“Not in the least.”
Which doesn’t mean he’s come to terms with it. It’s all he’s known all his life. Now suddenly it’s vanished, leaving him alone in the midst of endless tunnels. All the interstices upon which his mind abutted have faded from existence. He’s been reduced to just himself.
It’s going to take some getting used to.
“So what now?” says Linehan.
“Now we keep moving,” says Spencer.
He reactivates the ship’s power and switches on the headlights. They show tunnel stretching into dark. He fumbles with the ship’s controls, fires up its rockets. The headlights vanish in the reflected light of flame. The ship lurches, starts to move, starts to accelerate. Spencer calls up the map of the tunnels once again and pinpoints their position as best as he can. He no longer has the zone to moor him, so he has to extrapolate precisely what shaft they’ve been swept into, has to line it up against the map that gleams within his head.
Even as that map starts changing.
Lines start to expand through Spencer’s mind. What’s dark is suddenly being thrust into light. What were edges are fast becoming core. The whole of the old map becomes the center of the new one. And what the new represents is no longer just the corridor that surrounds the main line from Mountain to London. It’s the whole of the North Atlantic. Spencer watches as it keeps on growing. He realizes that if he isn’t crazy yet this map will probably take over his mind and make him so. Because it’s Control’s creature. He sees that now. He gets it. Control’s given him autonomous software able to adapt to the situation—able to help Control’s razor to assess that situation correctly. The zone’s gone. Spencer’s in the dark. But the lights of the map within him play upon him anyway. He reads the riddle embedded in their shifting patterns. He sees the route that’s tracing itself through them. He sees what Control wants him to do.
He starts discussing options with Linehan.
“What’s there to discuss?” says Linehan. “We’re ten minutes out from border.”
“What’s to discuss is that we’re not going there,” says Spencer.
“What?”
“I said we’re not going there.”
“Says who?”
“Says me.”
“What the fuck’s your problem?”
“There’s no problem,” says Spencer slowly. “There’s just logic. And logic says that we aren’t going to try to run the border.”
“We almost have!”
“Linehan. We’re still almost two thousand klicks west of where the Euro Magnates take over.”
“So?”
“So our chances of doing a stealth run have basically dropped to nothing flat. We were running beneath the radar before the zone went. We still are. But now it’s for a different reason. And it’s a safe bet that somewhere in the next couple thousand klicks the zone reasserts itself. Which means we’re essentially hiding in what amounts to a local disruption. Let’s hope that means that they can’t see what’s going on within it. But let’s not make any plans that don’t presume that they’re sending craft in right now. And let’s not kid ourselves for a moment that they aren’t waiting with all forces they’ve got for whatever comes out.”
“Which may not matter if this disruption extends all the way to the border!”
“You don’t need to have a zone to seal a border.” And with that Spencer veers the ship down a southward fork.
Linehan shakes his head. “You’re dead,” he says.
“By all means,” says Spencer. “Off me and add me to the trail of bodies you’ve left strewn in your wake. It won’t change a thing about all the heat in front of us. Nor will it save you when you run smack into fire.”
“We’ve already hit that fire,” says Linehan. “Are you fucking blind? We’re carving through it. We’re on the cusp of London, man. How can you deny it?”
“As wishful thinking,” says Spencer. “As embarrassing. The thought that we could slip on through the zone’s border membrane: events have rendered it a fantasy. We could have done it in that train. We could have even done it in this. But, like you said—every alarm and then some has been raised. The nuke didn’t kill us, Linehan. We’re alive. How about we face the consequences?”
“How about we shape the consequences, Spencer? How about we do something besides running home with our tails between our legs?”
“I want to go home more badly than you could know. But you forget my home’s in front of me. And your home, that’s nowhere. You’re rootless, Linehan. Your soul’s even more mechanical than your flesh.”
“So what’s your point?”
“This: I don’t see you ripping me away from the controls and ripping me in pieces. I don’t see you ripping through the tunnels and making hell for London. I don’t see you doing much except for sitting there and sneering. In fact, I don’t see you doing anything save admitting that I’m absolutely right.”
“And if we don’t go for the border—”
“It’s no if.”
“And if we don’t go for the border, where the fuck are we going to go?”
Spencer tells him.
PART III
INVERSION
Midnight at the Moon’s south pole. Always midnight down here. Always these voices in your head when you’ve been on the run too long. Always these voices that help you stay out in that cold for even longer.
Especially when they don’t know the whole story.
“Carson. You’ve done it.”
“Done what.”
“Killed him.”
The voice of Stefan Lynx is flush with triumph. The Operative just feels tired.
“Tell me you have more to tell me than that.”
“Confirmation is always good news, Carson. Was it hard?”
“Hard enough. What do his files say?”
“I mean was it hard to pull the trigger?”
“Not especially. What do the files say?”
“Would you do it all over again?”
“What do the fucking files say, Lynx?”
“That Leo Sarmax was one tricky customer.”
“I could have told you that.”
“You could have guessed that. What you just uploaded confirms it. There doesn’t seem to have been any game up here he didn’t have himself dealt into.”
