An angel of death,
Silent in a forest glade,
Awaits our passage.
It was not until they had reached Atalanta's berth that Karil was allowed to slow down. Shagrug pointed through the small port by the hatch and said, "What can you tell me about her?"
Karil found Atalanta nearly as impressive as Loris and Johanna; she was a beat-up old craft, sporting a number of dents and some serious burns on her lower fuselage, but sleek and aerodynamic, with a flying-wing planform. And much larger than he had expected. "She's a space-plane," he said, "probably a surplus Quasi cruiser. With a few modifications of your own, I imagine. She can hover like a helicopter or take off vertically to about l0,000 meters. Then she goes into a controlled dive till she reaches Mach 2, when you ignite the scramjets and boost her to the edge of the atmosphere, at Mach l4 or so. Once in space, you can use the ELF-drive. Electric Laser Fusion. With strap-on cryo-tanks, if you can afford the fuel, you can achieve continuous acceleration transfer and reach Mars in a week, Jupiter in a month. She's really beautiful."
Shagrug beamed with pleasure. "Come aboard, then. Atty?"
The hatch irised open and they drifted inside. "Welcome aboard, Captain," said a female voice. "There appears to be an altercation taking place at One Over Six, and security personnel are converging on the area. Ali Karil, I'm very happy to meet you at last." The voice enveloped him in a velvety fog; it caressed his inner ear and filled him with peace and happiness; it made him want to curl up in a furry ball and purr quietly.
"I'm very happy to meet you too, Atty," he said.
"He's had quite a day," Shagrug said. "He just met Loris and Johanna and he hasn't quite recovered yet."
"I know, Shag," Atalanta purred. "I can smell Johanna's favourite perfume, plus a great deal of beer, particularly about your person. I suppose you are in a hurry to leave, as usual."
"Well, Loris is handling my business at the moment, but I think we should be off, don't you, Stillborn? This way."
The ship throbbed subliminally, and Karil could hear it breathing. Padded walls curved subtly into floor and ceiling and there were grab-bars everywhere, to steady yourself or launch yourself down the corridor.
They kicked off and swung onto the bridge. Through the wraparound viewport, Karil could see the keel of Nearside Station pointing toward the moon's ravaged face. He dropped past the captain’s acceleration couch, flanked by a pair of passenger couches, and swung down into the astrogator's well. He strapped himself in and looked about.
His view of the outside world was excellent, although the helmsman above could see more, and there were monitors everywhere showing views fore and aft, port and starboard, as well as the interior of the cargo-holds. Panels glowing with multi-coloured lights formed a semicircle about him; without being asked, Atalanta shifted the control panels in such a way as to place the most crucial directly beneath Karil's fingers. The helmsman, above, could look down over his head and see every readout on the panel.
"You’ll find some data ready for you," Shagrug said.
Karil's fingers flew over the keys and the necessary data appeared on the screen in response: Grey-Eyed Athena’s scheduled arrival from Mars according to the standard timetables; its present position and trajectory, according to Geolunar Traffic records, as it approached docking orbit at Ell-two; the standard orbital transfer needed to place Atalanta alongside in six hours; and the precise de-orbit burn needed to achieve that transfer.
"We have a confirmation on that," said Atalanta. The fact was, Atty had accessed the information instantly, and it was Karil who had confirmed it.
"Take us out, Stillborn."
"Me?" Karil felt his stomach tightening in fear. Seemingly of its own accord, the co-pilot’s helm slid into position in front of him.
"You're supposed to be pretty good. You've got dangerous piloting citations all over LaGrange. Your old man had to bail you out of the slammer six times."
Karil took the helm in his hands. "That was a little speedster, not a billion-credit space-plane."
"A little one'll kill you just as dead. Cast off." Shagrug's voice had a snap to it and Karil responded. He popped the lock and the air pressure thrust them gently away from the station. He released a little vernier gas to yaw about as Nearside rolled away from them, and began to fire the drivers, trying not to think of the awesome destructive power that was roaring into life behind them.
