by Linda Nagata
“Something’s wrong,” he muttered. “There’s more going on here than we can see. What happened to the kid they called Ninh?”
“Slipped. The drone’s on him, but he’s moving fast. He won’t stay in sight for long. Daniel, we’re going to have to make a choice.”
The drone served as a relay, boosting signals from the peepers. If it strayed more then a few hundred meters in its pursuit of Ninh, the peepers would fall out of range. “Bring in another drone,” Simkin ordered.
“We only have one in the area.”
“Then get the helicopter in the air!”
That’s when the slickly dressed advertising executive launched his nationalist bluff.
A LOV protectorate.
Simkin glared at the display, certain there was a hidden element in this game, a factor he had not parsed. Again he thought of Ninh …
“It is the kid!” he shouted. “The boy, Ninh. This is about him.”
Ninh was armed with a stock of LOVs. If he slipped, he could make Nguyen’s threat real. He could scatter LOVs up and down the coast, put them in the hands of anyone who wanted them. They could make their way into parcel services and passenger airways, spreading around the world—and then it would be impossible to contain the LOVs. Nguyen was bluffing, but he was in a position to make his bluff real.
“Send the helicopter after the boy,” Simkin ordered. “Make him our priority. Now.”
“THE drone’s leaving,” Virgil announced.
He had been staring up into the star-filled sky, examining something there with the aid of his farsights. To the west, in the direction of Soc Trang, Ela could hear the faint buzz of a distant helicopter. Dread tightened around her heart. “They’ll look for Ninh.”
Nguyen was done with his declaration of independence. “Let’s go!” he commanded, returning to the car. Virgil dropped into the shotgun seat.
Ela was only seconds behind. Activating nightvision, she scrambled up to the dike road and dived into the backseat, slamming the door behind her. Her feet and her hands were filthy, coated in mud. Mud smears soiled the carpet, the door handle, and the upholstery too.
Nguyen turned around as the car surged down the road, guided by a ROSA. The green-tinged lens of his farsights veiled his eyes, but did not disguise the direction of his gaze. She watched him examine each stain. “Every time I pick you up, you are filthy, Ela. It’s a very bad habit, you know.”
“It’s a dirty little country.”
“It’s a grand and ancient country.”
Ela had not seen much of that. Quietly she asked, “Did you mean that about a LOV protectorate?”
“Of course I meant it! It’s the angle I’ve been working for days. I didn’t mean for it to happen this soon.” He shook his head. “It’s too soon. We’ll have to see if those bastards in Hanoi have the spine to make it real.”
Virgil had turned around too, his green-tinged gaze shifting from Ela to Nguyen. “Why are you doing this?”
Nguyen tipped his head back. “Because I have dreams of world domination.”
“Come on.”
Sarcasm gave way to a wistful smile. “We can be more than we are, don’t you think? Shouldn’t we try?”
“But why the LOVs?” Virgil pressed.
“They are an experiment.” Nguyen turned back to Ela. “One that got badly out of hand.”
She blushed and looked out the window. If she had not gone to pick up the no-oct shipment… . “I hope Ninh is all right,” she whispered.
“He’s fast,” Nguyen said.
Ela remembered her Roi Nuoc farsights. She pulled them from her waist pouch and slipped them on. “Where is Ninh?”
“Here,” Mother Tiger purred.
In an inset image she saw the racing lights of a helicopter sweeping nearer. She heard Ninh’s ragged breathing as he ran.
“You must help him.”
Nguyen’s fist thumped the seat back. “Nothing has gone as I’d hoped! If I had it to do again, Ela, I would leave you on the beach and be done with it.”
Ela’s hand tightened into a fist while she watched a soldier lean out the helicopter’s door, a rifle raised, aimed at her heart, at Ninh’s heart. “If I had it to do again,” she said softly, “I would still want the LOVs.”
Desire was different from need, from responsibility. Ninh stopped. His hands went up. She wanted to say the LOVs were worth it, but it was Ninh under the gun, not her. “They’ll arrest him now, won’t they?”
Nguyen snorted. “They will have nothing to hold him on.”
