And someone else had stopped them.
Which side was Rowan affiliated with? Who was right?
He hadn't told Jovellanos about the 'scaphe. He'd even done a passable job of forgetting about it himself, keeping things nice and simple, focusing on the mouse at hand until the whale on the horizon became a vague blur, almost invisible. He'd known in the back of his mind he wouldn't be able to keep it up for long; eventually they'd come up with a reliable index, some combination of distance spec and moisture and pH that pointed the finger at the invader. But he hadn't expected it so soon. They'd been working with old data, shipyard samples contaminated by industrial effluents, potential incursions three or four hectares large at most. Noise-to-signal problems alone should have held them back for weeks.
But you didn't need much rez to catch a beachhead ten kilometers long. Desjardins had kept his eyes down, and the whale on the horizon had run right into him.
Mandelbrot stood in the doorway, stretching. Claws extruded from their sheaths like tiny scimitars.
"You wouldn't have any trouble at all," Desjardins said. "You'd just go for maximum damage, right?"
Mandelbrot purred.
Desjardins buried his face in his hands. So what do I do now? Figure things out for myself?
He realized, with some surprise, that the prospect wouldn't have always seemed so absurd.
Drugstore
"Amitav."
He startled awake: a blanketed skeleton on the sand. Gray and dim in the visible predawn gloom, hot and luminous in infrared. Sunken eyes, exuding hatred on all wavelengths from the moment they opened.
Sou-Hon Perreault stared down at him from three meters up. Well-fed refugees, freshly awakened on all sides, edged away and left Amitav in the center of an open circle.
Several others—teenagers, mostly, a little less robust than most—stayed nearby, looking up at the 'fly with undisguised suspicion. Perreault blinked within her headset; she'd never seen so many hostile faces on the Strip before.
"How pleasant," Amitav said in a low voice. "To wake with a big round hammer hanging over my head."
"Sorry." She moved the 'fly off to one side, wobbling its trim tabs to effect a bobbing mechanical salute (then wondered if he could even see it with his merely human eyes). "It's Sou-Hon," she said.
"Who else," the stickman said dryly, rising.
"I—"
"She is not here. I have not seen her in some time."
"I know. I wanted to talk to you."
"Ah. About what?" The stickman began walking down the shore. His—
Friends? Disciples? Bodyguards?
— began to follow. Amitav waved them off. Perreault set the botfly to heel at his side; the entourage dwindled slowly to stern. On either side, anonymous bundles—curled on thermafoam, wrapped in heat-conserving fabric—stirred and grunted irritably in the gray halflight.
"A cycler was vandalized last night," Perreault said. "A few kilometers north of here. We'll have to fly out a replacement."
"Ah."
"It's the first time something like this has happened in years."
"And we both know why that is, do we not?"
"People rely on those machines. You took food from their mouths."
"I? I did this?"
"There were lots of witnesses, Amitav."
"Then they will tell you I had nothing to do with it."
"They told me it was a couple of teenagers. And they told me who put them up to it."
The stickman stopped and turned to face the machine at his side. "And all these witnesses you speak of. All these poor people that I have robbed of food. None of them did anything to stop the vandals? All those people, and they could not stop two boys from stealing the food from their mouths?"
Sheathed in her interface, Perreault sighed. Over a thousand klicks away the botfly snorted reverb. "What do you have against the cyclers, anyway?"
"I am not a fool." Amitav continued down the shore. "It is not all proteins and carbohydrates you are feeding us. I would rather starve than eat poison."
"Antidepressants aren't poison! The dosages are very mild."
"And so much more convenient than dealing with the anger of real people, yes?"
"Anger? Why should you be angry?"
"We should be grateful, do you think? To you?" The skeleton spat. "It was our machinery that tore everything apart? We caused the droughts and the floods and put our own homes underwater? And afterward, when we came here across a whole ocean—if we did not starve first or cook in the sun or die with our bodies stuffed with worms and things that your drugs have made unkillable—when we ended here we are supposed to be grateful that you let us sleep on this little patch of mud, we are supposed to thank you because so far it is cheaper to drug us than mow us down?"
They were at the waterline. Surf pounded invisibly in the dark distance. Amitav lifted one bony arm and pointed. "Sometimes when people go in there the sharks come for them." His voice was suddenly calm. "And on shore, the rest continue to sex and shit and feed at your wonderful machines."
"That's—that's just human nature, Amitav. People don't want to get involved."
"So these drugs are good for us?"
"They're not the slightest bit harmful."
"Then you put them in your food, too."
"Well no, but I'm not—"
— part of an imprisoned destitute mob forty million strong…
"You liar," the stickman said quietly. "You hypocrite."
"You're starving, Amitav. You'll die."
"I know what I do."
"Do you?"
He looked up at the 'fly again, and this time he almost seemed amused. "What do you think I was, before?"
"What?"
"Before I was—here. Or did you think that environmental refugee was my first choice of vocation?"
"Well, I—"
"I was a pharmaceutical engineer," Amitav said. He tapped his temple. "They even changed me up here, so I was very good at it. I am not completely foolish about dietary matters. There appears to be a—a minimum effective dosage, yes? If I eat very little, your poisons have no effect." He paused. "So now you will try and force-feed me, for my own good?"
Perreault ignored the jibe. "And you think you're getting enough to live on, under your minimum dosage?"
"Perhaps not quite. But I am starving very, very slowly."
"Is that how you motivated those kids to trash the cycler? Are they fasting too?" There could be serious trouble on the Strip if that caught on.
"Me, still? I have somehow tricked all these people into starving themselves?"
"Who else?"
"Such faith you have in your machines. You have never thought that perhaps they are not working as well as you think?" He shook his head and spat. "Of course not. You were not told to."
"The cyclers work fine until your followers smash them."
"My followers? They never fasted for me. They suck at your tits as they always have. It is only afterthey begin starving that they see your cyclers for what they—"
Crack!
An impact on polymer, the sound of a whip snapping just behind her ear. She spun the 'fly, caught a glimpse of the rock as it bounced along the substrate. Ten meters down the shore, a girl ran away with another rock clenched in her hand.