There is no air. There is no sound. The awesome enormity of his surroundings holds the boy. Black and white and black and white and black. Sterile and clear, shimmering to infinity.
The boy sits through the bright, hot morning. It is late in the afternoon when he first sees the ones who are not guards. They are few, and they are very far away, but he sees them clearly. Their cloth is black, but they are set apart from the guards even more certainly by the grace and ease of their movements. The boy believes that they are thieves but cannot imagine what there might be for them to steal in such a place. They walk with a fluid nobility that entrances the boy, and he strains his eyes to watch them until the last one is only a speck at an immeasurable distance.
The boy rises without knowing why. He unfolds his long young legs and walks to a black square. The black squares are empty, and he can look down the gleaming black diagonal to the far end of the Chessboard.
The boy walks the black diagonal, but he does not see another thief. After a time he doubts that he has ever seen one.
--Ronald J. Bass, "The Perfect Thief"
There are many beginnings; a story may begin many times, in many places.
But there must somewhere be a true beginning.
At the beginning of it all, there was an enigma.
* * *
The Star
December 21, 2067
to
December 22, 2067
* * *
11.
This is the planet Earth, on Wednesday, December 21, 2067, turning blue and white and beautiful against a starry background. You know what this looks like. Depending on when and where you are, you may also know what Halfway looks like: the orbital city in which much of the Solar System's manufacturing takes place, in this year of 2067. It's been described as a bowl of noodles that somebody dropped, still falling; this does it an injustice. Those born here, and sometimes those living here, find it a beautiful place, of lattice-thin girders and columns, of rolling O'Neills and tumbling slingshots and the huge free-fall structures where Homebrews--native Halfers, born and raised in free-fall--prefer to live. There is never a time when you cannot see the glow of fusion welding torches at the eternally-under-construction Edge, the brief, actinically bright flares from tugs and sleds ferrying gear and goods among the city's million and a half persons, its nearly 200,000 structures.
In geosynchronous orbit, along with Halfway, is the orbital junk from humanity's hundred years in space. Hidden among the junk are the Orbital Eyes.
A variety of humans, of human organizations, and of machine intelligences, look down through the hundreds of Eyes, scanning the Earth. One such Eye is doing just that, right … now:
From here you can see most of North America, but the person controlling this Eye is interested in something specific; the Eye focuses in. On New York State. Its lense sweeps briefly across Manhattanstill recognizably the Manhattan of Babe Ruth and La Guardia, tripled now, still a beautiful city in its wayacross the spires of the seven spacescrapers, each over a kilometer tall, that reach up from Manhattan and toward the Eye that has so briefly observed them; sweeps across the recently completed Unification Spaceport in south Manhattan, across the East River and into Brooklyn.
Where you see the Barrier for the first time.
The Berlin Wall had nothing on this. It's eight meters high, more than four times the height of a tall man and it's made out of black, supertwisted sheet monocrystal. The entire structure, end to end, is a single molecule. It can't be cut or broken or bombed with anything less powerful than a nuclear weapon, and only the Peaceforcers have those
The Peaceforcers built the Barrier, of course, and so they are unlikely to use nuclear weapons to destroy it.
On the west side of the Barrier are the Patrol Sectors. They're clean, they're even reasonably safe, given that this is still New York, after all. There are Peaceforcers and police in the Patrol Sectors. On the west side of the Barrier.
On the East Side of the Barrier is the Fringe.
Here there are no police. Here there are no Peaceforcers. The life expectancy for a man is 37 years. For women it's less. This isn't a slum, it's a war zone. Gangs patrol the streets, Temple Dragons in some areas, Gypsy Macoute in others, a thousand smaller gangs.
In Temple Dragon territory, in Flatbush, families on their way to Temple are escorted by armed men. From almost anywhere in the Fringe, down the entire great length of Long Island, at any given moment you can hear (in the distant background if you're fortunate) the flat crack of small arms fire, and the sizzle of energy weapons.
