“How direct can it be when you never see them either?”
“As direct as it needs to be for me to give you your final orders. You’ve been primed across your dreams. You face me in the flesh for activation.”
“Tell me what’s going on.”
“You already know what’s going on,” he says. “We’re getting hammered.”
“By the Latins.”
“By the Jaguars. The Latins didn’t mean shit until the Jags gave them a voice. Five years ago, these cities were virtually pacified. Everything was locked down. Look at them now. The governments we bought and paid for don’t dare to go inside. The militias are like iron filings over which a magnet’s passing. They’re focused like they’ve never been before.”
“Which is why I’m here,” says Haskell.
“Which is why you’re here.” Morat smiles without warmth. “This city is where they’re making their latest push. It started ten days back. Now it’s as bad as I’ve ever seen it. I tell you, Claire—we either find a way to break them, or else one of these days it’s going to be the other way. And if we’re going to win this, it’s going to have to be CounterIntelligence Command that gets in there and does it. The other Commands won’t. Army’s a hollow shell. Space rides high and disdains dirt. Info avoids the human touch. Navy steers clear of anything that isn’t ocean. The Praetorians have their hands full safeguarding the Throne. It’s going to have to be CICom. It’s going to have to be you, Claire.”
Silence. For minutes. For hours. Is she tripping on the pre-zone rush? Maybe. A structure’s forming in her head, aggregating out of nothing—it spins before her. It’s everything they told her while she was sleeping. It’s the codes that will allow her to beat what she’s about to face. Yet it’s as blurry as the mist outside. It needs the trigger words that Morat’s about to give her to make it real. Those words don’t have to make sense on a conscious level to unearth what’s been buried further down. If they do, it’s only because Morat is choosing to bind them up in context. But context is optional.
Codes aren’t.
“Is this building empty?” she asks. She realizes that Morat has just spoken. That her reverie’s all gone down in one moment.
“Of course not,” Morat replies. “It’s filled with our soldiers.”
“If they’re our soldiers, why are they wearing Army colors?”
“Because ArmyCom’s been divvied up by the rest of the Commands.”
“I hadn’t heard.”
“Shouldn’t let yourself get so out of the loop, Claire. Army did, and now it’s dead in the water. They’re keeping the name, but that’s about it. CICom got the franchise for all operations in this city. The Throne’s charged Sinclair with cleaning the place up.”
“Have these Army units been reconditioned?”
Morat looks at her like she’s stupid.
“Where are we in relation to this hedgehog’s perimeter?” she asks.
“About two or three streets from the edge. We extended the perimeter to encompass these blocks only yesterday.”
“And which floor are we heading to next?”
“The ninety-fifth,” he replies. “It’s the one we were tipped off to.”
“Who tipped us off?”
“An informant. Highly placed in what we believe to be the Jaguars’ command structure.”
“Is this informant reliable?”
“Reliable enough.”
“Enough for this?”
“What are you getting at?”
“That it might be a trap.”
“Of course it might be a trap. But if it’s not, we could roll them up. It’s worth the risk.”
“You mean it’s worth risking me.”
“Well,” says Morat, “I don’t think Sinclair imagines that you’ll be sacrificed. He likes you, Claire. He tells the handlers you’ll live forever. Even if it is a trap—he thinks you’ll be the one who’ll be able to get out and tell us all about it.”
“I can’t tell you how good that makes me feel.”
“You’re getting pretty close to insubordination.”
“I’m not interested in your threats,” she replies. “Not interested in the old man either. Just tell me what we’ve got here.”
“What we’ve got here,” says Morat evenly, “is a tunnel back in time.”
“Excuse me?”
“A tunnel back to the way things used to be.” He grins. “A tunnel straight on through to the way they still are.”
“Are you on drugs?”
“No,” says Morat, “but I know you are. I know you razors. How else do you bear the blast of zone? Can’t even say I blame you. But let me tell you this, Claire—what you’re about to enter is no ordinary zone. Or rather, it was ordinary once upon a time. Just not now. Not any longer.”
“You’re talking legacy.”
“Of course. This city used to be two. Belem and Macapa: a few decades back, they became one. Right about the time the first world-net got sundered. Right about the time the superpowers were building walls around their nets and calling them zones and the Euros were establishing theirs: this place was preoccupied with concerns that were far more local. She was the platform for the last rush to take down the Amazon. And when the bulk of green was gone, and the strip-mining of the Andes took off—once again, this was the place to be. Now she’s ours. Whether we like it or not. She’s got twenty million people. And ten million of those live outside the zone.”
“You mean they live beyond our zone.”
“Many of them live beyond any net whatsoever. Many don’t. This gateway I’m about to show you—as best as we can tell, it leads to conduits that constituted the center of this city’s power grid in the year 2060. It’s been buried a long time. We thought it no longer existed. And we might still be right. It might not be active anymore. In fact…”
He keeps on talking, but Haskell’s scarcely listening. At least not consciously. It hardly matters. What matters is that his words are confirming the glidepath down which her run’s going to slot. Visions burn through her brain: images, plans, recollections. The wrinkles of the old man’s face. The walls of that room. The surface of that sea. She sees once more those sterile corridors. Once again the codes course through her. The operating systems and the software of half a century back crystallize inside her mind. The parameters of the still-functioning nets of yesteryear echo through her head. They burn within her skull, flare behind her eyes; they course straight through her, and all the while that pale gaunt face keeps talking.