At any moment, he thought, Shagrug will take the helm. He did not. Somehow, this gave him confidence, and the certainty that Atty could take over in a split-second at the first sign of danger calmed him further. After all, he had performed this manoeuvre a thousand times; the only difference was the nature of the forces creating the thrust: the forces that power the sun itself locked in a magnetic genie-bottle a few meters away, with the energy to blow him and the ship and Nearside Station and everybody on it to space-dust in a nanosecond. Stop thinking about it! His fingers tapped out the course, Atty flashed her confirmation, and at the precise moment, for the precise duration, he burned the drivers.
Space-cold helium-3 and deuterium in exquisite balance were ignited by powerful lasers and fused. Containment opened to the rear and a great hand seemed to thrust Karil back into his acceleration couch. Nearside Station tumbled away behind them. Glancing at the scrolling figures on the screen, Karil knew that they would arrive at the co-ordinates, near L-2, on the far side of the moon, at precisely the correct time. He realized that he had been holding his breath for several minutes and inhaled loudly.
"So, what do you think, Shag?" Atalanta purred.
"Not bad, I guess, for a kid."
***
"I think of the astrogator," Atalanta said, "as a kind of nurse, slapping the instrument into the doctor's hand before she even realizes she needs it. Shagrug should be able to glance down and see that you have already given him the information he needs."
"You could do that faster. In fact, you could fly the ship yourself."
"Yes, I could. And I have, now and then. But this is Shagrug's ship, and all decisions are his, unless he is in danger, of course. Or indeed anyone else aboard. And feeding him information is your job. No man-machine interface, Karil, is as efficient and adaptable as a good human partnership. Besides, experience has shown the vital necessity of human beings doing such work themselves; a spacer would no more allow his ship to do his astrogation than a musician would allow his instrument to do his composing."
"Do I have access to your library? It's rather famous in LaGrange."
"Of course."
The library catalogue scrolled up one screen; it seemed endless. "Pardon me, Atty, but Shagrug doesn't exactly strike me as the literary type. Why does he have so many books?"
"The books are mine, Karil," Atalanta purred. "They tell me a great deal about the sort of human behaviour I have to deal with when I interact with my crew. I was programmed with a considerable library to begin with, and I have added to it over the years. You see, the Alpha Series was originally designed for interplanetary liners and bulk freighters; we not only ran the ship, we interacted with the passengers and crew as librarian, cruise-director, and confidant.
"When independent interplanetary entrepreneurs like Shagrug began to ply the Belt on low-energy transfer, they discovered that small crews were extremely unstable during long journeys: one person would experience sensory deprivation, two people would invariably fight, three people would usually end with two ganging up on the third, and four or five people were simply too expensive in terms of life-support. But when retired Alpha Series computers were installed as the third crewmember, the problems were solved: we were able to settle disputes without favouritism, care for the crew with total impartiality, and exert a calming influence in stressful situations."
"I can believe that!" Karil laughed.
"Heads up, Stillborn," Shagrug said, drifting onto the bridge. "There’s the ship."
The interplanetary freighter's name and registry could be seen emblazoned on its hull as Atalanta approached; it was Grey-Eyed Athena, a Galilean ship. The huge vessel appeared to be descending upon them at tremendous speed, even though Karil knew it was only waiting patiently in line to put in at Ell-Two, and that Atalanta was sidling up to its underside in a docking manoeuvre. Just as it seemed about to squash them like an insect underfoot, a huge cargo hatch irised open, and light from the interior poured down upon them like a spotlight. The smaller vessel slipped inside, nosed into berth like a suckling cub, and the hatch spun shut behind them. Immediately, Atty was surrounded by umbilicals--fuel lines, power cables, and a huge cargo tunnel that mated her hatch with a prolonged hiss. Only then could they hear the sound of claxons and throbbing machinery in the huge liner.
