The current situation both frightened Coyote and made him very angry. Hiroko and her crowd, disappeared—killed, in other words (though he was not sure yet); Sax brain-damaged; Maya and Michel gone to ground; UNTA security police everywhere you looked. And checkpoints. And even his ring of spies; it was hard to be sure none of them had turned. One young woman, for instance—a clerk in the UNTA Burroughs headquarters, a very attractive Dravidian. She sat down on the grass beside him, telling him that Hastings was going to arrive by train from Sheffield the day after tomorrow. Hastings, Coyote’s nemesis. But was it true? He thought that the good-looking young woman was brittle in a way she hadn’t been before, friendly but glittery-eyed. His electronics said she was not wired. But turned and telling tales, or setting him up; who knew?
She was supposed to have been working on finding out what UNTA security had on the radical reds. Irritated, he asked her about it, but she nodded, and had a report there too. Apparently they knew quite a bit. He asked her question after question, getting more and more interested; she was telling him things about the reds he didn’t know himself.
Finally he sent her on her way with a cheerful smile. He was always the same with everybody, all the time, and very much doubted that she would have seen any of his suspicions. He knocked back his glass of metaxa, left it on the grass, wandered down the Street of the Cypresses to the little dance studio. People behind plate glass were pirouetting. He slipped upstairs and scratched-tapped his knock. Maya let him in.
They discussed the latest news, went through their lists for each other. One of Maya’s biggest current worries was that the radical reds would strike before the rest of the resistance was ready, and Coyote agreed it was a bad possibility, even though he liked the reds’ attitude. But now he had news for her.
“Apparently they think they can bring the terraforming down,” he told her. “Crash the system. UNTA has gotten a mole in somewhere, and this is what they’re finding. There’s a wing of the reds think they can do it biologically. Another faction wants to make something go wrong with the deep thermal bombs. Sabotage one of those nukes in such a way that the radiation reaches the surface, get the whole operation shut down.”
Maya shook her head, disgusted. “Radiation on the surface. It’s insane.”
Coyote had to agree, though he liked their attitude anyhow. “I suppose we should hope that UNTA knocks out those groups before they act.”
Maya grimaced. Misguided or not, the reds were their allies, UNTA their shared enemy. “No. We should warn them they are penetrated. Then get them to stop their crazies. Follow the general strategy.”
“We might have to stop the crazies ourselves.”
“No. I’ll talk to Ann.”
“Right.” This in Coyote’s opinion was a waste of time for anyone. But Maya looked determined.
Michel came in and they took a break for tea. Coyote sipped, shook his head. “Things are getting tight. We may be forced to make our move before we’re ready.”
“I want to wait for Sax,” Maya said, as always.
When he was done with his tea Coyote got up to leave. “I want to do something in case Hastings comes here,” he said.
Maya shook her head. It was no time to show their hand.
But Maya’s whole project these days was to keep them all out of sight until the right moment came. Since she was in hiding she wanted the whole movement hidden. She was vehement on this point, and usually got her way with most of the movement. There’ll be a trigger event, she would insist. I’ll know it when I see it.
But Coyote, seeing her and Michel there in their little warren, was irritated. “Just a little sign,” he said. “Nothing serious.”
“No,” she said.
“We’ll see,” he said.
He left their hideout and went back to the canal side. He had a couple more drinks, mulling things over. Irritated at the sight of Maya in such confinement. Well, she was a dangerous revolutionary. Precautions were necessary. Still, the whole situation was getting dangerous, and worse than that, tiresome. Something needed to be done.
Also he needed to know if that young woman had turned or not.
The next night, after the restaurant row had almost emptied out, and the waiters were turning chairs onto tabletops and cursing each other in dull tired voices, Coyote wandered in by way of the Niederdorf, checking to make sure he was not followed. His contacts were waiting at the last Bareiss column. Separately they walked up to the shops at the intersection of Great Escarpment Boulevard and the Street of the Cypresses. There between two cypresses they met: Coyote and two young women in black, including the one from headquarters.
“Such dryads in the night,” he said.
The two women laughed nervously. “You have the banner?”
They nodded nervously, and one showed him a package that just filled her hand.
He led them through the night, uphill, until they looked down on the tips of the cypresses, swaying so slightly in the night air circulation. It was pleasantly cool at first, but began to seem warmer as they climbed.
Ellis Butte was steep, but he had long ago memorized the footpath beaten up a ravine cleaving the northern wall of the mesa. Burroughs’s nine mesas had become stupendous buildings and in people’s minds they were nothing more than that, like a convocation of massive cathedrals, so that climbing them now was like climbing the side of a building, and seldom done anymore. But every one of the mesas still had old footpaths draping its sides, if you knew where to find them. And Coyote had his routes, on every side of all nine of them. “Everyone freeze,” said an amplified voice, and figures appeared behind them on the ledge. Coyote leaped up and grabbed the railing of the private terrace and did a John Carter up over the side. A mellow party barely registered his presence before he was through them and off into the picturesque Aegean alleys of the mesa top, very convenient for a man fleeing the cops. On the other side of the mesa there was a trail down that few knew about, and in the dark Coyote was able to get down it a good distance before the security people reached the railings overhead and shined lights down that side. He ducked and became a rock for the period of their search. When they moved on he continued his descent.
The top of Ellis Butte was very expensive real estate, completely built over. But there was a ledge under the mesa proper, too narrow for anything but a trail, and he led the two young women along it, holding their hot hands in his. It seemed he could feel their heartbeats pulsing in their sweaty palms. Finally they came to an outcropping of the ancient basalt, ending the ledge and blocking their way. Leaning out they seemed to look directly down onto Great Escarpment Boulevard. The train station bulking against the tent wall was still lit, of course, but no night trains had arrived in the past hour, and all was quiet—so quiet they could hear voices above them, on some private terrace. Coyote gestured to his companions, and one of them got the package out of a pocket. The other touched a button on her wristpad.
But at the bottom of the trail there were more security police. They were trying to cordon off the whole damned mesa. Coyote climbed back up to a bolt-hole that led him onto one of the mid-mesa internal floors. From there he took an elevator down to the subway system, and got on a subway and sat back unobtrusively catching his breath until they reached Hunt Mesa Station, where he got off.
Up and back onto Great Escarpment Boulevard, across from the commotion surrounding Ellis. Free to go his way in the dark night city. But he was mad. He had made a couple extra packages when they manufactured the first one, so he went back to his coffin room in the workers’ section of Black Syrtis Mesa, and got one of them. He walked back down Thoth Boulevard, thinking things over. He had planned to hang the first banner between Ellis and Hunt, so that when people left the train station they would see it overhanging Great Escarpment Boulevard, greeting them. That no longer seemed a practical place to do it. But as they came down Great Escarpment they would reach Canal Park and be facing the great concourse where Thoth Boulevard intersected the park. So he could try hanging it between Table Mountain and Branch Mesa, and delay releasing the banner until they were down where they would see it.