But still, Myra thought, getting away from the killing peaks at all was winning. The Gonzalistas had been a nasty bunch, even for commies; the kind who would dismiss Pol Pot as a revisionist.
The restaurant was called Los Malvinas. Inside it was crowded, mainly with young old-money Latinos, preppily dressed, snootily confident of their social and racial superiority over the newer immigrants on the streets but exploiting—in their fashion-statements as in other ways—their cultural connection. The air smelt meaty and smoky, the walls had huge posters of Peron, Eva, Che, Lady Thatcher and Madonna. Sadie was welcomed by name by an attentive head waiter who escorted them to a table out the back, in a small yard enclosed by trees and creeper-covered walls.
“Nice place,” Myra said. She looked down the menu. “Doesn’t look like it’ll take a big chunk out of the company card, either.”
“Knew you’d like it,” Sadie said. She shrugged her bolero on to the chairback, revealing her bare shoulders. “Jug of sangria?”
“Good idea.” Myra tapped the menu. “You’ll have to advise me on this. Just as well I’m not a vegetarian.”
They put together an order which Sadie assured her would be both good and huge, and sipped sangria and smoked a joint and gnawed garlic-oil-dipped bread while waiting for it.
“OK,” said Myra. She glanced around, reflexively. Half a dozen Venezuelan oil engineers, in shirts and shorts, were talking loudly around the only other occupied table; she shrugged and shook her head. “OK. Let’s talk. Hope you don’t mind me saying, but, hell. You got authority to negotiate at the level we’re talking about?”
“Sure,” Sadie told her. “Don’t worry about that. Straight line to the top. Not that this is one of the Boss’s top priorities, mind you.”
“How about on the UN side?”
Sadie waved a chunk of bread dismissively. “That’s all squared.”
“No change there then, huh?”
“Changes, yeah, but we’ve rolled to the top again. For what it’s worth.”
“Right, I know what you mean. ‘For what it’s worth’ seems to come up in conversation a lot these days. Anyway. Here’s the deal. We sell you exclusive rights to the package, you back us up against the commie hordes. Shopping-list to follow, but like you say, later for details.”
The waiter arrived with a hot platter and a couple of dishes; a girl followed with bowls of salad and rice. The main dish was like a salad of meat, in which most possible cuts from a cow were represented, along with the tastier internals and a few of the less tasty.
“Enjoy your meal, ladies.”
Thank you,” said Sadie. She stubbed out the roach. “Oh, and another sangria, please.”
Myra was ravenous, her appetite honed even keener by the joint, and spent about twenty minutes in atavistic carnivorous ecstasy and exclamation before slacking off enough to take up the conversation properly again.
“So, Sadie.” She put down a rib, wiped her fingers and chin. “What do you say?”
Sadie took a long swig of sangria, the ice chinking slushily.
“You know, that guy we sent to speak to you? From the Company?”
“Bit hard to forget him.”
“Uh-huh.” Sadie sighed. “Well, Myra, sorry about this, but—” She scratched her ear. “It’s still the deal, basically. We can give you some kit, sure, but nothing like what you’re asking. Definitely no alliance.”
Myra rocked back. She heard the feet of her metal chair scrape the flagstones.
“That’s even with what we’re offering?”
“Even with.” Sadie picked up something intestinal-looking, dragged it through her teeth. “Because we can’t take it. It’s no use to us anyway, frankly.”
“Oh my God. Oh, shit.”Myra reached for her cigarettes. “Mind if—”
“Go ahead. Yes please.”
“What’s the problem with our package?”
“Skill sets and legacy systems, basically.” Sadie looked at the tip of her cigarette, wrinkled her nose and sucked grease from her lips. “Look above my head. Up. What do you see?”
Myra gazed southward and upward.
“Top of the Two Mile Tower?”
“Right. Know what’s in it? Squatters, mostly. Damn thing damn near built itself, like a stone tree. But the builders couldn’t find enough businesses to rent work-space in it.”
“That sort of thing’s common enough,” Myra said. “Speculative spectacular buildings are usually finished just before the recession hits, and stay empty until the next boom.”
“If there is another boom…” Sadie said gloomily.
Myra remembered Shin Se-Ha’s version of the Otoh equations. “There will be,” she said. One more, anyway, she didn’t say. “What’s your point?”
“We’re losing people,” Sadie said. “It’s no secret. The coup has succeeded in more ways than it’s failed. A hell of a lot of our best scientists and engineers have migrated to the orbital colonies, and they support the faction that Mutual Protection have been running supplies for.”
“The Outwarders.”
“Yeah. Think civilisation on Earth is doomed, and they’re getting out. And, more to the point, so is a lot of the big money. Most of the corporations have been headquartered in orbital tax-havens since at least the Fall Revolution. Now they’ve got the muscle—technical, military—to back that up. And the on-site personnel. They’ll finance us, all right, but strictly as user fees, like hiring a defence agency, and only as long as we don’t step out of line. You may think of the US as the old imperialist oppressor, but these days we’re just another banana republic. The whole Earth is one Third World. Big money and skilled labour are in space, and what’s left down below is mostly surplus population.” Sadie smiled wryly. “And bureaucrats, like you and me.”
“So you’re saying the US empire still exists,” Myra said. “But its capital—in both senses—is now in orbit.”
Teah, exactly!”
“Fair enough,” said Myra, “but how does that affect our offer?”
“Well.” Sadie leaned back, took a short draw, like a sip, on her cigarette. “Let me draw you an analogy. Suppose, just hypothetically, for the sake of argument, that the US wanted to go back to a strategic nuclear posture. Leave aside the fact that the Third World War did for nukes what the First did for gas. At least in terms of using them on Earth—the UN got away with the Heaviside Layer blasts, but that was a bit of a fluke. Leave aside the fact that the big money in orbit is becoming virtually Green with paranoia about nukes in space, too.”
Aha, Myra thought. She would not leave that aside, at all. This was the crux, however valid the rest of Sadie’s points were.
“Leave aside the fact that there simply aren’t that many big nukes left around. Suppose somebody came to us with, I dunno, a stash of old post-Soviet city-busters: laser-fusion jobs, long shelf-life, low maintenance. They still wouldn’t be any use to us, because our whole military doctrine has shifted away from reliance on nukes. There’s a lot more to maintaining a credible strategic nuclear deterrent than maintaining the actual weapons. You need missile and bomber crews, tactical boys, analysts, constant practice. Hell, I should know, I worked hard enough at dispersing the teams and scrubbing the records, back in my disarmament days. We don’t have people with the relevant skills any more, and we don’t have the people to train new ones. We need all our available skill pool to keep our stealth fighters flying, and our teletroopers, smart-battle tactics and techniques up to scratch.”