“Nothing?”
“He has become a … How is it said? A distraction?”
“A decoy?” Virgil suggested.
“That’s it. A decoy. Nothing more.”
SIMKIN watched as the youth surrendered and submitted to arrest. He was searched. No LOVs were found. “Backtrack,” Browning snapped at her field crew. “He’s tossed them.”
The IBC officers abandoned Ninh, taking off along his trail, using electronic sniffers to trace the way back to the pond. They turned up nothing.
“He handed them off,” Simkin said. “There was someone else out there in the brush.”
Browning nodded. “Let’s plug the drone into a search pattern. It’s only been a few minutes. They can’t have gone far.”
They.
The pronoun stirred in Simkin a nasty foreboding.
The drone gained elevation. The reach of its cameras extended outward in a widening circle. A dozen figures flickered into existence along that arc of view. Unresolved, elusive, vanishing instantly like ghosts destroyed by the act of being seen.
“Oh shit,” Browning whispered.
Simkin shared her dismay. Any one of those fleeting figures could be carrying the LOVs. Or all of them. He spliced into Browning’s field connection, linking directly with the pilot, who was already lifting off to retrieve the ground crew. “Bring the rabbits down,” Simkin ordered. “Live capture if you can. Live rounds if you have to. If we slip now, it could take years to recover.”
“Yes sir.”
The helicopter descended, just long enough for the ground crew to scramble aboard. Then it swung away, to hunt the wave front of fugitives expanding into the night.
chapter
19
VIRGIL SCROLLED THROUGH the perspectives of the runners as they dispersed through fields and country roads. The helicopter buzzed beyond them, closer, farther, depending on the point of view. He shook his head, unable to grasp how it had come to this. Why were these children involved?
When he had fled Honolulu he had not expected to find allies. He had not thought to discover himself a player in someone else’s game.
His gaze shifted to Ky Xuan Nguyen beside him in the driver’s seat—though he wasn’t driving. A ROSA steered the Mercedes, while Nguyen worked his farsights, his profile illuminated in the green tones of nightvision, fading, then brightening again as new information flickered across his screen. His fingers danced to the chaotic display, twitching in a furious arrhythmia, while every few seconds an unintelligible command popped from his lips.
A stray peeper had gotten into the car. Virgil caught it with a swipe of his hand. Absently he squeezed it. It deflated with a sharp squeak. “Ky? Where are we going?”
“We have no destination.”
“They’ll know this car now.”
“We will change cars.” His tapping fingers never slowed.
The Mercedes swerved to avoid a pothole. Virgil said, “I’m not sure about any of this.”
Ela answered from the backseat. “It’s too late to back out. There are over twenty Roi Nuoc involved now. We can’t betray them.”
Virgil watched another slim, dark hand toss another strip of LOV-impregnated cloth into the dark waters of a paddy freshly planted with wispy rice seedlings. Ela was right: The cost of backing out was going up every second.
“It’s too late,” she repeated. “Even if we gave up now, even if these twenty turned themselves in, the d
amage is done. What do you think will happen to all the other Roi Nuoc when word gets out about their involvement with the LOVs?”
Virgil felt the touch of a cold fear. “They’ll be blamed.”
“They’ll be persecuted,” she said. “People fear them already. All they need is an excuse. After tonight the Roi Nuoc will be in danger no matter what we do.”
“How dangerous are the LOVs?” Nguyen asked. Virgil turned, to find that his fingers had gone still; the illumination on his display had frozen as he waited for an answer.
“I don’t know,” Virgil said. “They colonized a fiber-optic cable aboard the Hammer. They shouldn’t have been able to do that.”
Nguyen shook his head. “Ms. Suvanatat is right. It doesn’t matter. We are committed. Our only defense lies in making the LOVs a political factor … and we can do that only if the LOVs are widespread, and impossible to stamp out.”
“The IBC will have this area under embargo by dawn.”
“Yes. I think so too.”
“You have leverage in Hanoi?”
“Nothing certain. An appeal to nationalism, to public gain. I have tried to sell the LOVs as an edge on the future … have I lied?”