“See, Claire,” it says. “We’re not idiots. We’ve long suspected the Jaguars have a net of their own. That they’re not just coordinating between cities by means of couriers. And we’ve long suspected that net’s physical. Our jamming mechanisms are too good for them to use wireless in any but the most tactical of situations. Which means they run that net through wires that lie beyond our maps. But the problem is that what’s beyond those maps is also out of our control. As out of control as this city. If there were more of a government here, we could clean them up comprehensively. But outside our own fortresses, law’s a product of the street. That leaves a lot of net-fragments remaining for the Jaguars to exploit. We’ve shut many down. But there are many others. Some of them are linked. Some aren’t. Some are just islands. Maybe this one is too. We don’t know. We’ve been looking for a way in from our zone. We’ve been looking for a way in from any of the fragments we know about. So far we haven’t found one. Which doesn’t mean there isn’t one. As you well know.”
“I do,” says Haskell, and she does. She knows that when a layperson says zone, they think of something monolithic, something sleek and grey and all-encompassing. Something that couldn’t be further from the chaos of the truth. A tangle of interfaces, a web of trapdoors, mirrors, dead ends: layer upon layer of construction, some of it fitting evenly, much of it not, so much of it built at cross-purposes, or simply without coordination—as uncoordinated as the traffic that flows through it. All th
at data skating over all the ice that crusts above a sea of legacy. Rarely does anything go any deeper. Unless you’re talking about something that’s pretty covert. And you can pursue that covert data if you like, can dig in that sea’s own bed through the strata of bygone technology, back through quantum cables, back through fiber optics, back through copper wires, back through what’s abandoned—or at least uncharted. As uncharted as the link to an antique power grid might be…
“But we found it,” says Morat. “On the ninety-fifth floor. X marks the spot. We dug in the place where we were told, and we found it.”
“And now you want me to crawl in there.”
“And get on the trail of the Jaguars’ net. And if you find it—if there really is a link between these wires and their lairs—then come back without tipping them off.”
“Who I am coordinating with?”
“Me.”
“I mean what other razors? What other mechs? I’m assuming this is part of a combined operation?”
“Sure it’s a combined operation. But you can leave all that to me, Claire. The word’s come down from the old man himself. Both kinds of runners hit this city tonight. The razors work the wires and the mechanics kick in the doors. But the razors aren’t working the mechs’ leashes. Not this time, anyway. The whole thing’s too compartmentalized. And your part is crucial. What you’re crawling into could be the lair of the Jaguars. Or it could be nothing.”
“Or it could be a trap,” she repeats.
“Or it could be a trap. But if it’s not, we could end this war tonight. You could, Claire. We need someone who can get in there without triggering any alarms. Someone who can tell us where to strike. We need your talents, Claire. It’d be worth a lot to your future.”
“So would living,” she replies. “How secure is this perimeter?”
“As secure as I can make it. This place has been swept. Along with this whole block. It’s clean. If they have anything rigged, it’d be inside the zone itself.”
“Great. And if I find something?”
“Map out the physical locations of the executive nodes of that network. And then get out.”
“In that order?”
“In whatever order you can manage.”
“Right,” she says. She breathes deeply. She looks around her. “I’m ready to do this.”
“Excellent.”
“You’re acting like I have a choice.”
“You always have a choice, Claire.”
“Can we get out of this shaft?”
“We can.” He turns to the wall panel, adjusts the controls. They start to descend. They gain speed, hissing down through scores of floors. They slow. They halt. The door slides open.
Nothing. There’s nothing here. It’s as if there never was. Marlowe’s making his way down ladders and stairs and through trapdoors and it’s as if they’ve all just been dormant, waiting for his presence. Yet he can feel the presence of the ones he seeks close at hand. The force they have in here probably isn’t large enough to set up watch over the whole building. They’re probably keeping as low a profile as possible. But sooner or later he’s going to reach their perimeters.
Probably sooner. For now he’s reached apartments that are inhabited. Open doors give way to living quarters—laundry hung all about tiny chambers, kids squawking, mothers screaming. Marlowe moves through them like a ghost, his suit’s camo cranked up as far as it’ll go, letting him take on the ambience of wall, of doorway, of ceiling—whatever surface he’s in front of at whatever moment. The most trouble he gets is from a dog that won’t stop barking. It knows something’s up. But Marlowe ignores it, becomes one more thing in that animal’s life that’ll never reach the lives of the humans who feed it.
He descends through several more such levels. He steps over sleepers, moves past men and women engrossed in card games, drinking, laughing—he reminds himself it’s Saturday night, wonders how much it differs from all the other nights that go down in this city. Truth to tell, the cities up north aren’t that different. They’ve just got more money to blow on this kind of thing. Not to mention a better chance of surviving to see tomorrow’s parties.