Shagrug unhitched and kicked off toward Atalanta’s capacious cargo hold, and Karil followed. A gang of roustabouts was already jockeying a series of huge and mysterious crates into position and securing them to the cargo netting that shrouded the hold like some giant spider's lair. Karil did a double take as he saw a monstrous spider scrambling over the netting, but it was only a robot. There was also a gang of dwarves with huge shoulders and mechanically assisted limbs: cyborgs from the high-grav colonies of the Galilean, bred to work the fuel-aerostats and ram-scoops in Jupiter's upper atmosphere, and often hired to hassle cargo. And there were humanoid robots, with bodies like a cross between a praying mantis and a human skeleton. The entire cargo hold seemed like a Bosch painting come to life, and Karil watched the infernal circus with delight.
Then a figure who could only be the ringmaster approached them, swinging monkey-like through the chaos and thrusting out a hand for Shagrug to shake. There was something in his black, piercing eyes and the set of his bearded jaw that made him instantly the focus of Karil's attention, despite the distractions all about him. Anger, pain, and determination seemed to burn in his eyes, and then he smiled, and the eyes danced with amusement and light. Karil found himself grinning from ear to ear, though he was not sure why.
"Karil," Shagrug said. "This is Progeny."
"Call me Proj." He took Karil's hand, and then placed his other hand over it, as if pledging eternal fidelity to Karil. He had to let go of the netting to do so, and he hung suspended from Karil's hand as if the boy were pulling the bearded stranger up out of the abyss. A wave of emotion washed over Karil; he would never let Progeny go; he would die rather than drop him. Then with a warm smile of thanks for all that Karil had done for him over the years, Progeny let go and swung off to direct the circus. Karil found his heart beating almost as wildly as it had with Loris and Johanna.
"Who the hell is he?" he whispered.
"What? You've never heard of Progeny Brown? The founder of the Martian communal movement, leader of the Martian rebellion, and fugitive from Quasi justice? Kind of takes your breath away, doesn't he? But you ain’t seen nothin' yet. Look at this."
Another figure swung into the hold and approached Progeny. She slipped her arm around his waist to anchor herself and they conferred for a second about the cargo, then she kicked off toward Karil and Shagrug. The lusty, long-haired Martienne was a common figure in popular entertainment, and every boy fell in love with one at some stage or another, but Karil decided this was the prototype. Her hair was golden, like sunshine on wheat, and in gravity it would have hung to the back of her knees. But here, it swirled about her like a living thing, and as she approached, she tossed her tresses like a Botticelli Venus stepping out of her shell. In close-up, Karil noticed her aristocratic features, determined mouth, and gold-flecked, green eyes. She smiled warmly, as a mother might smile to her child, and shook their hands. In a gesture almost too subtle to be noticed, she caressed Karil's shoulder with the palm of her hand, and the thrill of her touch arced through his body like static shock.
"I'm Terry," she said. "I want to thank you both for helping us."
Karil tumbled head over heels in love. It was only a few hours, of course, since he had fallen in love with Loris and Johanna, but it wasn't the same. He would fight to the death for Terry, and for Progeny too. Somehow, with nothing more than touch and eye-contact, they had enlisted his total support.
Claxons began to sound; the loading was complete. The roustabouts retired and the hatch closed on the mysterious crates that filled the hold. Proj and Terry scrambled into the passenger couches behind Shagrug, and he and Karil took their places.
"Atty," said Shagrug, "this is Proj and Terry. They'll be with us for a while. Meet Atalanta."
"It’s a pleasure to meet both of you," the ship crooned, and the guests smiled at each other in delight--probably a common reaction. Karil wondered if Atty was immune to Progeny's charisma. But then, she would naturally treat him with the same care and concern as any human being. With a flash of understanding, Karil realized that Progeny accomplished the same thing with body language as Atalanta with her voice, and to the same ends. "Progeny," Atty went on, "I'm very happy to see you've escaped the authorities once again. I've heard a great deal about your ideas, and I look forward to discussing them with you."
