Mirrored Heavens ar-1

by David J. Williams

  Grey going red is nothing but red now, and a lot of that red’s rubbed off on red going grey, who’s also now getting stuck straight through the belly to add to the royal crimson. As if to keep from falling, each man grabs the other, twists his blade in deeper, one practically decapitating, the other impaling almost up to the heart.

  “And you know what our biggest problem is?” asks Lynx. “It’s you. You’ve got to loosen up. This place is far colder than you could ever hope to be. I don’t need the man who thinks he can outchill the next ice age. I need someone who acts like a normal human being. Ever tried smiling, Carson? It’s not that bad when you get used to it. When all is said and done: it’s not such a contortion after all.”

  The mountains writhe. The sky reels. The two flopping bodies are lost to sight up front. Unless they were a diversion of some kind, they had absolutely nothing to do with the Operative. No one in the car is standing now.

  “You stand out,” says Lynx. “But no matter. With the Elevator down, all bets are off anyway. The prospect of Armageddon is growing. The other side seems to think we did it, we seem to think the other side was behind it, and no one but no one thinks that this outfit that calls itself the Rain is anything but a front for players hot on the trail of the main chance.”

  Sudden rearview: the Operative glances backward as the doors behind him open and suits swarm at speed into the room. SpaceCom military police. They check the bodies. They eye the technicians. The technicians return the favor.

  “So,” says Lynx, “try this on for size. Agrippa: don’t come back to it unless you have to. Sarmax: weighed in the balance and found wanting. You: dancing to the tune I call. And whatever you do, don’t sit still. Because there are no guarantees. At all.”

  Medics enter. God knows where they were hanging out. They unzip some body bags, stuff ’n’ load, zip ’em up, head on out. The cops exit with them.

  “As to contingencies,” says Lynx. “If they try to take you, let them. Play dumb. Buy time. Maybe you can fox your way out. And if they vector onto your identity, I’ll switch your ass, buy you a little margin.”

  Information washes around the Operative, information shot through with moonscape. And what, he thinks, if they vector onto yours…

  “But first they have to find me,” says Lynx. “First they have to see me. But see: I’m invisible, Carson. I’m the fungus that grows on the walls of the disused shafts. I’m the ghost in the final machine. It’s all around me, man. It’s like being in somebody’s skull. It’s almost as fun. Are you ready for the run to end all runs?”

  Long bridge becomes long tunnel. Long chute torpedoes past. Then:

  “So steel your heart,” says Lynx. “Prep those weapons. This’ll put us both on the map, Carson, on the map for keeps for sure. They’ll never forget this one. Not like we’re going to give them the chance. Not when we’re fishing for pearls of wisdom, Carson, pearls of wisdom. Data you can feel.”

  Train emerges from tunnel: chute gets torn away, shell shorn off by a darkness abandoned by the sun. It’s all black. It’s all mountains. It’s all stars.

  “And this is how you’ll work it, Carson. You want the formula, here it is: by keeping the Earth overhead and the zone at your back. By keeping your own counsel and playing all the ends against the middle. By making this Moon yours.”

  Through the last peaks, and lights become visible in the depths toward which the train’s now racing.

  “And we’ll start,” says Lynx, “with the place that’s south of every south.”

  S omewhere back on Earth another train is rushing east. Somewhere in that train’s a private compartment. Two men sit within. The door’s shut. It’s sealed.

  So now their mouths aren’t.

  “Okay,” says Spencer. “I’ve got this place rigged. It’s time to continue our conversation.”

  “Yeah? What’s to continue?”

  “A lot, actually. We need to know a little bit more about one another if we’re going to pull this off.”

  “Nah, Spencer. You’ve got it wrong. Less we know, the better.”

  “I disagree. In fact, it’s about time you stopped lying to me.”

  “What?”

  “I mean it’s not like you’re some kind of zone god.”

  “Did I ever say I was?”

  “You damn well implied it. You think that just doing a hack on my apartment block is somehow going to convince me that you can tap into the lines at will? That you’re off the cameras altogether?”

  “Never claimed either.”

  “But having me believe it wouldn’t be such a bad thing, would it? I’d be less likely to bolt that way, wouldn’t I?”

  Linehan says nothing. Just looks out the window.

  “I’m talking to you, Linehan. Look at me.” Linehan’s head turns as though it’s mounted on a swivel. “What are you using? You’re not a razor yourself.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “The fact that I am.”

  “Of course you are. I knew that already.”

  “Of course you knew that already,” says Spencer. “That’s why you came knocking on my door in the first place. But I can see straight through your parlor tricks. Straight through you too. You don’t talk like a razor, you don’t act like one, and you certainly aren’t thinking like one.”

  “Alright, Spencer. How does a razor think?”

  “In endless circles.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Got ten years?”

  “Your point being?”

  “My point’s made. What were you using for that conapt trick? A local node?”

  “Something like that.”

  “So why haven’t they picked you up yet?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean that there’s no way you could be on the loose with just a piece of localized shit. They would have rolled up your identity by now. There’s no way you should be sitting before me, breathing. There’s no way at all.”

  “What are you getting at, asshole?”