Virgil looked away, out into the green-tinted night. “I don’t know.”
Nguyen sighed. “You are a lousy salesman. Don’t you know the first rule of success is to believe in your product?”
Virgil smiled. From their first meeting at a private dock on the Bassac River, he had felt a strange affinity for Ky Xuan Nguyen. He had sensed in him a curiosity, an ambition that lay outside the mainstream. A pioneering boldness that reminded him of Panwar. “I don’t even know what my product is,” he admitted.
“Then it will be your priority in the next few days to find out.”
“If we manage to stay free that long?”
“That won’t be so hard, now that we are no longer hiding.”
Virgil leaned back in his seat, while Nguyen’s focus returned to the screen of his farsights, and his fingers resumed their twitching. Clearly, Ky Xuan Nguyen had not planned to play such a public game. Until now, he had contained his risk-taking within a hidden partition of his life, building firewalls between that and his respectable persona. But he had been overconfident, too sure of his own skills, and luck, and organization. Now he was trapped, unable to escape except by leaping forward. It was the same story Virgil had played out in Honolulu.
He thought of Panwar and Gabrielle, and nothing felt real. Was he crazy? Was he dreaming? Might it still be possible to wake up?
Don’t think that way.
Nothing would be gained by tying his mind in knots. He drew a deep breath, let it go slowly, demanding an onrush of calm. He was well practiced. He had done this a hundred times aboard the Marathon. He had lost track of the days spent in the isolation cell of its tiny pocket cabin, unable to take more than a step and a half in any direction. Worse, after forty-eight hours the air had begun to stink. He had tried cranking the blowers up to gale force, but then it was cold and noisy … and when he turned the fans back down the stink was still there. It had seeped into the walls. It had permeated the padding of the chair. Whenever he returned to the chair— (In his mind it had taken on capital letters, The Chair, transformed into a semi-conscious instrument of torture, or penitence, whose ultimate goal, though surely dark and sadistic in the way of old religions, remained obscure)—after a visit to the head, or a brief bout of deep knee bends on the tiny oval floor, he would sit down into the lap of a ghost image of himself, a wraith that had emerged out of the upholstery and whose substance was his own foul body odor and the stale echoes of his intestinal gas. It had been pure joy to open the hatch beneath the shelter of an offshore platform, to stand upright and breathe clean air, fresh off the water. He didn’t care if he ever saw the Marathon again.
The display on his farsights scrolled past the image of another fragile hand releasing one more LOV-saturated cloth …
“Back that up,” Virgil whispered, sitting up a little straighter.
The image rolled back in time. A jouncing path led across an irrigation ditch. The point of view leaped across the water, then slowed. Turned back. The ground rushed up, and a hand slipped the LOVs into gently flowing water. “Ky, someone has released LOVs into a flowing stream. There’s no way we can control where they go if—”
“You saw that?” Ela demanded. “Virgil? How could you see that? Those aren’t Roi Nuoc farsights.”
He turned to look at her, puzzled. “No. They’re mine. Sort of.” He touched the stolen Heroes.
“But they’re linked to Mother Tiger?”
“Sure. Ky set it up.”
She looked outraged. “He did … ? Is that possible? But I have to switch back and forth to Roi Nuoc farsights. I’ve been switching for a week. Mr. Nguyen! Why didn’t you tell me? Why did you convenience him?”
Ky Xuan Nguyen turned slowly, his eyebrows raised. “Because, Ela, Virgil does not make my car dirty.”
She screamed. It was a cry of horror, a caged thing that ripped through the soundproofed cabin. Her hand flew up to cover her mouth. Tears started in her eyes. “Make them stop,” she moaned. “They’re killing them.”
For a long, strange moment Virgil felt lost in unfathomable nightmare—and then the moment grew worse. On the screen of his farsights the point of view shifted. Brilliant light washed the ground as the dust on the back of a dike exploded upward in a dozen bursting fountains. The light went out and a child’s voice was screaming, crying in utter terror the same phrase over and over again dutifully translated by Mother Tiger, It hurts, it hurts, it hurts.