But the lower he gets, the more the ones going on around him fizzle out. Finally he finds himself moving through deserted halls once more. Most of the overhead lighting’s gone. And now Marlowe’s circuits are humming. His heads-up’s giving him the alert: there are sensors in here. There are wavelengths brushing against him like cobwebs. But his suit’s camoed in more than just the visible spectrum. It’s state-of-the-art.
Now put to the test.
Intervention on the Elevator: the Operative watches through the magnifiers as two patrol ships move in toward the construction area. They’re drifting cables—and fixing those cables to the web of scaffolding that encrusts the Elevator’s spine. Hatches open. Suits emerge, fire jets, flit in toward the workers clustered along the scaffolding.
“What’s going on?” says the Operative.
“Looks like a raid,” replies the pilot.
“Any idea why?”
“What do you know about those workers?”
The suits are going to town. They’re fanning out through the scaffolding. They’re grabbing workers, dragging them out of latticed depths. There seems to be struggling going on in several places. Several workers are being hustled into one of the ships.
“Less than I thought,” says the Operative.
“Here’s a hint—those guys aren’t drawing a salary, friend. They’re not in it to win it. They’re either soaking up the radiation on that thing or else they’re breaking rocks beneath the Mare Imbrium.”
“They’re convicts.”
“And usually political ones. Sentenced to life by definition. Nothing left to lose. Someone was probably doing petty sabotage. Or plotting hopeless escape. Shit, man. This kind of bust happens a lot more often than you’d think.”
But someone must be refusing to go out easy. Because now another swarm of suits is billowing from both ships. They latch on to the scaffolding, start getting in there. The Operative shakes his head.
“Look at them go.”
“This is getting good.”
It’s getting even better. Because now the jets of both ships are flaring. Those craft are still tethered. They’re turning on their axes. The KE gatlings in their tails are starting to track on something.
“Hello,” says the Operative.
“Shit,” says the pilot.
Both guns fire simultaneously.
The elevator doors give way to a room that’s really a warehouse. It cuts through at least three stories. Catwalks line the walls. Power-suited soldiers stand at intervals along the lower catwalks. Some kind of structure occupies most of the floor—sections of plastic wall partition the space into many sections.
Morat leads the way into the maze. Occasional glimpses through open entryways reveal equipment, crates, dust—sometimes all three and always at least the last. At first Haskell wonders why the partitions haven’t been removed. But then she realizes that what’s about to happen is for her eyes alone: hers, and maybe Morat’s—and now he’s leading her into one particular room. It contains a metal rack in which a console sits. Wires protrude from the floor, nest around that console like snakes. Five screens gleam atop it.
“Here we are,” says Morat, halting. “We’ve dug in, hooked up these interfaces. When you jack in, the connection goes live.”
Haskell just stares. At the screens. At the console. She walks toward it. She halts in front of it, looks it over. She turns back to Morat.
“I’ll watch your flesh,” he says.
She says nothing—just turns, adjusts the manual controls. Takes out the implants, connects them. Slots them into her head. The hooks hang heavy in her skull. She sits down on the floor. Crosses her legs. Glances up at Morat.
“The fuck you will,” she says as she jacks in.
Marlowe’s given up on the stairs. He switches to the elevator shaft. He squirts the c
omponents of an acid compound from the finger-cartridges of his glove, lets that acid activate and corrode a hole in the elevator doors. He climbs through into the shaft. The light here is very faint. He loops a tether around a beam, drops down the shaft’s length. He sees sensors positioned in its walls. He feels their emissions scrape against him, watches his suit run countermeasures. He wonders whether he’s showing up on anybody’s scopes.
That’s when something emerges from the gloom below. It’s the elevator car. It’s about twenty-five floors beneath him. It’s just gone motionless. Marlowe doesn’t know how fast it can move. He only knows that it’s time to get out of the shaft.
But before he can do that, the doors to the floor immediately above the elevator car open. He goes very still.
Two figures in light battlesuits leap into the shaft, land on the elevator’s roof. They’re looking upward. Not as high as Marlowe is. But high enough. Marlowe watches on his heads-up as the spectrums start to get crowded. He realizes that the suits are probing. That they’re about to detect him. The stealth part of this run is officially over. He lines up his targets.
No half measures: the KE gatlings triangulate, slice through scaffolding like it’s so much matchwood. Shreds of suit and meat spray out in slow motion.
“Shit,” says the Operative.
But the pilot says nothing. And now the workers are swarming in among the power-suits where the big guns can’t touch them. They’re bringing the suits down with sheer numbers. They’re grabbing weapons, turning them on their assailants.
“Shit,” says the Operative.
But all he hears is silence.
“You still there?”
There’s no answer. Now the ships are opening up on everybody in that section of the spine, friend and foe alike. It’s a total massacre. One of the ships suddenly explodes—opening up like a tin can packed with gunpowder.
“Shit,” says the Operative.
It’s the same ship into which the prisoners were taken. The Operative wonders what was in those workers. The other ship fires its thrusters, swans away from the scene of the killing.
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