“You wouldn’t believe what space has shown me,” the pilot hisses. “But that doesn’t mean that I’m going to see things your way. If what you say is true, why don’t we just withdraw from all those cities down there. Abandon them. Seal them off.”
“You probably would if you were in charge,” says the Operative. “Problem with you flyboys is that you’ve got no sense of the subtle touch. You can’t seal off a tumor. Can’t withdraw from cancer. If we left the cities to the Jaguars, they’d mobilize all urban resources against us. They’d be fanning out through the jungles and the sewers. They’d be assaulting our launch bases in nothing flat.”
“If that’s true, then why don’t we just nuke them?”
“We may yet.”
“But why haven’t we yet?”
“Because no one’s used a nuke since Tel Aviv and Riyadh.”
“So?”
“So this is the era of détente. The second cold war ain’t that far in the rearview. The last thing anybody needs is for one of the superpowers to start frying populations wholesale. How do you think the East’s analysts are going to rate the situation’s stability if we start charbroiling the Latins?”
The pilot doesn’t reply.
“Exactly,” says the Operative. “And while you’re at it: don’t forget the East has a similar problem in Africa.”
“Lagos and Kinshasa.”
“And about twenty other cities.”
“Didn’t they once contribute to our Latin problem?”
“By supporting the insurgents? They may still.”
“No kidding?”
“And we may still be returning the favor.”
“You’re joking.”
“You’re naïve,” says the Operative. “Don’t you know what détente means?”
“I’ve heard many definitions.”
“So let me give you the one that counts.”
“Namely?”
“Same game. New phase.”
“That’s all?”
“Believe me: that’s enough.”
* * *
They’ve reached the perimeter. Haskell watches as her ’copter sweeps past skyscrapers that have been transformed into mammoth firing platforms: whole sections of walls, whole stacks of floors removed to allow scores of gun-emplacements to be situated within those scooped-out innards. Giant metal nets drape here and there, connecting other buildings. The whole area looks like the domain of some monstrous spider. The ’copter starts to weave in among those nets. It’s a complicated route. Haskell counts at least three distinct lines of defense, each one containing untold fields of fire.
Though she knows full well the real point of this place isn’t defense. It’s the reverse. It’s the way modern urban warfare gets waged. Establish bases in the city in question, use those sites to launch forays into the concrete wilderness all around. Hedgehogs, some call them. Hell on Earth might be more accurate. Haskell never thought she’d be in the middle of one.
But there’s a first time for everything. She feels her stomach lurch. The ’copter’s circling. Those circles tighten around one building in particular. The craft floats toward it, touches down on the roof.
The engines die. She hurriedly pulls her breath-mask into place, strapping it onto her chem-suit—just in time as the hatch swings back. Helmets peer inside. But Haskell’s already coming out—“Out of my way,” she snarls, and they back away quickly.
She leaps lightly to the rooftop, looks around. Two other jet-copters sit alongside hers. Soldiers in powered armor stand at attention. Barbed wire rings the rooftop’s perimeter. Buildings protrude out of the murk beyond like fingers jutting up from quicksand. The sky overhead couldn’t be more than two hundred meters up. Half-seen lights move through it.
“Get me off this roof,” says Haskell.
“Yes, ma’am,” replies one of the soldiers. He turns. She follows him toward a single-story structure set atop the center of the roof. As they reach its door, the soldier steps aside, gestures for her to enter. She steps within, finds herself on a metal-grille stairway. The door closes behind her. She hears atmospheric purifiers working as she descends.
At the bottom of the stairway she finds a room. It looks to be some kind of storage chamber. A single door’s set within the opposite wall. Two men stand before that door. One’s another power-suited soldier. The second isn’t. He’s wearing civilian chem-clothes. His face is gaunt. His eyes are pale.
“Claire Haskell,” he says.
“Yeah?”
“My name’s Morat. You can take your breath-mask off now.”
“Thanks,” she says. But she leaves it on.
“It’s clean in here,” says Morat.
“It doesn’t feel that way,” she replies.
“You get used to it,” he says.
She stares at him. She pulls her mask off, lets brown hair fall back. He grins at her naked face.
“Welcome to what’s left of Brazil.”
“Thanks a lot.”
“How was your trip?”
“Uneventful.”
“So it was good.”
“Until I got here, yes.”
“A sense of humor,” says Morat. “I like that.”
She doesn’t reply.
“Come with me,” he says.
Morat turns, opens the door behind him. He starts to walk down a corridor, stops, turns back toward her.
And beckons.
“Come with me,” he repeats.
This time she does. The soldier steps in behind her. She realizes that she can hear his footfall. She really shouldn’t. She thought those suits were supposed to be silent. Evidently, this one’s not. Or else the pre-zone rush is rendering her all too sensitive…because she can hear everything—the slight clank of feet against the floor, the tiny hisses of gas from neck joints, the whirring of cooling motors…all of it trailing in her wake down the corridor.
At the end of the corridor’s an elevator. Its doors slide open. Morat enters. Haskell follows, turns—looks into helmeted visor. The soldier’s stopped at the elevator’s threshold. The doors slide shut. The elevator starts to drop. It’s just the two of them now.
“Can we talk freely in here?”
“Nothing’s ever free,” Morat replies, pulling out a pistol. “Particularly not talk. This is cleared terrain in theory. In reality”—he hands her the pistol, hilt first—“you’d better hang on to this.” She takes the weapon. He flips open a panel in the wall, pulls a lever. The elevator shudders to a stop.
“Where do you want to begin?” she asks.
“With you.”
“There’s so much I can’t recall.”
“And so much you’re about to.”
Blind man in the city: but Jason Marlowe utilizes the coordinates programmed into his heads-up as he maneuvers his glidewing amidst the buildings of this megalopolis. Occasional thinnings of the mist reveal vast grids of light, stretching out of nothing, dissolving into even less. Marlowe’s steering in toward one grid in particular. It swims toward him on the heads-up display, one column protruding past the others. He can’t allow himself to drop below its roof. He’s got to slow down: he works the flaps, sails down toward it. Suddenly it’s filling the screens. He braces himself. And then he’s striking that roof at speeds that knock the breath from him—even as he jettisons the glidewing, rolls along the roof, springs to his feet in a semicrouch.
Marlowe looks around at the buildings that tower around him. No one seems to have spotted him. He steps lightly to a trapdoor in the rooftop’s corner, wrenches it open. He finds a ladder, disappears within.
The maw of delta-city has now moved to the very center of the window. The Operative stares down at the spires that rise out of the clouds that gather more than two klicks up.