The third was ajar. Low voices murmured behind it. It swung inward easily; flat panels of vat-cloned hardwood lined the space beyond, a kind of library or map room that looked out onto a grassy compound (half sunlit, half in shadow) past the opposite end of the room. Past sliding glass doorways, arcane objects rose haphazardly from that immaculate lawn. Brüks couldn’t tell whether they were machines or sculptures or some half-assed hybrid of the two. The only thing that looked at all familiar out there was a shallow washbasin set atop a boxy waist-high pedestal.
There was another one of those inside, too, just past a conference table that dominated the center of the room itself. Two mismatched Bicamerals stood at the table’s edge, gazing at a collection of dice-size objects scattered across some kind of hard-copy map or antique game board. The Japanese monk was gaunt as a scarecrow; the Caucasian could have passed for Santa Claus at the departmental Christmas party, given the right threads and a pillow stuffed down his front.
“From Queensland, maybe,” Santa remarked. “That place always bred the best neurotoxins.”
The scarecrow scooped up a handful of objects (not dice, Brüks saw now; a collection of multifaceted lumps that made him think of mahogany macramé) and arranged them in a rough crescent across the board.
Santa considered. “Still not enough. Even if we could sift the Van Allens dry on short notice.” He absently scratched the side of his neck, seemed to notice Brüks at last. “You’re the refugee.”
“Biologist.”
“Welcome anyway.” Santa smacked his lips. “I’m Luckett.”
“Dan Brüks.” He took the other man’s nod for an invitation and stepped closer to the table. The pattern decorating the game board—a multicolored spiral of interlocking Penrose tiles—was far more complex than any he remembered from his grandfather’s attic. It seemed to move at the corner of his eye, to crawl just so when he wasn’t quite looking.
The scarecrow clicked his tongue, eyes never leaving the table.
“Don’t mind Masaso,” Luckett remarked. “He’s not much for what you’d call normal conversation.”
“Does everyone around here speak in tongues?”
“Speak—oh, I see what you mean.” Luckett laughed softly. “No, with Masaso here it’s more like a kind of aphasia. When he’s not linked in, anyway.”
The scarecrow spilled a few more mahogany knuckles with chaotic precision. Luckett laughed again, shook his head.
“He talks through board games,” Brüks surmised.
“Close enough. Who knows? I might be doing the same thing by the time I graduate.”
“You’re not—?” Of course he wasn’t. His eyes didn’t sparkle.
“Not yet. Acolyte.”
It was enough that he spoke English. “I’m trying to find the room I was in last night. Basement, spiral stairs, kind of a war room bunker feel to it?”
“Ah. The Colonel’s lair. North hall, first right, second door on the left.”
“Okay. Thanks.”
“Not at all.” Luckett turned away as Masaso clicked and rolled the bones. “More than enough antimatter to break orbit, anyway. Least it saves on chemical mass.”
Brüks stopped, hand on the doorknob. “What was that?”
Luckett glanced back at him. “Just drawing up plans. Nothing to worry about.”
“You guys have antimatter?”
“Before long.” Luckett grinned and dipped his hands into the washbasin. “God willing.”
Most of the tactical collage was dark, or writhing with analog static. A half dozen windows flickered fitfully through random points of view: desert, desert, desert. No satcam imagery. Either Moore had shut down those feeds or whoever was behind the blockade had walled off the sky as well as the horizon.
Brüks tapped experimentally on an unlit patch of paint. His touch provoked a brief flicker of red, but nothing else.
The active windows kept changing, though. Some kind of motion sensor built into the feed, maybe: views would pan and pounce, flash-zooming on this flickering shadow or that distant escarpment. Sometimes Brüks couldn’t see anything noteworthy at the center of attention: a falcon grooming itself on a skeletal branch, or the burrow of a desert rodent halfway to the horizon. Once or twice a little fall of rock skittering down a distant slope, scree dislodged by some unseen disturbance.
Once, partially eclipsed by leaves and scrub, a pair of glassy reflections looking back.
“Help you?”
Jim Moore reached past Brüks’s shoulder and tapped the display. A new window sprang to life at his fingertip. Brüks stepped aside while the soldier stretched the window across the paint, called up a feed, zoomed on a crevice splitting a hillock to the south.
“I was trying to get online,” Brüks admitted. “See if anyone out there’s picked up on this whole—quarantine thing.”
“Net’s strictly local. I don’t think the Bicamerals actually have Quinternet access.”
“What, they’re afraid of getting hacked?” It was an ongoing trend, Brüks had heard: defensive self-partitioning in the face of Present Shock, and damn the legal consequences. People were starting to weigh costs against benefits, opt for a day or two outside the panopticon even in the face of the inevitable fines and detentions.
But Moore was shaking his head. “I don’t think they need it. Do you feel especially lost without access to the telegraph network?”
“What’s a telegraph?”
“Exactly.” Something caught the Colonel’s eye. “Huh. That’s not good.”
Brüks followed the other man’s gaze to the window he’d opened, to the crevice centered there. “I don’t see anything.”
Moore played a little arpeggio on the wall. The image blossomed into false color. Something glowed Euclidean yellow in all that fractal blue.
He grunted. “Aerosol delivery, looks like.”
“Your guys?”
The corner of Moore’s mouth curled the slightest bit. “Can’t really say.”
“What’s to say? You’re a soldier, right? They’re soldiers, unless the government’s started subcontracting to—”
“Biothermals, too. They’re not trusting their bots to run things.” There was a hint of amusement in the old soldier’s voice. “Probably baselines, then.”
“Why’s that?”
“Fragile egos. Low self-esteem.” His fingers skipped across the darkened wall. Bright windows flared everywhere they touched.
“At least you’re all on the same side then, right?”
“Doesn’t really work like that.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“The chain of command isn’t what it used to be.” Moore smiled faintly. “It’s more—organic, these days. Anyway.” Another finger dance; the window dwindled and slid to an empty spot along the edge of the wall. “They’re still setting up. We’ve got time.”
“How was the meeting?” Brüks asked
“Still going on. Not much point hanging around after the opening ceremonies, though. I’d just slow them down.”
“And let me guess: you can’t tell me what’s going on, and it’s none of my business anyway.”
“Why would you say that?”
“Lianna said—”
“Dr. Lutterodt wasn’t at the meeting,” Moore reminded him.
“Okay. So is there anything you can—”
“The Fireflies,” Moore said.
Brüks blinked. “What about—oh. Your common enemy.”