The belly of the cloud overhead bulged downward and began
to twist. A white plume spread above the blowout with the grace
of creeping frost. It was steam, condensing from the air in the
suddenly lowered pressure.
Lindsay held the camera above his head and leaped down onto
the grimy floor of the window. He ran toward the blowout,
ignoring Ryumin's surprised protests.
A minute's broken-field running brought him as close as he
dared go. He crouched behind the rusted steel strut of a plug,
ten meters from the impact site. Looking down past his feet
through the dirty glass, Lindsay saw a long trail of freezing spray
fanning out in rainbowed crystals against the shine of the sun-
light mirrors.
A roaring vortex of sucking wind sprang up, slinging gusts of
rain. Lindsay cupped one hand around the camera's lens.
Motion caught his eye. A group of oxygen farmers in masks
and coveralls were struggling across the glass from the bordering
panel. They cradled a long hose in their arms. They lurched
forward doggedly, staggering in the wind, weaving among the
plugs and struts.
Caught by the wind, a camouflaged surveillance plane crashed
violently beside the hole. Its wreckage was sucked through at
once.
The hose jerked and bucked with a gush of fluid. A thick spray
of gray-green plastic geysered from its nozzle, hardening in
midair. It hit the glass and clung there.
Under the whirlwind's pressure the plastic warped and bulged,
but held. As more gushed forth, the wind was choked and
became a shrill whistle.
Even after the blowout was scaled, the farmers continued to
pump plastic sludge across the impact zone. Rain fell steadily
from the agitated clouds. Another knot of farmers stood along
the window wall, leaning their masked heads together and
pointing into the sky.
Lindsay turned and looked upward with the rest.
The sudden vortex had spawned a concentric surf of clouds.
Through a crescent-shaped gap, Lindsay saw the dome of the
Eighth Orbital Army, across the width of the Zaibatsu. Tiny
forms in white suits ringed the dome, lying on the ground. They
did not move.
Lindsay focused the telephoto across the interior sky. The
fanatics of the Eighth Orbital Army lay sprawled on the fouled
earth. A knot of them had been caught trying to escape into the
airlock; they lay in a tangle, their arms outstretched.
He saw no sign of the airship pirates. He thought for a moment
that they had all escaped back to the landing port. Then he
spotted one of them, mashed flat against another window panel.
"That was excellent footage," Ryumin said in his ear. "It. was
also very stupid."
"I owed you a favor," Lindsay said. He studied the dead. "I'm
going over there," he decided.
"Let me send the robot. There'll be looters there soon."
"Then I want them to know me," Lindsay said. "They might be
useful."
He crossed another stile onto the land panel. His lungs felt
raw, but he had decided never to wear a breathing mask. His
reputation was more important than the risk.
He skirted the Black Medicals' stronghold and crossed a second window strip. He walked north to the ragtag junk dome of
the Orbital Army. It was the only outpost in the entire third
panel, which had been abandoned to a particularly virulent
form of the blight. This had once been an agricultural zone, and
the heightened fertility of the soil brought forth a patchy crop of
ankle-high mold. Farm buildings, all pastel ceramic and plastic,
had been looted but not demolished, and their stiff inorganic
walls and gaping windows seemed to long to lapse into an
unattainable state of rot.
The recluses' dome was built of plastic door panels, chopped
to shape and caulked.
The corpses lay frozen, their limbs oddly bent, for they had
been dead before they hit the ground, and their arms and legs
had bounced a little, loosely, with the impact. There was a
curious lack of horror about the scene. The faceless masks and
watertight body suits of the dead fanatics conveyed a sense of
bloodless, prim efficiency. Nothing marked the dead as human
beings except the military insignia on their shoulders. He counted eighteen of them.
The lenses on the faces of the dead were fogged over with
internal steam.
He heard the quiet whir of aircraft. A pair of ultralights circled
once and skidded in for a landing. Two of the airship pirates
had arrived.
Lindsay trained his camera on them. They dismounted,
unplugging their credit cards, and the aircraft taxied off.
They walked toward him in the half-crouching shuffle of people unused to gravity. Lindsay saw that their uniforms were
full-length silver skeletons etched over a blood-red background.
The taller pirate prodded a nearby corpse with his foot. "You
saw this?" he said in English.
"The spyplanes killed them," Lindsay said. "They endangered
the habitat."
"The Eighth Orbital Army," the taller pirate mused, examining
a shoulder patch. The second pirate muttered through her
mask's filters, "Fascists. Antinationalist scum."
"You knew them?" Lindsay said.
"We dealt with them," said the first pirate. "We didn't know
they were here, though." He sighed. "What a burn. Do you
suppose there are others inside?"
"Only dead ones," Lindsay said. "The planes use x-ray lasers."
"Really?" the first pirate said. "Wish I could get my hands on
one of those."
Lindsay twirled his left hand, a gesture in surveillance argot
stating that they were watched. The taller pirate looked upward
quickly. Sunlight glinted on the silver skull inlaid over his face.
Me looked at Lindsay, his eyes hidden behind gleaming silver-
plated eye sockets. "Where's your mask, citizen?"
"Here," Lindsay said, touching his face.
"A negotiator, huh? Looking for work, citizen? Our last diplomat just took the plunge. How are you in free-fall?"
"Be careful, Mr. President," the second pirate warned.
"Remember the confirmation hearings."
"Let me handle the legal implications," the President said
impatiently. "I'll introduce us. I'm the President of the Fortuna
Miners' Democracy, and this is my wife, the Speaker of the
House."
"Lin Dze, with Kabuki Intrasolar," Lindsay said. "I'm a theatrical impresario."
"That some kind of diplomat?"
"Sometimes, your excellency."
The President nodded. The Speaker of the House warned,
"Don't trust him, Mr. President."
"The executive branch handles foreign relations, so shut the
fuck up," the President snarled. "Listen, citizen, it's been a hard
clay. Right now, we oughta be in the Bank, having a scrub,
maybe getting juiced, but instead these fascists cut in on us with
their surface-to-air stuff, a preemptive strike, you follow me? So
now our airship's burned and we've lost our fuckin' rock."
"That's a shame," Lindsay said.
The President scratched his neck. "You just can't make plans
in this business. You learn to take it as it comes." He hesitated.
"Let's get out of this stink, anyway. Maybe there's loot inside."
The Speaker of the House took a hand-held power saw out of
a holster on her red webbing belt and began to saw through the
wall of the sundog dome.-The caulk between the plastic panels
powdered easily. "You got to go in unexpected if you want to
live," the President explained. "Don't ever, never go in an
enemy airlock. You never know what's in 'em." Then he spoke
into a wrist attachment. He used a covert operational jargon;