The Mirrored Heavens (15 page)

“So here’s something else to think about. A present. Just to show you I’m serious.”

“Namely?”

“Namely this.” Linehan reaches into one of his pockets—“Easy,” he says as Spencer tenses. He takes something out, places it on the table. Spencer can see that it’s a chip.

“What’s on it?”

“What’s on it,” says Linehan, “is the production outputs for the United States’ farside mining operations. The real ones, Spencer. Not the ones they publish. Not the ones they claim. The genuine article.”

“If that’s true, that’s worth—”

“A fortune on the neutral markets? For you, it’s free. Check it out, Spencer. See for yourself.”

And Spencer does. He keeps the gun trained on Linehan, picks up the chip as though it will turn hot and burn at any moment. He slots it into a space that suddenly opens in his index finger. He downloads it into secure storage: a part of his software that’s modularized from the rest, thereby allowing him to see the readouts without compromising himself with a download that’s potentially tainted. Numbers stream through his skull. He can’t see if they hold everything that Linehan’s promised. But he can see enough.

“Alright,” he says. The numbers fade out, replaced by Linehan’s mirthless grin. “Looks like you’ve got something here.”

“More than just something, Spencer. I reckon that little chip will get you most of your remaining distance to the quota Priam’s set for you. Maybe more.”

“You know about the quotas?”

“Of course I know about the quotas. I know they’re all your masters care about. I know your quota’s the difference between your being set up for life in Europe and trapped forever in the States. But what
you
need to know is that if you play ball with me, no one will ever talk to you about quotas again.”

“Where’d you get this, Linehan?”

“Looking in places I wasn’t supposed to.”

“I’m sure. My answer’s still no.”

“What?”

“You heard me.”

“What more do you want?”

“How about something realistic? Look, you’ve got something going on here. I’m convinced. I’ll do what I can for you. I can get you to the coast. But a border run is something else entirely. It’s hard enough with one. Two would make it suicide.”

“Not if Priam took it seriously.”

“It’s not a question of what Priam takes seriously. It’s a question of ten million klicks of sensors. It’s a question of satellites scanning everything that moves. It’s ocean. How are we going to get you past that?”

“It’s not foolproof. No border is. You know that, Spencer.”

“You don’t know
shit
.”

“Then shoot me now, you listless fuck. Come on and try it. Or how about if I just call the feds and tell them to swing on by and collect us both. Look, am I saying it’s gonna be easy? Fuck no. I’ve lived the life too, Spencer. I’m living it now. That’s how I beat a trail to your door without leaving any fucking footprints. Zone prowess, right? Something I know you know all about. That’s how I’m staying one step ahead of all those hounds.”

“Who do you think is after you?”

“Who isn’t?”

“I’m not.”

“You don’t count. You’re nobody. No offense.”

“And what are you?”

“Already told you what I am. An asset.”

“An asset to what?”

“To you. To your life—let’s hope so. To my life—for sure. I aim to keep on living.”

“And for how long have you been prolonging it?”

“A few thousand klicks and a few score hours.”

“How hard are they looking for you?”

“Hard enough to damn me,” says Linehan.

“And now you’ve damned me too.”

“You gotta admit you’re intrigued, Spencer.”

“Of course I’m intrigued. I’m also fighting the urge to put one straight between your eyes.”

“Spencer, look at it this way. I can appreciate that you haven’t got the warm fuzzies for me. But try to put yourself in my position. Don’t think of this as blackmail. Think of it as a business offer.”

“I’ll think whatever I like.”

“Sure you will. But while you’re at it—keep in mind that what I’m proposing to give you will let you write your own ticket. It’ll catapult Priam to the top of the data-combines. It’ll vault you straight up into Priam’s rafters. Which surely ought to make up for the fact that you don’t have an alternative.”

“Don’t patronize me.”

“But have I sold you?”

“More like you’ve sold me out. But I’ll play your game. I’ll take you across the fucking border. I’ll try to take you in one piece too. And then, so help me God, whatever you’ve got had better make the thing worth it.”

“It’s a deal,” says Linehan. “How do you propose we do it?”

“I propose we start by getting ourselves to the Mountain.”