  “That you’re working for the feds.”

  “Already told you I ain’t.”

  “So where are the others?”

  “What others?”

  “If you don’t enjoy federal blessing, then where’s the razor who configured your identity? And how come you ended up on my door out of all the doors out there? Listen, Linehan: I can take ordinary rudeness. I can take working on a need-to-know basis. I can even take not knowing if you’re going to try to stab me through the heart. But what I can’t take is not even knowing enough to get the job done. So you’d better start giving me a little bit more to go on.”

  “Listen,” says Linehan, “what you gotta under—”

  But Spencer’s just talking over him: “And you know how you can get some extra credit while you’re doing it? By giving me a little bit more of a fucking hint about what I’m going to get at the end of all this. Otherwise, I promise you, this isn’t worth it to me. I’ll jump ship at some point and take my chances on a lightning run.”

  “Fine,” says Linehan, “you win. The others are dead.”

  “What happened to them?”

  “Blown out of an expresser about fifteen klicks up.”

  “When?”

  “Two days ago.”

  “Two days ago? You mean—”

  “Right,” says Linehan. “With all that Elevator shit, the fact that a suborbital bound for Paris had bought it in mid-flight and scattered itself all over Greenland several hours earlier got knocked off the headlines and never made it back. They’re saying structural integrity was lost. I don’t exactly know what the reasons for that were, but I can tell you that they weren’t accidental. Awful lot of fuel on those fuckers. They’re fuel-bitches, really. All it takes to send one up’s a little spark. And that was all it took.”

  “And what set off that spark?”

  “What didn’t? See, you could say that we were expendable. You could say that. But you’d be lying. We were wors
e than expendable. We were marked for disposal from the start.”

  “Why?”

  “Because we learned things we weren’t supposed to. That’s all, really. I’d reverse it, you know. I really would. If I could, I’d ditch my memory. I’d ditch it all. I’d go back to them and tell them I was gonna do all that. But they wouldn’t believe me. They wouldn’t listen. And even if they did, you know what this business is like. Dead meat—safer than live. Right, Spencer?”

  “Sure,” says Spencer. “Dead meat’s always safer. Who are we talking about?”

  “We could be talking about anyone,” says Linehan. “That’s the point.”

  “So point me in the right direction.”

  “No,” says Linehan. “Gonna give you a little bit now, and you’ll get the rest when we cross the border.”

  “The rest of what?”

  “The rest of the story, asshole. Way I heard it, you like stories. Right? That’s why you’re in this country in the first place. That’s all that gets the Priam Combine’s rocks off, right? You broker information. You profit from data. You find the juice, your masters sell it to the highest bidder. Well, this one’ll get bid so high it’ll melt the fucking auction. Think your team’s good enough to take that heat, Spencer?”

  “Do you?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “Of course it does. Surely you wouldn’t sell to someone who wasn’t going to be able to handle it.”

  “You’re confusing me with someone who gives a fuck, Spencer. As long as I pull it off, I don’t really care if you do. And it’s not like I had that many options. Couldn’t trust anyone I knew, now, could I?” Linehan coughs. “So had to think about some possibilities I’d laid out in advance for just such a day. Some of the people I considered weren’t even guilty of espionage. But all of them had something they were trying to hide.”

  “And I was one of them.”

  “Yeah, Spencer. Just one among many. It’s true. But don’t feel bad. I chose you all the same. Because it wasn’t just a matter of being proximate. It was a matter of connections.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning I put my stash of names together from two different sets of sources. One was keepers of the records within this country. I had the inside track on some of them. Lots of records. Lots of keepers. Lots of data that some know, but not everyone. See, Spencer, the people who rule this country keep a lot of things hidden from one another. Always have, always will. And if you know how to work it, you can make that fact work for you.”

  “What was the second set of sources?”

  “Neutral data. I’m a little bit of a traveler, Spencer. Bit of a globetrotter. And if you want to get neutral dirt, best place to do it is beyond the Atlantic and Pacific firewalls. Right? So that became another asset that I had at my disposal. Things I dug up via the first set might have sufficed, but the second was my top choice. Especially now that a lot of shit that’s been buried deep is getting stirred up. So when the rubber met the road, I thought of you, on my second list and not on the first so far. Not too far away, either—and undoubtedly more than capable of helping me out. If you felt like it. If you could be made to see reason.”

  “And your colleagues? When did you ditch them?”

  “When they split for Kennedy. I figured that they’d be able to stay below the radar screen until they reached passport control. But I figured that after that they were gonna get busted. I didn’t place as much confidence in our razor as the rest did. Fucking optimists. They must have thought they had it made when they put the ground behind them.” He shakes his head. “Me, I cut loose. I turned to my portfolio of options. I turned to you, Spencer.”

  “I’m touched.”

  “You wanted more. I’m giving you more.”

  “So tell me how you’re moving around.”

  “Standard procedure. Our razor locked each of us into our new identities and threw away the key.”

  “I’m surprised he didn’t hold on to your reins himself. Given how frisky you seem to be.”

