One orbit almost done, and now the Andes rise toward the Operative’s ship. They don’t get very far. A few more minutes and those peaks are crumpling back into what’s left of jungle. The remnants of that green are cut through with great brown and black streaks. Amazonia’s seen better days. From up here, the cities are shrouded in smog so thick they look like little more than massive craters. If a meteor plunged into them, it’d be hard to tell the difference.
“And this is on a good day.”
The voice is coming from the speakers. It’s one of the pilots. But it may as well be a million klicks off. The Operative feels it slowly impinge upon his consciousness. He feels so high he feels he was never anything else. He waits for all eternity.
And then he speaks.
“And when it’s bad?”
“All you’ll see is junkyard.”
“Price we pay for cheap launch real estate.”
“The only people down there doing any paying are the Latins,” says the pilot. “For shortcutting their way into the modern era.”
“That’s one way to look at it.”
“It’s hard to understand anything down there without understanding that.”
“Didn’t realize you flyboys studied history.”
“Nothing we don’t study,” the pilot says languidly. “Nothing but ways of killing time.”
“So come on back here and let’s have a chat.”
A spluttering emerges from the speakers. The Operative assumes it’s a laugh. “I don’t think so.”
“Why not.”
“No fraternization with the cargo. Cockpit door remains shut.”
“Says who.”
“Says the ones who told us to add you to that cargo. As you well know.”
“So why are you speaking with me?”
“Because this isn’t a social call. I’m just letting you know we’ve got clearance for the burn to Moon. As soon as we hit Atlantic, we’re in the window. Which will take us within a hundred klicks of Elevator.”
“No shit?”
“None at all.”
“Visible from this window?”
“Eventually. But visible on the screens right now.”
“Put it through.”
But the thing is, there’s no vantage that’s advantaged to frame the foremost wonder of the age. There’s no such thing as the whole thing. The joint construction of the superpowers: the Elevator is four thousand klicks long. It circles Earth twelve times each day. It stretches from the lower orbits all the way toward the mediums. Any view that takes in the entirety is too removed to register the thickness. Any view that catches that thickness can’t hope to catch the length. So now something that looks like a luminescent tendril cuts in on the screen. It rises from the horizon. It vanishes into the heavens.
“So that’s it,” says the Operative.
“Come on, man. You must have seen it before.”
“Only on the vid.”
“How’s this any different?”
“Because now I’m up here with it. Where do we hit closest proximity?”
“Where Amazon hits Atlantic,” replies the pilot.
“Belem-Macapa? That’s almost where we launched from.”
“Yeah. That window’ll give you a great view of the whole town.”
“What’s it like?”
“I’ll give you one guess.”
It’s like being underwater. The architecture of Belem-Macapa’s visible only indistinctly: buildings towering out of the smog, towering back into it. Stacks of lights shimmer through the haze. There’s no way to see the ground. There’s no way to see the sky. Haskell cycles through the optical enhancements she has at her disposal. All they show her are the other vehicles in her convoy—several other ’copters in the air about her, several crawlers roaring at speed along the skyways and ramps that twist among the buildings. And those are just the ones in sight. A quick glance at her screens reveals the real extent of it: at least forty vehicles in the immediate vicinity, several flanking formations off to either side, and—two klicks up—ships roaming through this city’s upper reaches, ready to swoop down at the first sign of any trouble. She wonders if it’s all for her. She’s tempted to feel flattered. It’s the closest she’s come to feeling anything all day.
But that’s starting to change. She shouldn’t be this close to the action. Not physically, at any rate. She’s a razor. She’s supposed to sit back and work the wires from afar. She’s not supposed to be thrust into a live war zone. As if on cue, more things surface within her. More pieces of her purpose. She marvels at the spaces they fill—marvels, too, at all the gaps they still leave. What they reveal has the feel of a plan laid hastily. It has the feel of the same old story: get them before they get us—and turns out that she was the right woman for the moment. She’s sick of it. She can’t get enough of it. Her pulse is quickening. So is her mind. The city streams past. Her destination looms on the screens ahead.
Stealth pod tumbling from the heights: and within that pod is Marlowe, watching the sun sinking to the west, watching all the readouts, watching as he drops toward Belem-Macapa’s sprawl. It’s like the swamp to end all swamps: swarms of roving jet-copters are the insects, while the city’s highest spires reach out of the murk like reeds. The levels below that waver in the gloom. The levels below that are invisible.
Even to Jason Marlowe. He has the sensors, sure. But he’s not using them. He doesn’t dare. All he’s using are the maps he’s been given. He’s got the city’s simulacrum burned into his brain. He sees the way the city looks beneath its veil. He sees what his pod’s descending into—feels the pod jettison, feels his suit’s glidewing buffeted by turbulence even as visibility drops toward nil. What’s left of the sun dissolves. Marlowe turns his attention to the buildings in his mind, drifts in among them.
The Amazon twists and turns, closing on the ocean. The Operative gazes down at the city that’s sliding into view, watches as it swallows the river in smog.
“The epicenter of the latest flare-up,” says the pilot. “That’s not just environmental meltdown. It’s scorched-earth warfare.”
“Come again?”
“They’re burning their own buildings to blind our satellites.”
“Ah,” says the Operative.
“The latest round started up ten days ago,” says the pilot. “It now extends through half this city’s districts. They say the Jaguars view it as a test of strength. They say that if they can force us to withdraw, they’ll show the world who really rules this continent.”
“They wish,” says the Operative.
“You’re saying we have all the answers?”
“Nobody has all the answers, flyboy. All I’m saying is that all they’re doing is killing their own people.”
“Not to mention our soldiers.”
“Who are a hell of a lot cheaper than our machines.”
“You sure?”
“Look,” says the Operative. “Hate to break it to you, but everything you see down there is collateral. If the Jaguars torched the whole thing, they’d be doing us a favor.”
“And the economy of South America—”
“Would collapse? Already has. Doesn’t matter. Only thing that means anything is our control of the equator. Don’t you get it, man? The profit margins that gives us in vacuum turn those cities into write-off.”
“Maybe it once did,” says the pilot. He sounds testy. “Maybe. But not now. You can’t write off a whole war.”
“Jesus Christ,” the Operative mutters. “I thought you said you’d read history? I thought you thought you knew something about the way this world works? What you’re looking at isn’t a war. It’s just a fucking domestic disturbance. And all we’re laying down is just a little police action. Isn’t space supposed to give you some perspective?”