In Flatbush, rather closer to the Temple of Eris, you can hear this, if you listen carefully, the sound of the crowd listening to the Reverend Andrew Strawberry as he preaches:
… stomp stomp clap, stomp stomp clap …
"and the great Swami Dave Leary said to the Prophet Harry, give up the waiting of tables, and embrace your destiny! For though barriers are thrown in your way, still destiny calls"
A small family approaches the Temple, passes the armed guards at the door, and goes inside. About fifty people, a dozen small families, are gathered here. The Temple pews are arranged in a circle, and light streams in through the stained glass windows showing scenes from the life of the Prophet Harry, high above them. Preaching in the center of the Temple, with the crowd around him, is the Reverend Strawberry. A huge black man, 210 centimeters, sweating and grinning, and he directs that grin at those just now entering what is now his Temple:
"destiny calls...to those who will listen!" The latecomers stop, caught by the power of that brown-eyed gaze. The grin does not waver. "And to those who can be on time, take your seatsthere is a power for those who will trust it, a power inside all of us, the power to believe, and through that belief not merely to move mountains, but to raise them up! There is no task too large for the brave, no detail too small for the pure of faith…."
Three blocks away, high in the rafters of a dark warehouse, a young man was busy working his way down a rope, trying to keep his breathing calm and even despite his excitement. He could not hear Reverend Pena's sermon, but she must have been in fine form that morning, because even from that distance he could hear the crowd, stomping and clapping along with her.
He hung in the blackness, dressed in black, with a black hood covering everything but his eyes, the rope running through his right hand and around his right wrist, and then looped once around his right ankle. In his left hand he held a gun. Abruptly, in mid-air, he flipped over, slid his right hand down the rope and caught it again so that he was facing downward, still touching the rope at just the wrist and ankle.
For the first time he got a good look at his target. Beneath him were two uniformed guards and a small stand. Atop the stand, laid on black velvet, was a blue jewel the size of a robin's egg. He could not get a good look at it, swaying back and forth in the darkness above their heads. The men beneath him never looked up.
Two men, one white and one black, dressed in expensive business attire, stood near the warehouse's large sliding door. In his mind, the thief dubbed the white guy Fat Dude and the black guy Thin Dude. They were talking, but the thief could barely hear their voices.
A booming noise erupted, the sound of something crashing against the warehouse's sheet metal. That would be Bird, right on time, whacking the door with a baseball bat and then running awayBird was good at hitting things, sometimes people, with a baseball bat, and then running away; he'd been doing it since he was seven. The four men beneath the thief all jumped in near unison, the two guards pulling their weapons, the Thin Dude and Fat Dude, both evidently armed, reaching for their concealed weapons and then restraining themselves. The Fat Dude and Thin Dude walked toward the warehouse door together, leaving the bodyguards behind. One of the two uniformed guards holstered his weapon, and so the thief shot the other guard first, and then the guard with the holstered weapon. In the darkness his weapon made no sound, and no light; the two men folded and the rope the thief was clinging to di
pped downward, and he stored his gun, reached down with his now empty hand and lifted the jewel up off the black velvet.
Sirens exploded in an insane racket. The thief vanished back up into the darkness abovenot climbing, the rope he held onto onto being pulled. The Thin Dude came sprinting back toward the stand, saw the two guards down on the ground and looked wildly aroundand still didn't look up.
The thief reached the ceiling, pushed aside a black blanket covering the hole he and his partner had cut into the roof, and light spilled down into the warehouse below. The Thin Dude finally did look upand ran for the stairs.
A young, dark-skinned man stood on the roof, under the bright winter sky. He pulled steadily on the rope, muscles straining, until the form of the black-clad man had reached the roof. He helped the thief to his feetand Jimmy Ramirez said breathlessly, "You get it?" and Trent pulled the hood off and grinned at him. "It's great to be me."
Jimmy unhooked the rope, retied it at the edge of the roof, and shimmied over the side.