Shagrug rolled his eyes heavenward. "This is going to be a long trip," he mumbled.
The hatch opened up beneath them and Atalanta dropped into the void. A few minutes later they were in Resonant Earth Orbit: the slow drift from Lunar Farside to low Earth orbit taken by most carriers in Geolunar space, and the least likely manoeuvre to attract undue attention. Karil still did not know where they were going, but he was certain it would be much more exciting than an archaeological dig.
***
"The process has been going on for a century, at least," Progeny said. "When government on Earth began to collapse and no longer cared enough for the propaganda value to invest in space research, the High Companies took up the slack, because the economic benefits were so obvious. Besides, they'd pretty much used up the planet's resources by that time, and space was the only long-term investment left.
"Unfortunately, moving into space allowed the fantasy class to isolate itself from the reality class more than ever. They’d always gone to different schools in different neighbourhoods, travelled in separate coaches or on separate decks, and lived in palatial houses behind high walls, but now they could abandon the planet altogether and literally build their own worlds to live in."
Karil looked down at the dark side of Earth spread out below them, where only a handful of city lights blazed in the vast, black North American landscape beneath a jewelled necklace of SPOT-lights. "But there had to be major benefits for Earth," he protested. He suddenly realized he was parroting something he had heard in school, but he went on. "What about the irrigation grids, and the reclamation projects, and the powersats? That was the purpose of setting up in orbit in the first place, wasn't it? Not to mention the natural resources from Luna and the Belt, fuel from Jupiter, interplanetary trade... Without the High Companies, Earth would have been left out of System trade entirely."
"Yes, and the European Imperial Powers thought the colonization of Asia and Africa, and the slave-trade, and the looting of the New World were all about bringing the benefits of civilization to the heathen. Sure, they built the power-grids and the irrigation systems. During the early construction phase, they needed Earth for food and natural resources, and then it became a source of cheap labour, but now they’re just holding onto it out of pride and habit, like an exhausted colonial administration. The official fantasy they sold was that the resources, energy, and cheap transport of space meant unlimited benefits for Earth. But the fact is, with abundant resources, inexhaustible energy, and virtually free transport, it didn't take long for the High Companies to realize they didn't need Earth at all.
"The official fantasy on Mars is that colonization will eventually lead to terraformation, but to strip a desert planet of its water in the name of making it green has to be the ultimate in paradox denial. Everyone knows that hauling water up a gravity well is less cost-effective than shipping ice from the Outer Belt, but the High Companies don’t want to deal with the Galilean-owned Belter colonies, and they won’t do that until Martian water becomes too expensive. It's bad enough that most of the subarean aquifers are polluted with toxic perchlorates and we have to pay Martian Mining and Manufacturing for their patented detoxification process. But our water, which we naturally regard as extremely precious, is disappearing forever. The more expensive we can make Martian water, right now, the sooner the High Companies will bite the bullet and sit down at the interplanetary water-table.
"Triple M, of course, thinks we’re simply being ungrateful, since Mars was only colonized for natural resources in the first place, including water; they brought us there and set us up and now we’re trying to shut down one of their most important operations. They conveniently forget, of course, that a lot of us were transported criminals and didn’t have a hell of a lot of choice in the matter, and most of us are still working for next to nothing. We've worked hard and made good money for them and dug our warrens and raised our domes and planted our gardens ourselves, without much help from the High Companies, and most of us could no longer return to full gee if we wanted to. We're in this for the long haul and we're going to need that water. As far as we're concerned, mining Mars for water is a typical fantasy-class project--way too expensive, ultimately unworkable, and basically unnecessary in the first place."
***
In Low Earth Orbit, Atalanta put in for inspection at one of the Customs stations there. Karil was probably the most nervous, as Shagrug had been through the process many times, and Proj and Terry seemed to be in perfect control of themselves.