“That’s great, Lynx. Was he dealing with the Rain?”
“There’s no evidence of that,” says Lynx. “Not yet anyway. But I have found a lot of evidence to suggest he was looking for them.”
“To do what?”
“Who knows? Do business with them, maybe. Sell their whereabouts to us, maybe. Or to someone else.”
“Sounds like a very dangerous game.”
“No shit,” says Lynx. “Look where he ended up.”
“Much more likely that the Rain would find him than the other way around.”
“One would think,” says Lynx. “But again, that’s why I targeted him, Carson. The man was a nexus. A conduit. Even in death, a middleman. His organization—the whole web of companies he set in motion—is a machine that’s got a link into basically everything that’s going on up here.”
“And now we’re inside.”
“And outside. And all around. Everyone who so much as sniffs at you—I’ll dissect them without them even realizing it. Everyone whom Sarmax had a file on, I’ll get a hundred more. SpaceCom intelligence knows nothing about you. And even less about Sarmax. They haven’t a clue that he used to be one of us. They haven’t a clue what we’re about to pull.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“How do you think? I’m camped out in their fucking mainframes, remember? And get this, Carson—the whispers atop the SpaceCom rafters is that the farside of this rock harbors the Rain’s main stronghold.”
“Yeah? Based on what intel?”
“Well,” says Lynx, “that’s the big question, isn’t it?”
“You mean you don’t know?”
“I mean
I’m still finding out.”
“And is SpaceCom passing word of its suspicions back to the Throne?”
“Put it this way,” says Lynx. “I’m passing this back to the Throne. I’ll keep on doing that. But that’s my obligation. It doesn’t cut the other way. The Throne doesn’t tell me shit about who’s giving it what. It doesn’t have to.”
“Doesn’t it,” says the Operative. “I mean, you’d think it would be useful for us to know if the Com is withholding a piece of data like that. Because if they’re playing that kind of double game, then—”
“We’re assuming they’re playing that kind of double game,” snaps Lynx. “I mean, who the fuck isn’t these days? Wake up, Carson: there’s a reason I’m buried in these comps. The Rain could be the very treason within SpaceCom that we were sent up to find in the first place. It could have been that way from the start. It might have become it in the days since. And even if it hasn’t, we’re still going to need the Com’s files. Their eyes see so much up here. They may not even realize the significance of everything they process. But with one foot in their living guts and the other in the dead heart of Sarmax, we’ve got the inside track on Rain. And that trail leads out to Congreve Station.”
“In the center of the farside?”
“That’s the only Congreve I know of, Carson.”
“Where exactly?”
“Northwest district. Upscale residential area. Sarmax maintained an address there.”
“And you want me to set up shop there.”
“Got it in one, Carson. I want you to go there and set up shop. And do some digging in the Congreve speakeasies. Sarmax had more than a few contacts strewn through them.”
“Yeah? Who?”
“Oh, various characters,” says Lynx vaguely. “Various lowlifes. Congreve’s quite a place, Carson. It’s the largest city that never lays eyes on Earth. It’s the heart of SpaceCom power. The L2 fleet hovers in the sky above it like a demented sun. All of Congreve is dedicated to that fleet, Carson. That’s the whole reason the town exists. And you can be sure that’s one of the reasons the Rain are up here.”
“To blow that fleet?”
“You have to admit that in terms of spectacular targets, that would be a good one. Congreve was always going to be one of the possibilities for the next move of the physical vector of this mission. But the latest intel makes it essential. It gives us no choice but to send you there.”
“Fine,” says the Operative. “When do I leave?”
“As soon as we’re done here.”
“Transportation?”
“Take one of Sarmax’s shuttles.”
“And when I get there—you want me to just go to this house and knock on its door?”
“No need to even knock. You’re the new owner. No need to announce the old one’s untimely demise just yet. Besides, we need all the leverage we can get. Things are getting out of hand back on Earth. The Newfoundland Yards got wiped off the map. HK’s under embargo. The Rain jacked one of our spaceplanes and downed it there. Along with some key CICom agents.”
“How are we responding?”
“With the usual recriminations. The shit’s going down in the Inner Cabinet. Apparently Space and Info are at each other’s throats. Undoubtedly the Rain are in the mix somewhere. The Throne is threatened like never before. Our Throne, Carson. Our man. There’s war in heaven.”
“Heaven save us from war’s worst kind,” mutters the Operative.
“Don’t look to anybody to save us, Carson. Only we can do it now. Now go. You’ll be on the other side of sky in under two hours.”
“And our contact protocols?”
“The same as ever. Extreme judiciousness.”
“Got it.”
Lynx cuts out. The Operative stares at the blank wall. Turns to the blank expression of the man standing next to him.
“Well,” says Leo Sarmax.
“It’s complicated.”
A s were the first hours in the city. The first hours past the point of no return—a fact only just now dawning on them. Threading their way through streets of silver and corridors of chrome, rubbing shoulders with the men and women of a hundred nations…into what strangeness had they stumbled? They didn’t know. They scarcely cared. All they knew is that they were on the run. And that they needed a base: some space to catch their breath. They needed a place.
