The Mirrored Heavens (3 page)

M
arlowe’s got two minutes. Lighted arrows show him the way, but he no longer sees them. Disembodied voices goad him on, but he no longer hears them. All he hears is the soundless noise that’s building up within him—the silent siren that accompanies the moments that play out before the run…out of that formless dark in which the word goes down, out into the events in which he writes that word across flesh. He races down another corridor. It’s getting narrower. Up ahead, a door slides aside. He runs through the opening and down a ramp.

He’s in the underbelly. The ceiling’s lower here. Technicians step in from left and right. They check his suit’s seals. They check the thrusters on his back and wrists and ankles. They make some adjustments to the minigun that’s perched on his right shoulder. They wave him onward. Marlowe moves past more ladders, closes in upon one ladder in particular. Blank screens are everywhere. He feels the stare of invisible eyes upon him. He’s going straight for the door at his feet. It seems to lead directly into a crawl space—a tiny alcove that he might have missed had the arrows not led him straight here. But it’s not an alcove. It’s not a crawl space.

It’s his ride to ground.

“Get in,” says the voice.

But Marlowe’s paying no attention. He climbs in, activates magnetic clamps. The door folds in over him, encloses him in darkness. But only for a moment—and then screens snap on inside his skull as his armor’s software syncs with that of the craft. Coordinates click into place. System specs parade past him. A vibration passes through him. The locks that hold his craft in place retract. He starts plunging toward the city stretching out below him.

O
ne orbit almost done, and now the Andes rise toward the Operative’s ship. They don’t get very far. A few more minutes and those peaks are crumpling back into what’s left of jungle. The remnants of that green are cut through with great brown and black streaks. Amazonia’s seen better days. From up here, the cities are shrouded in smog so thick they look like little more than massive craters. If a meteor plunged into them, it’d be hard to tell the difference.

“And this is on a
good
day.”

The voice is coming from the speakers. It’s one of the pilots. But it may as well be a million klicks off. The Operative feels it slowly impinge upon his consciousness. He feels so high he feels he was never anything else. He waits for all eternity.

And then he speaks.

“And when it’s bad?”

“All you’ll see is junkyard.”

“Price we pay for cheap launch real estate.”

“The only people down there doing any paying are the Latins,” says the pilot. “For shortcutting their way into the modern era.”

“That’s one way to look at it.”

“It’s hard to understand anything down there without understanding that.”

“Didn’t realize you flyboys studied history.”

“Nothing we don’t study,” the pilot says languidly. “Nothing but ways of killing time.”

“So come on back here and let’s have a chat.”

A spluttering emerges from the speakers. The Operative assumes it’s a laugh. “I don’t think so.”

“Why not.”

“No fraternization with the cargo. Cockpit door remains shut.”

“Says who.”

“Says the ones who told us to add you to that cargo. As you well know.”

“So why are you speaking with me?”

“Because this isn’t a social call. I’m just letting you know we’ve got clearance for the burn to Moon. As soon as we hit Atlantic, we’re in the window. Which will take us within a hundred klicks of Elevator.”

“No shit?”

“None at all.”

“Visible from this window?”

“Eventually. But visible on the screens right now.”

“Put it through.”

But the thing is, there’s no vantage that’s advantaged to frame the foremost wonder of the age. There’s no such thing as the whole thing. The joint construction of the superpowers: the Elevator is four thousand klicks long. It circles Earth twelve times each day. It stretches from the lower orbits all the way toward the mediums. Any view that takes in the entirety is too removed to register the thickness. Any view that catches that thickness can’t hope to catch the length. So now something that looks like a luminescent tendril cuts in on the screen. It rises from the horizon. It vanishes into the heavens.

“So that’s it,” says the Operative.

“Come on, man. You must have seen it before.”

“Only on the vid.”

“How’s this any different?”

“Because now I’m up here with it. Where do we hit closest proximity?”

“Where Amazon hits Atlantic,” replies the pilot.

“Belem-Macapa? That’s almost where we launched from.”