Shagrug greeted the inspector like an old friend, which he probably was, and the exchange of remuneration was discreet. The crates were labelled as machinery parts and agricultural implements and the cargo manifest was in perfect order.
"Good morning, Atty."
"Good morning, Chief Inspector. It's such a pleasure to see you again, after such a long time. How is little Sam? Is he doing well in school?"
"First in his class, Atty." The inspector beamed.
"You don't say. Well, I'm hardly surprised. He was always such a bright little fellow." Karil later learned that Atty had accessed the school records; she did not inquire after the older child, who had been arrested for petty theft.
"I'm afraid I'll have to ask you to open one of these crates," the inspector said.
"Of course," said Shagrug. "Which one?" He placed his hand on one of the crates, as if to stop his drifting.
"That one."
"No problem." Proj and Terry entered, dressed in machinist coveralls. "These are the technicians who will set up the machinery. It's being installed at a Mormon farm in Nevada." Proj kept his face hidden, but the inspector hardly noticed him, distracted as he was by Terry's green eyes, the blonde tresses that escaped from her hairnet, and her coveralls, which did not fit very well at all. She smiled at him as the contents of the crate were revealed.
Karil recognized it as a Martian sand-rover, dismantled and expertly packed. If there was anything else in the crate, it would take a great deal of unpacking to find it. "These rovers make great desert vehicles," Terry said, bathing the inspector in the warmth of her smile. She blew away a strand of hair that was drifting across her face and brushed her cheek with her glove, smudging her chin with grease. On her, it was a beauty mark. "We're hoping to make this a regular run."
With the expectation of seeing Terry again, the inspector did not need to keep them any longer; he could enjoy looking forward to making a fool of himself later, rather than risk doing so now. Atalanta was electronically stamped and tagged and given permission to land on Earth, with her cargo of harmless machinery and two harmless technicians.
"Terry," Atty said as she dropped away from the inspection station, "that was completely shameless. I couldn't have done better myself."
***
Captain Solla's cruiser slipped into docking orbit on the approach to High Europe. As his pilot handled the complex manoeuvre, Solla glumly watched the huge colony spin toward him. The only purpose of his physical presence here, he knew, was to be impressed with the power of his masters, and what was more, it would work: High Europe was probably the most beautiful of the orbiting pleasure worlds.
The view through the port, Solla thought as the ship came into dock, resembled what a pigeon might see as it returned to its nest on the ledge of a Gothic cathedral. His driver waited, stretching out in his acceleration couch in anticipation of a nap, as Solla cycled through the lock. Another Security officer greeted him, saluting with one hand as he clung to a stanchion with the other. Solla returned the salute and kicked off behind him in the microgravity. Through an observation port, he was afforded a glimpse of the end-cap city below--beams of sunlight pouring down the mile-high atrium past vine-draped balconies to the busy streets of the circumference in the distance.
He climbed into a Security car with the driver, and they sped through a tunnel into the vast open space of the cylinder. A trio of landscapes, separated by the transparent panels that allowed reflected sunlight into the interior, spun slowly about them. They stretched for kilometres into the blue haze of the far endcap. One of the landscapes soon rotated into position below them as they dropped toward it through the thin cloud, and the other two began to retreat into the distance overhead. He glanced up through the car's transparent roof to see, on one side, a sunlit Italian villa surrounded by red-tiled village rooftops and vast citrus orchards, and on the other side, a French chateau surrounded by vineyards and a village of thatched-roof huts clustered about a cathedral. Rushing up from below was an English manor, complete with village and farms and the transplanted ruins of a Medieval abbey. As they sped over the green hills, he saw deer running for the forest, brightly painted barges on the canals, and a foxhunt in progress in the fields.
These were working farms as well as enormous private estates, but the labour expended in their upkeep was still superfluous; the real food was grown in aeroponic greenhouse toruses elsewhere on the shaft, much more efficiently than could be produced by kilometres of tilled earth. These were only the hobby-gardens of the space-rich.