They found it.
In a room. Same story as ever: find walls and a floor. A door you can close. And above all a ceiling. Anything to blot out the sky. Cheap-ass motel in Old Port Moresby district, no questions asked, no answers needed. Just naked light overhead while their bodies writhe naked in front of a wall-screen that pulsates static. They leave it like that. It seems fitting. It’s how they feel. It embodies what they feel tossed upon. So they make love while they let the static play around them.
Until a face appears within it.
It isn’t one they recognize. It’s a man. He’s got one eye. He wears a mustache. It looks absurd. Yet his expression’s anything but.
“Shit,” says Marlowe. He’s pulling himself off Haskell, vaulting onto the floor. Haskell turns the vid off.
But it remains lit. The face persists.
“Shit,” she says.
“The CI codes,” says the man. And the codes of CICom fill the screen, flit in and out of static, float in front of his face. Both Marlowe and Haskell recognize them. Friend-or-foe identifiers, changed every hour on the hour according to algorithms given to each agent at the start of every mission. Embedded with myriad fail-safes for an interloper to trigger. Doesn’t mean they can’t be fucked with.
But it’s a long way from easy.
“We should go,” says Haskell to Marlowe on the one-on-one.
“You shouldn’t,” the man says. “I’m Sinclair’s man in HK.”
They stare at him. Haskell’s first to find her voice.
“How’d you find us?”
“Sit down,” the man says.
They sit. He gazes at them. He shakes his head.
“I found you because I’m a handler. I know agents. I brief them. Track them when I have to. Snuff them when I must.”
“Going to try that on us?” asks Marlowe.
“No. All I wanted to do is locate you.”
“But how did you do that?” persists Haskell.
“I’ve got the edge,” says the man. “I’ve got everything on you two. Your psych profiles, for one—which way you move when under pressure. That helped. But it wasn’t as useful as your neutral accounts. Figured you’d go back to those. I mean, what else could you have done?”
“You’re lying,” says Marlowe. “Those weren’t even the accounts you gave us. Those were the ones I set up last time I was in the neutrals.”
“We’re not stupid, Jason. We know how our agents do it when they get out beyond the border. We know you think you live longer if you don’t link to us. We’re not even against insurance policies. Doesn’t mean we don’t like to keep an eye on things.”
“If you have those account numbers, then Morat might have them too,” says Haskell. “He had access to every code you’ve given us as well. So why should we trust you?”
“Trust me,” says the man. “If I were trying to nail you they’d have kicked down your door already. Nailing people’s easy. Saving them’s the hard part. I’m changing up the codes even as I speak. I’m here because you’ve got a new mission. I’m the one who’s going to tell you all about it. Besides: don’t you want to know what’s really going on?”
“What happened on that spaceplane?” demands Haskell.
“You know damn well what happened,” replies the man. “Morat betrayed us. He helped the Rain to jack it.”
“Why?” asks Haskell.
“Surely it wasn’t to get at the two of us,” says Marlowe.
“Actually, I’m sure that was part of the reason. But it wasn’t the main one.”
“What was the main one?”
The handler smi
les mirthlessly. “The main one was the cargo you were carrying.”
“I didn’t know we were carrying anything,” says Marlowe.
“Of course you didn’t.”
“What,” says Haskell slowly, “are you talking about?”
“Like I just said: I’m talking about the fact that you were carrying a cargo.”
“And are you going to tell us what the fuck it was?”
“That’s not an easy question to answer,” says the handler. “In fact, I’m not even sure I can answer it. What you have to understand is that Sinclair was intending to take the fight to Autumn Rain. He put all his primary agents into the field. And he emptied out the research labs of anything that even looked like it had any promise. Every black-ops project, every R&D prototype—all of it got deployed.”
“Which,” says Marlowe, “was exactly what the Rain wanted.”
“Chalk one up to hindsight,” says the handler. “The plan was to assign an artifact to each team. You were one such squad. When you reached the Moon, your briefing was to encompass that artifact’s activation. We couldn’t transport it out of sight of those we trusted most. But we weren’t going to tell you about it until you absolutely had to know.”
“But you were going to tell Morat.”
“We don’t know what happened to Morat. We don’t know how he found out what he did. We don’t know how he broke loose. It calls into question every—”
“Never mind that crap,” says Haskell. “Tell us what was on that plane.”
“Next-generation AI,” replies the handler. “A comp that combined state-of-the-art battle management capability with the ability to do zone incursions far beyond the level of our best razors.”
“Oh,” says Haskell.
“Oh. What was on that plane was the ultimate machine for waging secret war. And not just secret, either. Situate it in an inner enclave, and you could vector a first strike through the thing. All housed in a highly mobile chassis.”
“It moves?”
“In point of fact, it bailed out.”
They look at him. Look at each other.
“Why so surprised?” asks the handler. “After all, that’s what you did.”
“Sure,” says Marlowe, “but that’s different.”
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