fell silent. All eyes were on the two newcomers.
Chovnik took his seat at a corner of the table nearest the door, behind an old slide projector and a battered ham radio. He placed the headset over his ears and began working the dial.
A barrel-chested man with a neatly trimmed beard and a startlingly high forehead signaled for the two guests lingering beside Chovnik to sit down. He picked his notes up from the table and walked to a podium standing in front of the whiteboard. Sam Murton was impatient to begin. In truth, he was in a bit of a hurry to get this whole thing over with. There was far too much on the schedule to discuss. There were the reports from party branch offices to get through and the very worrying main topic missing party members. Reports of a death squad operating in the city were rife, but so far, they had no clear evidence to verify the existence of a such a terrifying development.
If Murton was going to be completely honest, he would admit to feeling a little awkward. Allowing the two visitors to address the Committee without Alistair Tremain present could well turn out to be a huge mistake. It was Alistair who had talked the Committee into giving their valuable time to hearing the story first hand. But, the scientist had not turned up, and neither had Alistair. Never mind. It was too late. The boy and the soldier had made it all that way into Sydney. They deserved a hearing. He hoped the boy had information the Committee and its supporters needed to hear if not the time they were given for their address would be cut short.
Storm recognized the sharp eyes behind the thick glasses and the man's confident posture at once. Murton was the speaker at the rally at Sydney University campus the day of Penny's graduation. That was the day Storm had been arrested by the FSF and taken to Sydney's notorious Unicorp Remand and Holding Facility with Alistair. The day his wrist was tattooed with a bar code that identified him forever as a lawbreaker.
The members of the Committee regarded the two guests with interest, but it was a guarded reception. A few offered polite nods of greeting. Others barely bothered to disguise the suspicion they had that Storm and Cameron were really government agents sent here to spy on them.
Murton glanced at Chovnik. The tall thin man listened attentively through his headset. He was carefully working the channel selector backward and forwards in tiny increments.
"Have you found anything yet?" Murton asked.
The thin man looked up and shook his head.
Murton looked around the room at the gathering and cleared his throat to get silence. He cleared his throat.
"While we wait for Taras to make contact with Doctor Boulos, let me take us back to the issue of security. While the legal status of the Party has not changed, party members continue to go missing across the city. We are receiving more reports of family members and neighbors vanishing from their homes, and we hear it's happening in other Australian cities. We must consider the possibility that elements within the security forces are involved. Bodies continue to turn up on a daily basis in wasteland areas, on the banks of streams, and beside the train tracks. Government and media reports would have us believe the murders are the result of gang turf war. We know this is false. How could this be true when we are faced with ever more intelligence agencies? Not to forget the merging of police and massive expansion of a security force in the form of the FSF? And, many of the murder victims are women as well as youth as young as fourteen years old among the dead. I can report none of the missing Party members have turned up among the dead. The 'sunup score' as the media call them. With regard to the missing members, we can conclude most if not all of them are being held by the FSF."
YOU ARE READING
May Day (The Erelong Trilogy Book II)
Science Fiction[WATTYS 2018 Longlist] For fans of The Atlantis Gene, The Hunger Games, and Red Rising, this high-suspense, action-filled, sci-fi novel continues the story of a teenager from the outback who finds himself fighting for his survival. In a race against...