The manor-house itself appeared through the trees--a monstrous extravagance of roofs and chimneys, ivy-covered towers, and acres of mullioned windows. It may have been English in style, but there was nothing of British restraint about it, and it rivalled the excesses of the villa and chateau above. The car descended to a poplar-lined drive before it, and Solla stepped out onto the gravel; he walked up the drive and a door below the staircase opened for him--a servant's entrance. A butler showed him the way up narrow stairways to the master's study.
Surrounded by wood panelling and real leather book-bindings, Lord Coldwell sat at his desk, absorbed with weighty matters on his screen. He grunted a greeting and waved Solla to a chair. As the officer sat motionless for long moments, he realized that the figures flickering across the screen represented sums of money and shifts of power he could not begin to comprehend. Coldwell motioned for Solla to don the VR set on the table beside him. As soon as Solla had done this, parts of the room before him began to disappear, to be replaced by parts of other rooms in other places.
Senor Juarez appeared, sitting on his veranda with a drink and a cigar; behind him, Solla could see a coffee plantation stretching away to the jungle, and a glimpse of pampas in the sky. Mrs. Gilbert appeared in her stables, watching a thoroughbred being shod; through the open door, he could see the bluegrass hills of her estate, chequered by white fences into the wooded distance, and a bit of autumnal New England landscape overhead, a white wooden church stark against the colourful foliage. The Sultan of High Africa appeared, stripped naked in his baths, being massaged by two girls in diaphanous clothing, and through the window behind him, Solla could see herds of zebra and wildebeest drifting over the savannah. And finally, Mister Wu flickered into existence. Behind him, his gardens seemed to stretch away to infinity--a perfect landscape of flowering tree and lily-pond, arched bridge and delicate pagoda, vista climbing upon vista to the misty mountains in the distance. The cost of tending this perfect garden was beyond Solla's imagining. In the sky above, a Rajah's palace gleamed like gold jewellery on green cloth, and Solla fancied he saw a procession of elephants moving through tall grass--perhaps a tiger-hunt in progress.
Mrs. Gilbert was the first to speak; but she kept one eye on her horse throughout the conversation. "Solla, I really would like to know how Progeny slipped through your fingers this time. Were you in control of the planet or not?"
"Yes, Ma'am. But Progeny was in control of the people. There are less than a million souls on Mars, but every single one of them is ready to lay down his life for the man. He's their son, their father, and their brother, all wrapped in one. Every child born there is called Progeny’s child."
"Can he not be controlled in some way?" Juarez demanded. "Bribed, brainwashed, killed?"
"His martyrdom would be counter-productive in the extreme," Solla replied. "He can't be bribed because nothing money can buy means anything to him, and everything he values not only can't be bought, he already has it. As for brainwashing, I'm not sure how you can turn a man who has no beliefs."
"What do you mean?" Wu asked. "Is he a nihilist?"
"Far from it, Sir, but it's difficult to convert a man to your religion if he has none of his own or persuade him to betray his political cause for yours if he thinks that all political causes are equally bogus."
"How, then," Lord Coldwell asked, "can he have such a following? What does he preach, if not religion or politics? The family? But Martians don't have families as we know it, do they?"
"No, Sir. And they don't have politics or religion either. In fact, the things that we believe in most strongly, and are willing to kill and die for, they deny their existence outright." He sighed. "As Progeny said in one of his essays, words are only noises with agreed-upon meanings and if a word--like God or Nation or Family--means something different to everyone who uses it, and indeed can be used by the same person on two different occasions before two different audiences to mean two totally different things, it has no real meaning and the thing named has no objective existence. The word is used, in fact, because it has no intellectual content--only emotional impact--and it's just a tool for controlling the minds of others."
"This is getting us nowhere," the Sultan said. "That's enough, Inger." He waved the girls away and sat up with his towel around him. "Where is Progeny now? Still on Mars?"