“Which sector?”

“Old Manhattan.”

“Works for me. When do we leave?”

“Now.”

T
he ’copter’s been going for a while now. It’s left the Rockies behind. It’s well out over the western desert. Smoke billows far to the northeast. Haskell can’t see it. Marlowe can.

“The prairie fires.”

“Still burning?”

“Still burning.”

“Eight weeks now,” she says. She doesn’t take her eyes off her window.

“Every year they flare longer past the summer,” he says.

“Uh-huh,” she replies. She’s still not looking at him.

“I think we should start talking,” he says.

“About.”

“What’s happening.”

“What’s there to talk about.”

“We could start with why he put us together.”

“I presume he has his reasons,” she says.

“Sure he does. Can you name a single good one?”

“Who said they had to be good?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Maybe he just wants to see how we’re going to react.”

“You think he finds this amusing?”

“I think he might,” she says. She smiles slightly. “Don’t you?”

“Did you ever think you’d see me again?”

“I figured the odds were against it.”

“I tell you what’s funny,” he says. “What’s funny is how it seemed so secret at the time. It seemed like we were fooling them back in the academy. A month in the real world—a month into the runs and out of training, and it was clear they must have known all along.”

“Yes.”

“They were watching us the whole time,” he says.

“Yes.”

“Is that what’s got you so rattled?”

“I’m not rattled,” she says. “
They’re
rattled.”

“Obviously,” he replies. “They briefed us in real-time.”

“They briefed us
together
. Even in the secondary briefings, I’m always the only agent.”

“That’s the way all of CI works,” he says. “I’ve never met another agent save in the field. I’ve never known an agent who had.”

“Or at least, that would admit to it.”

“And we were briefed by Sinclair himself.”

“Or by something that wore his face.”

“But why would it have done that?”

“To inspire us,” says Haskell dryly.

“And are you inspired?”

“To stop the Rain? Absolutely. To serve the greater glory of CICom? Sure. To help Matthew Sinclair help Matthew Sinclair? Why not?”

“You don’t sound that convinced.”

She says something he doesn’t quite catch.

“What was that?”

“I said Sinclair’s a bastard.”

He stares at her. He glances at the ’copter’s walls. She sneers.

“What does it matter if he hears us now? He heard us
fuck
all those years ago. He’s heard all there is to hear. He’s a degenerate. A dirty old man.”

Marlowe has no idea what to say to that. So he says nothing.

“Besides,” she says, “it’s not like he’s going to hear anything
new
. I’ve been telling the microphones this for years. I’ve told him how much I fucking
hate
him. Told him how much I love him too. But never anything he didn’t already know.” And then a snarl in response to whatever Marlowe’s about to say:

“Well, why the fuck
wouldn’t
he already know? He’s the one who fucking set me up this way. So why in God’s name am I so ashamed of the way I’ve been
configured
?”

She wipes at her eyes. “Shit,” she says.

“Is this why you haven’t been speaking to me?” Marlowe asks.

“No,” she says. “There’s something else.”

“That something being my being back in your life?”

“That sounds like wishful thinking.”

He doesn’t reply.

“Look,” she says, “all I’m saying is that we can never forget that Sinclair’s the one who handles the handlers. We can never forget he’s the master Operator of them all. That’s all.”

“You just changed the subject,” says Marlowe.

“Sorry?”

“I was talking about us.”

“What’s there to talk about?” she asks.

“What you’re not telling me.”

“What am I not telling you?”

“What’s really got you so rattled.”

“Look,” she says, “enough with all the questions. Enough with the interrogation. Or is this some kind of seduction? I’ve read your files, Jason—”

“You’ve read my
files
?”

“—and you know what? I can’t say I
like
the man you’ve become. Whatever you’re not trying to kill, you’re trying to fuck. Believe me, Jason: you’d better be ready to make an exception.”

“Who gave you my fucking files?”

“Sinclair.”

“Sinclair?”
Marlowe’s as angry as he is puzzled.

“Or whoever’s speaking for him. Think about it, Jason. I’m the razor. You’re the mechanic. Which means you’re reporting to me.”