Abruptly the Thin Dude burst up onto the roof, through the stairwell exit, holding a laser. He took one step and yelled: "Stop! Thieves!"
Jimmy froze, halfway over the edge of the roof. "Boy, that was fast."
Trent blinked. "They're not usually that quick."
Jimmy loosened his grip and slid down the rope, and Trent turned and sprinted to the other side of the roof, came to the edge and leaped without hesitating. The Thin Dude might shoot at him but there was no way the guy was going to catch him; Trent was the fastest runner in the Temple Dragons, possibly the fastest runner in the Fringe. Nobody else ran like himnobody else was like him. He crossed two buildings, leaped over another alleway and came down on the roof facing him, ran across that roof on a diagonal in the general direction of the Temple, and finally glanced back to see how far behind he'd left his pursuit.
The Thin Dude was gaining on him. Trent frozeovercame his shock, turned and ran. He hit the edge of the next roof, dropped to his stomach and grabbed the rain gutter and swung himself over the edge and dropped to the ground. He hit the ground running, flew down the alleway, turned a corner, turned another corner, saw an open doorway and ducked through that and then down a long corridor, into another building, into the space between two buildings and through the back entrance of the Temple of Eris where a tall black man he had never seen before, with sweat dripping off him and onto his Reverend's robes, standing there in the center of Reverend Pena's Temple. The tall man turned to look at Trent, features clouding with anger in the heartbeat before the door behind Trent burst open, and the Thin Dude charged through with his laser drawn, screaming at the entire Temple, but mostly at Trent:
"Nobody move!"
Trent and the Thin Dude stood facing one another across the length of five meters, pointing their weapons at each other.
Trent said, "What are you, a track star?"
The Thin Dude was breathing heavily, and the tall Reverend, standing off to Trent's left, spoke, his voice the only noise in the silence: "Lamont Newman. Broke the 200-meter world record back in...what, '55?"
The Thin Dude, Lamont Newman, still gasping for breath, said, "Andrew Strawberry. Small world. It was '56." Sweat dripped off of him, and he shook his head to keep it out of his eyes, never looking away from Trent. "Andy, this bastard's not even breathing hard."
Reverend Andy glanced at Trent. The barest hint of amusement touched him. "You got old like me, Lamont. Can't keep up with the young bucks. It happens."
Newman said, "I want it back."
Trent stared at the man over his gunsight. "Put the gun down before someone gets hurt, and we'll discuss it."
Reverend Andy walked between them. "Both of you put down your guns. I won't have this in my church."
Both of them moved to the side to get Reverend Andy out of their line of sight.
"Kid, I'll shoot you."
Trent smiled at him. "No, you won't. That's an Excalibur 313. Emits a nice green beam."
Newman nodded. "You've got good eyesight. Problem with the 313 is that green cloth reflects a lot of the wavelength. But you're wearing"
Trent's black outfit shimmered and turned bright green.
"Oh," said Newman with honest admiration, "that's a great trick," and he fired. The green beam lashed out at Trent, and Trent lifted an arm to cover his face and stepped forward, firing. He pulled the trigger four times; and four times, squirts of liquid splashed over Newman. Newman staggered backward, dropped his gun, and collapsed.
There was a moment of silence.
Reverend Andy stared at Trent, his outrage palpable. "A squirt gun?"
And the crowd began to applaud. The same rhythmic applause that, moments earlier, they had been giving Reverend Strawberry.
Trent smiled at the man. "Complex 8-A. Fadeaway. Great stuff." He backed up, watching not Newman, but the man who had somehow taken over Reverend Pena's temple, with the crowd clapping and stomping, back out the way he had come in, waved once at the crowd and turned and ran, with Reverend Andy staring after him.
Early that evening Trent talked with his family about what had happened.