"No, I don't believe so. His presence is too dangerous to others. He could be hiding out in the Belt, where he has many sympathizers, but I think he's gone to Earth."
"Earth?"
"A number of Martian colonists have returned to Earth and set up little communes, mostly in the American Empty Quarter. He could be hiding out there."
"Surely it will be easier to find him on Earth."
"Actually, no. The areas on Mars where a person can live are few and far between, easily isolated and searched. Earth is a nightmare place for police work."
"Nevertheless," said Coldwell, "the search must continue. We have no authority in the Belt, but we do on Earth. You will turn over control of Mars to your second-in-command as Interim Chief of Security, and will take command of the Citadel at Nueva York, suitably reduced in rank, of course, but if your search is successful, and you find some way to neutralize Progeny, your old rank and command will be restored."
"I understand, of course." It was no more than he was expecting. As he turned to leave and the board turned to discussing other matters, as if he no longer existed, Solla actually smiled to himself in amusement. It was ironic that he was being punished for incompetence by being given a more difficult job, as Roman officers had been punished by being sent away from Rome to govern some place that could not be governed, like Judea.
***
Atalanta sped low over the Pacific Ocean; Shagrug's Martian passengers gazed out through the ports in silence, mesmerized by so much water. The rocky coast of Spanish North America rushed toward them, and soon they were climbing over a landscape of sun-burnt mountains, not so different from that of Mars.
"That's Pacifica, to the north," Shagrug said. "Stretches up the coast from the Californias to Lower Alaska. They came through the wars okay, on this side of the mountains, and they don't seem to miss high technology that much. The fish are even coming back in some parts. Ahead of us are the Enclaves, mostly Mormon territory, though there must be hundreds of other cults and communes of one sort or another. Including the Martians."
"There are Martian communes on Earth?" Karil asked.
"Some of our families," Terry said, "were returned to Earth a decade ago. The Quasi thought they could get rid of troublemakers that way. It was hard for the older members, who were adapted to Martian gravity, but the youngsters managed to re-adapt to full gee, and they survived, but they still believed in the Martian way. They migrated to the only place they would be left alone to live the way they wanted to. There’s a very old tradition of moving to North America for religious freedom, ironically. That's our destination, in fact."
"You're bringing them sand-rovers."
"Yes, and guns."
"I thought so. Rimbaud's Army."
"More and more desert tribes from Kansas and Nebraska are moving into the Enclaves," Progeny said. "Some of them have extremely vicious and well armed militias, and the conviction that God has destined them to re-unite America. They won't take on the Mormons because they're such fierce fighters, but our little colony is pretty defenceless. There's another family like it in Ohio, threatened by Millenarian extremists from the south, and one in Vermont, being harassed by the Quebecois Hegemony from the north."
"We're going to swing over South California," said Shagrug, "in case we're being tracked. Easy to lose us in the radiation from the cities."
The ruins stretched below--collapsed highways and bridges, toppled towers, blackened hills, and the forlorn skeletons of melted reactors rising from the sea, all swept by wind-born dust from the once-verdant valleys. A single goatherd, swathed in rags to protect him from the ultra-violet, peered up at them from beside the ruins of an ancient hotel as they roared overhead. The ship banked and sped off through the mountains. It swooped over the oasis domes of Nevada, now reduced to rubble by Mormon holy warriors--sodomized, Karil's friend Jay had once said, and then gomorrhized for good measure. Soon they were climbing into the Rockies.
"Captain," said Atalanta, "we have a ship on our tail."
"Jesus." Shagrug glanced at the screen. "Where the hell did that come from?"
"It came up out of one of the valleys."
"It came up? It's not a Quasi ship?"
"No. It appears to be a gunship from the civil war, and there appears to be nobody aboard."
"A drone? Put it on the big screen. Jesus, Atty, it's in worse shape than you."
"Thank you, Shag. You're always so charming."