Marlowe shakes his head. “Hey,” he says. “Relax. I think you’ve got the wrong idea.”

“Good,” she says.

“I just want to know what you’ve discovered.”

“What have I discovered?” she asks in a voice that would fool anybody else.

“Something you shouldn’t have.”

She stares.

“I know that look,” he says. “The look that says you’re holding out on everybody. It was driving me crazy throughout the briefing with Sinclair.”

“Driving you
crazy
?” It’s a good half-second before Marlowe realizes that her question is sounding in his skull and not in the air around him. That Haskell has spoken aloud the very next moment: scorning him for trying to get inside her pants, then cutting off the conversation. She sits there, apparently simmering. But her words sound in Marlowe’s head anyway.

“The one-on-one,” she says.

Not that she needs to. He’s switching into it seamlessly, neural implants letting words flick between them.

“You’re doing this in code?”

“The only safe way,” she replies.

“How did you get my side of the cipher?”

“When I gave your systems that boost back in that city.”

“I thought that was just my suit.”

“Your head wasn’t that much farther away.”

“So what is it you want to tell me?”

“That I made covert downloads in the Citadel.”

“The Citadel? You mean, in South America—”

She nods.

“When?”

“While you were out there slugging it out with the Jaguars on the roof. I downloaded every file that was still intact.”

“CI files?”

“Of course. That’s who owns the Citadel, right?”

“That’s who used to.”

“Right,” she says. “Anyway, the files didn’t help us. Most of it was wiped by EMP anyway. And then that zeppelin started signaling. So I never mentioned it.”

“If you had, you’d be facing a court-martial,” he says. “Jesus, Claire. What the fuck were you
hoping
to find? What the hell could justify hacking classified seals?”

“How the fuck should I know, Jason? Maybe I was gonna find the blueprint of an escape route. Maybe the location of a distress beacon. Or the coordinates of some evac point. Or
anything
that would have kept the militia from using their machetes to cut me extra orifices while they raped me from every direction.”

Her voice dies away inside in his head. He sits amidst that silence. Emotions tear at him—fear for this woman, fear of this woman, all of it bound up in something else that he can’t name. He tears away from all of it, focuses:

“So what
did
you find?”

“Like I said, nothing at the time. But once they’d repaired the damage my cranial software had sustained from the EMP, I went back to those downloads with a revamped toolkit. Some of the data wasn’t recoverable. Some of it was. Some of it dealt with us.”

“One of the files talked about
us
?”

“Not you and me specifically. Or maybe it did. I don’t know.”

“What did it
say
?”

“Our memories—” Her voice trails off.

“Yes?”

“May be manufactured.”

“Manufactured.”

“Yes.”

“Meaning what?”

“Meaning they might have been implanted by the handlers.”

“Why?”

“Presumably to render their asses even more secure than they already are.”

He doesn’t reply.

“Surely I haven’t left you speechless? The handlers brief us in the trance to prevent turned agents from rolling up the network. They’re pros at using the deployment of memory to further their control. If they controlled our waking memories as well, they could configure that memory between missions. Which would make it irrelevant that an agent has been turned. Just install new programs and reboot.”

He stares at her. He realizes he’s doing so while a soundless conversation is taking place. He turns back to the window of the jet-copter, keeps gazing at the fires.

“Look, I’ll transmit you what’s left of the file,” she says. “It spells all this out.”

“Don’t,” he says. “I don’t want to see it.”

“Still the good little errand boy? I’m trying to show you what happens to good little errand boys.”

“So does this mean I haven’t done any of the missions I remember doing?”

“That
would
be your first thought, wouldn’t it?”

“What else would be—
oh,
” he says.

“
Oh.
The file isn’t as specific as one would hope. It doesn’t name names. It’s part of some briefing manual to help envoys help their agents ‘adjust’—the actual word—to the alterations. And it implies that this practice is starting to be rolled out across CI agents but isn’t yet universal. And that the other Commands have yet to adopt it as standard procedure. They may not, either. It may remain a CI-specific practice, like the envoys. But if you want my opinion, I’d say that for the sake of your sanity you should just assume that most of your life’s greatest moments actually took place, Jason.” She looks thoughtful.