by John Lumpkin
“Still, might be some opportunities here.” If we can mount a coup to put the Chinese-backed party in power, the Russians may join us in response.
“We looked into that, but the costs were too high.” We already tried and failed.
“That’s a shame,” Donovan said. “Our working together going to create any issues?” Is our renewed association going to clue in President Delgado’s investigators that we were responsible for the big leak?
“It shouldn’t. Our past work together is off the radar.” No one knows.
“If you say so. I’ve wanted to know for a long time, though: When I brought it to you, why did you go along with it?”
Fairchild smiled thinly. “The large white building kept the entire agency out of the loop about the astronomical findings, even the chief. Told the four-stars at the five-sided structure down the river, but not us. Nobody, not even the fucking president, does that to my team. What about you? You never seemed to want to play political games.”
“Kid died on my watch,” Donovan said. “I thought his parents deserved to know why.”
Fairchild briefly looked taken aback, but, for all Donovan knew, it was an act.
“No kidding,” Fairchild said. “Now look at the damn menu, Jim; we’ve only got an hour before our flight leaves.”
Near Sycamore, Sequoia Continent, Kuan Yin
Lieutenant Colonel Shen knew he had no legitimate reason for being here, but the prospect of getting outdoors was enough to draw him away from the office for a few hours for an unscheduled “operations observation.”
Benefits of rank, he thought, watching the technical crew putter around, double-checking their gear before the launch. The setting southern sun cast glittery rays through the forest canopy, and in front of them was a small, lively stream, fed by distant mountain springs.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen water so clean,” the technical crew’s lieutenant commented to Shen. She was from Shanxi province, inland and polluted.
She’s right. This wouldn’t be bad place to immigrate to, after the war is over.
“We are ready, sir,” the lieutenant said. “My team would be honored if you would carry out the launch.”
Shen nodded, and the lieutenant gave him her handheld, pointing to the correct icon for him to press.
As soon as he did, a line of small boxes alongside the stream opened and disgorged their contents: a school of fishlike drones, which swam upstream. They would follow this distributary to its source river, where they would spread out into its various tributaries.
And they would drink.
For as clear as the water appeared, the stream was not pristine. Somewhere upriver were humans, eating, defecating and urinating, taking medicine and discharging hormones, and dropping little bits of processed metal and plastic. Some of this effluent had made it down to where the river met the ocean, and the sensors there had alerted Shen of upstream human activity.
You’ve shielded your power source and waste heat among the hot springs, but you can’t shield everything, Shen thought at the guerrillas. The fish would analyze what they tasted and transmit reports to Shen. He was certain he would find the Americans’ base within a few weeks.
While the techs packed up, Shen watched two squirrels chasing each other around a tree trunk.
This really is a nice place. Perhaps I could build a house on this spot. His wife and daughters would enjoy it, he was sure.
San José, Republic of Tecolote, Entente
The day before his twenty-third birthday, a Saturday, Neil was alone, eating an early breakfast at the restaurant he had found on his first night in San José, when a thin man in dirty clothes hurried in, looking over his shoulder.
“Das!” Neil said, and stood up, grinning.
Das turned around, his eyes wide and fearful. He recognized Neil, and his face instantly relaxed into a congenial smile, and he walked over and sat down at Neil’s table.
Outside, two paramilitaries strolled past, rifles slung over their shoulders.
“Um, something I should know?” Neil said.
“No, no, no, G-Man, everything’s fine. Can I buy your breakfast?”
“Talk to me, Das.”
He sighed and dropped the congenial mask. His face looked almost ten years older.
“They weren’t after me, in particular,” he said, his voice quiet but harsh. “But I got caught in that riot, and I think I got sprayed with the dust. They’re not interested in separating the demonstration’s leaders and participants from unlucky people like me, G-Man.”
“What were you doing in the riot, Das?” Neil asked, his voice as even as he could make it.
“Sleeping.”
“What?”
“I was sleeping. I’ve got a big shipping crate I call home a few blocks from the riot.”
He’s homeless. How did I miss that before? He’s wearing the same clothes as when I met him. Poor guy …
“You sure you weren’t in the demonstration?”
Das shook his head. “Oh, no. Politics are for people who can afford them.”
He’s telling the truth. “All right, let me buy you breakfast.”
Das’ shoulders slumped a little. “Thank you, Neil.”
They talked. Das told Neil about the money-for-street-cleaning payouts, which had kept Das fed until the riot. Now, he was too frightened to allow cops to approach him. What little cash he had accumulated was running out.
“The power supplies on the grains of nanotransmitter tracking dust run out in about three weeks, Das, and they can’t push a signal more than a few meters,” Neil told him. “If you can get in a shower, wash your clothes and cut your hair that should help some, but the main thing you can do is wait.”
Das looked relieved. “Two more weeks I can get by before going back to work. How do you know that?”
“I’m a G-Man, remember?” Neil smiled cryptically.
“I guess so,” Das said, and grinned an honest grin.
A tone rang in Neil’s ear, an alert from his handheld. “Whups, I’ve got to go. Got to see a man about a fish.”
He left half of his meal uneaten, hoping Das would finish it.