Karil saw it on the monitor. It did look a little bit like a smaller version of Atalanta--sleek, manoeuvrable, and badly damaged. And fast. It was gaining on them at gees no human being could stand.
"You wouldn't mind if I blew it out of the sky, would you?" said Shag. He touched a sensor and Karil's instruments recorded weapons whirring into position all over the hull--lasers, rockets, even guns. Karil had had no idea Atty was so well armed.
"There is no sign of life aboard," said Atty. "You can blow it to pieces, for all I care."
Shagrug stabbed a button and rockets erupted from tubes located between the scramjets and the nuclear drivers at Atalanta's stern. They arced away, leaving a trail of vapour behind, passed harmlessly through the place where the pursuing ship had been an instant before, and detonated against a cliff-face, sending an avalanche thundering into the forest below.
"Where did it go?"
"It dropped out of sight at something like thirty gees and is now snaking through a parallel canyon to head us off."
"That’s a hell of a manoeuvre."
"I could do it if you were not aboard. Watch out."
The ship appeared out of nowhere and fired all of the guns in a row along its leading wing-edge. Atty flipped sideways to take the fire across her lower hull--hardened for atmospheric entry--and roared off into the sky. Karil was flattened in his couch, the breath crushed out of him for an instant. He could feel his ship-suit tightening to hold in his viscera, the elastic fabric fooled into thinking he had experienced sudden decompression. In a moment, Atty levelled off and streaked away over the mountain tops. He was still crushed in his couch, but he could breathe.
"Did everybody see what I saw?" Shagrug said, with a stunned expression on his face.
Everyone had. In the instant they were face to face with the ship, they had seen an armoured human skeleton, rotting flesh still clinging to its bones, its hard white fingers wrapped around the ship's controls.
"What the hell is it?" Progeny asked.
"It's a Morg," Atty said. "A dead cyborg. In certain rare cases, the bionic skeleton and limbs in the armour of human soldiers may continue to function after the soldier's death, with enough intelligence to perform simple tasks."
"That's pretty terrifying," Terry said.
"Tinpot Zombies, we called them," Shagrug added. "Robo-stiff. Corpse in a Can. We joked about them because they scared us shitless. I only saw one in the flesh. It was standing in a chow-line behind me for five minutes till I turned around and saw it. Other guys told me worse stories."
"You were in the war?" Karil asked.
Shagrug scowled. "Pay attention, Stillborn. Atty, how could the systems in that ship have survived this long without a human being?"
"The ships were quite intelligent to start with, Shag. To increase their manoeuvrability, they were designed to be unstable and had to be flown by computer. Feedback loops kept them from crushing their occupant. In a way, cyborg pilot and ship became one instrument. It will continue to follow its last commands until they are countermanded, or until its nuclear batteries run out. Bear in mind that this is not a robot and is not programmed with the first directive, as I am. It can kill; it's as efficient as a robot and as heartless as a human being."
"Thanks, Atty. You're always so charming. Where is it?"
"Hidden behind the mountains, I believe. It can detect my radar and stay just out..." The ship came roaring up out of a pass in the canyons below, blazing with gunfire. Atalanta spun away, but burdened as she was with living passengers, her evasive manoeuvres were too slow. Karil's screens blazed with warning lights and shrieked with klaxons as systems were disabled all over the ship. A portion of Atty's starboard wing seemed to float by the viewport and the landscape tilted up in Karil's face. Atty dove screaming into the mountains below, banked hard to starboard to avoid a rocky peak, though her port wingtip uprooted a stand of conifers like a scythe, and then she plummeted toward a mountain lake. She lifted her bow and opened all her fan-doors, trying to slow her descent with forced air. The ship skimmed over the surface of the lake, creating a wall of water on each side, leaped up a driftwood-choked beach, and dove headfirst into the trees.
Karil's couch folded up about him like a gloved fist and its straps bit cruelly into his body. He slipped into unconsciousness like a warm bath