“Yeah. That window’ll give you a great view of the whole town.”

“What’s it like?”

“I’ll give you one guess.”

I
t’s like being underwater. The architecture of Belem-Macapa’s visible only indistinctly: buildings towering out of the smog, towering back into it. Stacks of lights shimmer through the haze. There’s no way to see the ground. There’s no way to see the sky. Haskell cycles through the optical enhancements she has at her disposal. All they show her are the other vehicles in her convoy—several other ’copters in the air about her, several crawlers roaring at speed along the skyways and ramps that twist among the buildings. And those are just the ones in sight. A quick glance at her screens reveals the real extent of it: at least forty vehicles in the immediate vicinity, several flanking formations off to either side, and—two klicks up—ships roaming through this city’s upper reaches, ready to swoop down at the first sign of any trouble. She wonders if it’s all for her. She’s tempted to feel flattered. It’s the closest she’s come to feeling anything all day.

But that’s starting to change. She shouldn’t be this close to the action. Not physically, at any rate. She’s a razor. She’s supposed to sit back and work the wires from afar. She’s not supposed to be thrust into a live war zone. As if on cue, more things surface within her. More pieces of her purpose. She marvels at the spaces they fill—marvels, too, at all the gaps they still leave. What they reveal has the feel of a plan laid hastily. It has the feel of the same old story: get them before they get us—and turns out that she was the right woman for the moment. She’s sick of it. She can’t get enough of it. Her pulse is quickening. So is her mind. The city streams past. Her destination looms on the screens ahead.

S
tealth pod tumbling from the heights: and within that pod is Marlowe, watching the sun sinking to the west, watching all the readouts, watching as he drops toward Belem-Macapa’s sprawl. It’s like the swamp to end all swamps: swarms of roving jet-copters are the insects, while the city’s highest spires reach out of the murk like reeds. The levels below that waver in the gloom. The levels below that are invisible.

Even to Jason Marlowe. He has the sensors, sure. But he’s not using them. He doesn’t dare. All he’s using are the maps he’s been given. He’s got the city’s simulacrum burned into his brain. He sees the way the city looks beneath its veil. He sees what his pod’s descending into—feels the pod jettison, feels his suit’s glidewing buffeted by turbulence even as visibility drops toward nil. What’s left of the sun dissolves. Marlowe turns his attention to the buildings in his mind, drifts in among them.

T
he Amazon twists and turns, closing on the ocean. The Operative gazes down at the city that’s sliding into view, watches as it swallows the river in smog.

“The epicenter of the latest flare-up,” says the pilot. “That’s not just environmental meltdown. It’s scorched-earth warfare.”

“Come again?”

“They’re burning their own buildings to blind our satellites.”

“Ah,” says the Operative.

“The latest round started up ten days ago,” says the pilot. “It now extends through half this city’s districts. They say the Jaguars view it as a test of strength. They say that if they can force us to withdraw, they’ll show the world who really rules this continent.”

“They wish,” says the Operative.

“You’re saying we have all the answers?”

“Nobody has all the answers, flyboy. All I’m saying is that all they’re doing is killing their own people.”

“Not to mention our soldiers.”

“Who are a hell of a lot cheaper than our machines.”

“You sure?”

“Look,” says the Operative. “Hate to break it to you, but everything you see down there is
collateral
. If the Jaguars torched the whole thing, they’d be doing us a favor.”

“And the economy of South America—”

“Would collapse? Already has. Doesn’t matter. Only thing that means anything is our control of the equator. Don’t you get it, man? The profit margins that gives us in vacuum turn those cities into write-off.”

“Maybe it once did,” says the pilot. He sounds testy. “Maybe. But not now. You can’t write off a whole war.”

“Jesus Christ,” the Operative mutters. “I thought you said you’d read history? I thought you thought you knew something about the way this world works? What you’re looking at isn’t a
war
. It’s just a fucking
domestic disturbance
. And all we’re laying down is just a little police action. Isn’t space supposed to give you some perspective?”

“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.”

T
hey’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.”