  “I had an understanding with her,” says Linehan. His lip curls upward in a half smile. “She helped me get away without alerting the rest of the team. I pointed out that my enhancements were going to make it tough for me to get through an ever-tightening border security.”

  “Combat enhancements?”

  “Look at me, Spencer. Take a good look. Even without weapons, I’m built for one thing. That’s going to be obvious to any halfwit customs software.”

  “And now your razor’s dead.”

  “She is,” says Linehan. “Turns out she couldn’t configure an identity strong enough to get out of the country. So she bought it. Along with the rest of them.” He shakes his head.

  “Someone was willing to do a lot to make sure they never made it to Europe.”

  “Someone was. Someone still is. So how do you propose we get there?”

  “I propose we do what we’re doing, Linehan. Straight run to the Mountain.”

  “Yeah. And then what?”

  “Why should I tell you?”

  “I’ve been giving. It’s time for some quid pro quo.”

  “Oh really? So it’s quid pro quo day, is it? Tit for tat, huh? You haven’t even begun to level with me, Linehan, and now you’re saying I’m the one who owes you?”

  “We’re on the same team, Spencer.”

  “We’re not on the same team at all. This fugitive life has warped your fucking brain.”

  “Then I’m gonna spell it out for you. We’re both professionals. Those who aren’t can never understand what that’s like. What those places are like. The one we’re in now. The one I’m coming from. But we can both come out of this winning.”

  “Define winning,” says Spencer.

  “Us both living,” says Linehan. “Tell me your plan.”

  “You already know my plan.”

  “I do?”

  “If you know about Priam, then you know why we’re going to the Mountain.”

  “To ask for help.”

  “Exactly,” says Spencer.

  “And how is the one you’re asking likely to take it?”

  “Very badly, I suspect,” says Spencer.

  T he jet-copter slides down the runway in horizontal landing mode, slowing all the while. It slants off the straight, taxis along ramps that thread it through the heart of the spaceport’s tangled maze. It proceeds past other craft waiting. It waits while other craft proceed. Sometimes the runway upon which it rolls bridges other routes. Sometimes it’s the reverse.

  “Complicated,” says Marlowe.

  “It’s Houston,” says Haskell.

  The craft rolls into a less-trafficked area. Lights rise and fall through the haze at the far reaches of the runways. Hangar clusters draw closer.

  “Looks like that one’s ours,” says Marlowe.

  “Take my advice,” says Haskell, “drop the possessives.”

  “Why?”

  Because: they’re lazy. They constitute labels. They represent assumptions. They hide the truth. Beyond the periphery of your vision: that’s where it all goes down. Behind your own eyeballs: that’s where it all hangs out. Secret names in the dark that you’re hiding even from yourself: shadowed orbits that might just be revealed when the mood strikes them.

  Or you.

  “All I’m saying is that we need to revert to first principles,” says Haskell.

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” says Marlowe.

  “Makes two of us,” replies Haskell.

  Makes for one dynamic partnership, that’s for sure. She figures that must be the point. Volatility’s been known to strengthen the mix sometimes. Let agents bitch and moan and wonder all they want. But give them something to sink their teeth into and a reason to care…

  “Tell me then,” says Marlowe, “how you think this’ll play out.”

  “Take my advice,” she says. “Don’t think.”

  The jet-copter trundles across an apron. It rumbl
es into a small hangar and rolls to a stop. The doors open. Marlowe and Haskell get up, get out, get hustled by waiting soldiers across the concrete and into an elevator set within one wall. Seconds later, they’re rising through the ceiling—and then through many more. It’s almost enough to make them think that this is the way into space after all.

  But eventually the elevator slows and stops. Their escorts lead them down another corridor and into a room.

  With a view. Windows occupy the entirety of one wall. Gantries and runways sprawl all the way to ocean. The sky’s filled with craft receding and craft approaching. Exhaust hangs heavy overhead. Concrete shimmers in the heat.

  “Welcome to Houston,” says a voice.

  The voice’s owner sits within a chair set in the corner. He regards Marlowe and Haskell without expression.

  It’s Morat.

  * * *

  You say that Earth’s south pole is dark six months a year? The Moon’s nets all twelve with ease. Picture Malapert Mountain gleaming overhead, a black and furnaced pearl. Picture a plateau anchored halfway down into the void beneath it—and you’ve got your fix on Shackleton. But to really understand that place, you have to move beyond it. So picture the trails that lead down to nowhere. Picture the prospectors gone missing for more than five decades now. The bulldozers that hauled away and never came back. The valleys that lead to cul-de-sacs of killing angles, the caves that become catacombs, the craters within craters within craters. So tangled, that land: even worse than man’s mind—and now the Operative wanders through the streets that make up an outpost suspended above the polar maw itself.

  He figures no one will give a shit about the Elevator down here. He’s right. These guys are rugged individualists. They think they’re so tough they don’t need a dome. Most of Shackleton is underground anyway. Including the main rail station. The Operative’s in that station’s lockers now. He keys the door to one locker in particular, picks up several packages. He whistles up a conveyor, places the packages on its platform, lets its gyro-stabilized bulk trail him as he walks out into corridors and passageways that are a lot wider than those within Agrippa Station.