“I swear they stocked this planet with them,” Tippy Griego insisted after their third hour of no luck. Only two pieces of bait had disappeared, and they were uncertain whether it was to lousy casts or nibbles from actual fish.
Neil and Tippy were still in sight of Tecolote, a rugged green line on the western horizon. They sat side-by-side off the back of Tippy’s small cabin cruiser, which bobbed gently in the murky green swells. The northern breeze ensured the heat from Beta Comae Berenices was not so oppressive out here.
It was the first time Neil had felt relaxed since he had landed on Entente. They had drunk three beers each, but Tippy was pulling ahead, popping his fourth while Neil nursed his own can.
Tippy had called the night before to invite him, and Neil couldn’t think of a reason not to go. He was an easygoing man, eager to show Neil the particulars of saltwater fishing, and he had a stockpile of dirty jokes that kept Neil laughing. Neil had a few of his own, most gleaned from chiefs during late-night watches on the Apache and San Jacinto. Apparently, humor on Entente and Earth diverged enough that the two men hadn’t heard the same ones before.
But mostly Tippy wanted to hear about Earth and the United States, which he seemed to hold in almost mythical regard since his early childhood there. For him, it was a place of comfort and convenience, constant technological interconnectedness, all manner of entertainments, and a great degree of freedom from interference from the authorities.
Compared to Tecolote, all that was true, Neil knew, particularly in the prosperous decade during which Tippy was on Earth. But he wondered whether to describe all the problems, failures and shortcomings that went along with those things, or to let Tippy keep his vision of the United States as it was in his head.
“You thinking about moving back?” Neil asked.
Tippy snorted. �
��Like I could afford it. The government subsidizes moves out to the colonies, not back to Earth. I might be able to sell everything to get my family and me back there, but we’d be penniless as soon as we landed.”
No reason to disabuse of him of his notions, I guess, Neil decided. Might make him happier here, but he doesn’t need to know.
“But why not move somewhere else on Entente? There are better places than this,” he said.
“My wife’s family is here; my business is here; my friends are here,” Tippy said after a pause. “Sure, the government’s a disaster, full of parasites with guns who demand their protection money from time to time. But you can survive all the same, as long as you don’t talk politics in public places. I keep a bunch of people employed and fed. I have to believe that’s making things better, or, at least, keeping them from getting worse.”
His cork hopped on the water.
“‘Bout time!” he said. He started reeling in slowly.
“Don’t you want to set the hook?” Neil asked.
“Gently, amigo. This ain’t no river trout. Need to bring in the slack first.”
“What is it, then?”
“Beats me. That’s the beauty of fishing out here; there’s all kinds of stuff you can bring up.”
Neil’s line jerked as well, and he grabbed the rod and imitated Tippy’s motions. The fish had hit so hard the hook had set itself. Neil kept one eye on the reel, unfamiliar with some of its workings.
“Aw, hell, it’s just a school of bonito,” Tippy said, motioning with his head to the water behind the boat, where several silvery ten-pounders broke the surface. “Predator must have spooked them. Bonito’s not a great eating fish, but the churches in the city will take them to feed the homeless. So here’s our good deed for the day.”
Feeding the homeless. Tippy’s words sparked a line of thought in Neil.
“Hey, Tippy, got a question for you,” he said, his voice strained with effort fighting the fish.
“Fire away!”
“Got any openings for servers?”
“What, you get fired from the consulate?”
“Naw, it’s for a friend. Good guy, just needs a better job.”
Tippy’s fish burst from the water, its tail fluttering.
“Sure,” Tippy said, his eyes looking out to sea. “I’ll tell you where to send him.”
Neil went out to a club that night, with everyone from the consulate except Irene Gomez. They went to dinner and then to Dietrich’s, the same club he had met Kitsune, now geared up for its weekend audience of young and wealthy patrons, children of the nation’s elite, mostly, and foreigners from the embassies and business district.
Neil took first watch over everyone’s things, sitting alone at the round table they had commandeered in one corner and nursing a glass of cheap scotch. He had a brief urge to rifle through the purses to see if they betrayed any evidence of spying for the Chinese.
Above the thumping dance floor swirled three ghosts.
They were in the horizontal, looking down on the dancers. They were beautiful people; they glowed, the color shifting between a pallid green to a warm yellow. Two were female, and one male, at least from the waist up. Their trailing lower extremities were a tangle that morphed from loose bandages to cephalopodic tentacles.
From time to time, one would descend onto the dance floor, growing legs as it landed. The ghost would dance by itself for a bit, but if no one moved toward it, it would move toward a knot of dancers and engage one or more of them.
The holo projectors, software and sensors were as good as any on Earth; they didn’t skip or repeat in obvious ways, and Neil found his brain accepting the ghosts as something real. So did the dancers; Neil watched as one began assisting a female ghost in a wild, gyrating striptease; the holo’s clothes fell away where his hands touched her. But the software did not automatically reward such behavior: Move too aggressively, or too slowly, and the ghost’s flesh rotted away, its face turning into a wormy skull or maniacal clown with teeth honed to points. It would scream, then, a horrific electric laughter, and launch back to the ceiling. The striptease moved forward only as a reward for the right mix of skill and reserve on the part of the human.