The point of view shifted. Now he could see the helicopter, bright against the night sky, sweeping in low, only a few meters above the paddies, the side door open and a gunman lifting his rifle, taking aim. With an oath that did not need translation, the view dived forward into a stand of grass. Events blurred, shifted. Now came the sound of running feet, falling in fast rhythm against the dirt, while the buzz of a helicopter and the ratchet of gunfire raged in the distance.
Virgil’s head slammed against the side window; his farsights were knocked askew. He was back in his own locus again, as the car spun around. Nguyen had his hand on the steering stick. He had taken over driving from the ROSA. Sweat shone on his cheeks, and rage lay in every line of muscle on his face. He punched the accelerator, and Virgil was slammed back into his seat as the car went bouncing, flying over the rough country road.
In the distance the helicopter moved like a specter, its search light switching on, off, in no apparent rhythm. Tiny red bursts erupted at intervals from its sides.
“There is a pistol in the compartment at your knees,” Nguyen shouted, as the car bellied viciously in the bottom of a dip. “Take it out.”
Virgil lunged for the compartment, tried twice to pop it open, got it on the third attempt. The gun bounced like metal popcorn. He scooped it up, surprised at its weight. He had never held a gun before. Again he thought of Panwar. He had shot that cop. It seemed like another lifetime.
The Mercedes hit a smooth stretch of road. Nguyen leaned on the accelerator. The car shot ahead once more, doing a hundred, easily. Whatever bumps there were skimmed past beneath tires that barely knew the earth.
The sunroof slid open. Virgil glanced up to see a star-speckled sky.
“You have a choice of two targets,” Nguyen said. “The pilot or the tail rotor. Hit either one, and the ship comes down.”
Virgil stared at him for the space of two deep heartbeats. Then he nodded. Children were being gunned down, wounded. Their screams poured through his farsights, straight into his core.
He took a second to examine the gun. He could feel the way the safety worked, but even with nightvision he could not read the letters to see which setting was on and which was off. He shrugged to himself. Trial and error, then.
He started to get up on his knees. “Brace yourself!” Nguyen shouted. He pressed the brakes. Dust billowed past the Mer
cedes while Virgil leaned against the dash. The car fishtailed, straightened, then took off again on another road. Virgil crouched on the seat, then carefully he rose, emerging into a hurricane sweeping over the car roof.
The helicopter was dead ahead, hovering a few meters above the road, its searchlights off and its gunner targeting the racing car. Nguyen was going to ram it in about seven seconds if it didn’t lift.
Virgil braced his elbows against the roof of the car, holding the pistol with two hands as he squinted along the sight, aiming at the gunner’s transparent face shield. He wore body armor, and a helmet too. The best Virgil could hope for was to knock him down. The muzzle of his weapon flared red. At the same time the car swerved, tossing Virgil to one side of the open sunroof, slamming his rib cage.
He gasped, but managed to brace his legs, sighting again along the pistol. Only then did he remember Nguyen’s instructions: The pilot or the tail rotor. Hit either one, and the ship comes down.
Shifting his aim, he fired off six shots in quick succession.
Something exploded, and the car sagged. Virgil collapsed halfway back into the cabin, just as the tail rotor burst into a rain of fiberglass splinters. The helicopter spun wildly, around and around across the rice paddies while the Mercedes went careering over the opposite bank. Virgil ducked back into the car, hitting the seat just as a squadron of air bags exploded in his face. The jolt knocked the memory of the next few seconds right out of him.
When his mind started working again, the air bags had already deflated and the car was still. Virgil could hear the tick of hot metal, and water trickling. He could hear someone moving behind him. “I’ve lost the gun,” he whispered.
Nguyen said, “Look for it on the floor.”
Motion made him turn his head. He saw Ela, wriggling out through the sunroof. “Did you get it?” Nguyen shouted after her.
“Every fucking minute!” she screamed back. “Now hurry up! These children are hurt.” Then she disappeared from Virgil’s sight.
“Get what?” he asked hoarsely, shaking his head to clear it, then quickly deciding that was a very bad idea.