They lived together on Crown Street near Bedford, on the top two floors of what had, before the Troubles, been an apartment complex that people paid to live in. Now it belonged to the Temple Dragons, and Trent and Jimmy Ramirez, and Bird and Jodi Jodi, and Milla lived on the top two floors; a variety of Temple Dragons had lived, at various times, in the rooms on the bottom two floors. At the moment they were empty, which suited Trent and made Milla nervousif Gypsy Macoute came, there would be no one to fight them until they reached the family she was responsible for protecting.
She was twenty-five years old, which made her ancient; dark-haired, thin, with a wiry strength. Milla looked calm, and looked quiet, and was both of those things, and Trent had seen her kill a man with her bare hands.
Trent had lived with them all, in various places, since his fourteenth birthday. He could remember thinking them an odd crowd, all four of them, when he met them; but that was so long ago now, five years, that he had to make an effort to recall why he had thought them strange. Jimmy was the first one he'd met, and Milla had adopted the two of them as soon as the Temple Dragons had allowed her to, after the Temple Dragons had reluctantly concluded that Trent was not, after all, a webdancer. Jodi Jodi and Bird had turned up together, about a year after that; Trent did not know what had happened to either of them before Milla adopted them, except that Jodi Jodi said she couldn't remember anything between the onset of the Troubles, and being adopted by Milla; and that Bird, two years younger than Jodi Jodi, still had nightmares every other night, on average.
They sat in the living room together, with a small fire burning in the fireplace, the only heat in the great building. Each of them wore some prominent item of clothing in Temple Dragons colors, purple and gold.
When Milla heard the name she burst out, "The guy called him Andrew Strawberry?"
"Yeah," Trent said. "And Strawberry called him Lamont Newman. You know him?"
Milla and Jimmy looked at each otherTrent found himself baffled by their apparent excitement. Jimmy said slowly, gaining speed as he went on: "Yeah…he was my second grade teacher, before the Troubles. He was on the other side when they put up the Barrier. We never saw him again."
Trent did not think he had ever seen Milla look so animated. "He preached in the Flatbush Temple when I was a teenager. I never had him in school, but my sister who died in the Troubles, she had him. She said he was"
Jimmy said it with her: "the meanest man anyone ever saw." He and Milla looked at each other and grinned and Jimmy went on. "He was in the WFL"
Milla: "he was a linebacker for the Beijing Bears"
Jimmy: "and they won two Stupendous Bowls"
Milla: "and he killed someone once who tried to tackle him"
Jimmy: "and he killed students who didn't do their homework."
Milla paused, then said uncertainly, "That's not true. You don't know
that's true."
Trent, Jodi Jodi and Bird were looking back and forth between the two of them.
A thought struck Jimmy and Milla at the same moment. They turned to Trent and said in almost the same voice: "You left a body in his Temple?"
Trent blinked. "It wasn't a body. It was just...that guy I shot. He was fine. They knew each other," he assured them. "They probably talked about old times when he woke up."
In the silence, they considered this possibility together.
Jimmy said finally, "He knows a lot of people."
Jodi Jodi said skeptically, "He was really famous?"
Jimmy nodded. "I haven't heard about him since the Troubles, though. Five and a half years."
"Huh. So that would be less famous."
Milla said, "He was the best known person in Flatbush before the Troubles."
Jimmy added, "Or afterwards."
Bird spoke for the first time. "Until Trent."
Everyone looked at him.
Bird shrugged. "Everyone knows who Trent is."
Trent smiled. "The Reverend Strawberry didn't." A distant look touched his features. A message on his earphone, from his Image: the Orbital Eye they had hijacked earlier that day was still theirs, and it showed Reverend Strawberry making his way up the street, two Temple Dragons at his back, toward their home.
Trent said aloud, "He's here."
The others all glanced at one another; they didn't even question him any longer on such matters.
A few minutes later Reverend Andy entered the room, alone, leaving his his bodyguards outside. They all rose to greet him, Trent a little slowlyMilla flung herself across the room and threw herself into Reverend Andy's arms. The big man picked her up, hugged her, and put her back down again, a smile breaking out, and said softly, "Milla, darlin'."
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