While Neil watched, fascinated, Lindsay Trujillo came by more than once, but the music was too loud to allow for conversation, so they shouted brief updates to one another, and communicated no more than that.
Much later, Lindsay drove him to the consulate and followed him to his apartment.
“You said you’d been to that club before? You get around for a guy who’s new in town,” she teased.
His brain was still soaked from a day and night of drinking, but the internal guard against telling secrets was still in place. “Daytime meeting. Place is much different after hours,” he said.
She looked him over. “Rumor is you are heading out with the army.”
“Yes. Leaving Monday. Tomorrow is a day of rest.” He sat on his sofa, suddenly tired, and Lindsay wandered around. Neil had put up few personal effects, and she zeroed in on a photo of Jessica.
“Girlfriend?”
“Yes.”
“You guys poly?”
“I don’t … I don’t think so. We never talked about it.” Actually, we don’t talk often at all.
Lindsay said, “It’s important to communicate with each other in a relationship, Neil.”
A tone in Neil’s ear, a personal transmission from Apache. Jessica.
Neil answered it immediately. “Hey! How’s it going?”
Lindsay recognized the tone in his voice and surmised who was calling. When Neil activated the video, she made sure she was out of view of the camera. She silently waved good-night and left.
They talked about their pasts.
Neil and Jessica had done surprisingly little of that. Their relationship on Apache had largely started off in the physical realm and remained oriented in the here-and-now, but their separation with Neil’s deployment to Entente’s surface was forcing them to explore more of a verbal sort of intimacy. Because Neil’s orders required him to remain on Tecolote, he was trying to persuade Jessica to let him purchase her passage down to the island for some shore leave. But Jessica insisted on paying her own way, which complicated things, as she sent most of her salary home to her parents and younger sister on Mars.
Jessica had grown up there, in one of the decaying domes that was nominally American territory, although its management had been farmed out to a subsidized company with little incentive to improve things. The domes and covered canyons on Mars were becoming a sad little historical footnote, representative of a human space future that was born after the Rock but died quickly, once Hirasaki Masuyo isolated the first wormhole and the deep space telescopes discovered an abundance of potentially human-habitable worlds orbiting nearby stars. But here and there in the Sol system were signs of that alternate future: the abandoned surface bases on Callisto and Ceres, the half-hollowed-out asteroids, and the derelict terraforming stations on Mars.
The colonies on the red planet had been built as homes for the scientists and engineers to design and gestate the various plants that would help process a breathable Martian atmosphere, but after those projects ended, the domes came to serve as retirement communities for the first generations of commercial spacers. These were people whose bodies had atrophied after spending years in zero-gee, before some of the more enlightened governments began requiring freighters and liners to provide facilities for crew to exercise under simulated gravity. But the damage was done for people like Jessica’s parents, who simply couldn’t survive on Earth or any of the other new planets without wearing powered exoskeletons all the time. Permanent quarters on space stations were ridiculously expensive, so many had elected to spend their retirement in the 0.38 g on Mars.
The conditions inside the domes were not good; the residents had nothing to sell the rest of humanity, and Jessica’s no-nonsense scavenger mentality had been forged helping her family locate and trad
e for various not-quite-necessities from other dome-dwellers. On Mars, estate auctions were well-attended events.
“So I didn’t have many options to get off-planet,” Jessica told Neil. “I needed to get someone to pay my way, and I’ll never work for one of those commercial haulers. At least the military tries to care for its veterans.”
Combat Supply Cache Falcon, Sequoia Continent, Kuan Yin
Rand and Aguirre sat under the night sky, their butts on two flimsy folding chairs they had found in the supply cave and brought up to the surface. Rand was hunched over, peering into the telescope’s display, while Aguirre took notes on his handheld. He had to use an actual wire to link into the base network; transmissions from even a local wireless network might be detected by the Chinese.
“Quite the throwback, eh, Hal?” Rand said. “This is stuff I learned in my first year and didn’t need since.”
Aguirre nodded; the sergeant had been one of Rand’s gun commanders during Rand’s brief stint as an artillery platoon leader before the Chinese invaded Sequoia, and he had learned the same things during training. Their telescope was indeed a nice one, scavenged from an estate outside of Sycamore in the chaos following the invasion. It certainly wasn’t as smart as an artillery telescope, which could actively seek and follow orbiting ships and stations, but it could still resolve things in orbit with significant detail.
“All right, that wraps up the forties; I’m moving to inclination fifty-four degrees,” Rand said. That would catch ships passing over Sequoia’s latitude – ones capable of making bombardment passes on them.
At Rand’s command, the telescope angled slightly upward and began a slow back-and-forth track. It quickly found something and began to follow it. The image appeared on the display.
“Communications satellite, looks like one of ours. Hans probably holed it with a laser during the invasion.”
“Good of them, keeps the debris down.”
“Yeah.”
Rand told the telescope to ignore the object in future passes and set it to resume scanning.
“Aha. Gotcha.” With his right hand, Rand made a firing-the-pistol motion into the night sky.
