(Project Thor dates back—way back, apparently, to the middle of the last century or thereabouts—but it's an idea whose time had come. Project Thor envisioned putting a whole drekload of "semismart" projectiles in low Earth orbit, equipped with little more than a retro-rocket, some steering vanes, and a dog-brain seeker head on the tip. No warhead, because one isn't needed. Basically, they're just "smart crowbars." When you need to send a blunt message to someone, just send the appropriate commands to a couple dozen Thor projectiles. They fire their retros to kick themselves out of orbit, then plummet free toward the ground at some horrendous speed. Their seeker heads now start looking for an appropriate target, depending on their programming—a Main battle tank, maybe, or the dome of the Capitol Building ... or something that looks like an aircraft carrier. Down they come, packing Great Ghu knows how much kinetic energy, and whatever they hit just kinda goes away . . . probably accompanied by much pyrotechnics. In essence, then, Thor shots are just guided meteorites. Elegant idea, neh!
(That was the idea, but as far as anyone knew—up to 2017, at least—nobody had actually implemented Project Thor. To this day, nobody's precisely sure who fired the rounds that vaporized a couple of tons of seawater off the Enterprise's bows.
(But I can make a pretty good guess, based on some interesting coincidences. Coincidentally, 2017 was the year in which Ares Macrotechnology took over the old Freedom space station, the one they eventually modified and renamed Zurich-Orbital. Just as coincidentally, Ares was the only megacorp with orbital assets anywhere near the correct "window" for a Thor shot into the central Pacific. And—also coincidentally, of course—Ares was one of the megacorps with which our friend Danforth Ho had enjoyed the longest and most intense private discussions . . . Quelle chance . . .
(End of digression.)
So that was it. Screened by Aegis cruisers or not, there was no way a carrier battle group could intercept Thor shots, or survive them if they landed. Once more, the task force reversed course, and slunk dispiritedly into San Diego harbor. The feds recognized Hawai'i's independence, and King Kam IV became the head of a constitutional monarchy that still exists today. And they all lived happily ever after ...
Null! As I said before, megacorps don't give gifts; they make investments. Now they came to King Kam looking for some major return on their investments. Like special trade deals, extraterritoriality, and basically almost complete freedom to do biz as they saw fit in the islands.
The people of Hawai'i liked the idea of independence from the U.S., and they weren't convinced that immediately giving up that independence to the megacorps was such a swift idea. The leadership of Na Kama'aina—yep, it was still hanging around—decided that this was a perfect lever to pry away King Kam's popular support (and, ideally, to put their own figurehead—a real figurehead this time—on the throne). Campaigning on the platform of cutting back—way back—on the megacorps' freedoms, Na Kama'aina politicos won a significant number of seats in the legislature. King Kam suddenly found himself confronting a strong faction within his own government that was dedicated to tossing him out on his hoop. He managed to keep control of the majority, but it was a very close thing.
King Kam IV died in 2045—no, the Na Kama'aina didn't off him ... I don't think—and the faction of the government that had backed him retained just enough influence to put the successor he'd designated on the throne: his son, Gordon Ho. At age twenty-five, our boy Gordon became King Kamehameha V, and still wears the funky yellow-feathered headdress of the Ali'i.
I was still chewing over all the facts I'd absorbed and trying to make overall sense of them when the suborbital touched down at Awalani—"Sky Harbor."
"Welcome to Hawai'i," the flight attendant announced.
5
Call it the Montgomery Principle of Inverse Relationships. The faster you can get somewhere, the longer the wait for customs at the other end. Honolulu's Awalani Airport added another nice, big data-point to my mental graph.
I timed it. After spending only forty-some minutes to travel six thousand klicks, it took more than sixty minutes to traverse the fifteen meters from the end of the customs/immigration lineup to freedom in the lobby of the airport.
The only difference between the Hawai'ian customs officials and the functionaries who'd hassled me at Casper was the tans. Other than that, it was the same trolls in undersized uniforms watching from the sidelines while humorless drones asked me questions about whether I was importing meat products in my luggage. (I've always had the perverse impulse to ask a customs drone whether a dismembered body in my suitcase qualifies as "meat products . . .")
As I waited in the "Foreign Visitors" lineup, I watched with growling bitterness the speed with which the returning kama'ainas—the locals, Hawai'ian citizens—were processed through. No probing questions about meat products for them, and smiles and greetings of "Aloha" instead of a cold-voiced "Travel documentation, please."
At last I was through, though, into a pleasantly spacious and airy lobby, which suddenly struck me as packed with a disproportionate number of trolls and orks—at least in comparison to Cheyenne and even Seattle. Now that I thought about it, I remembered that the juvenile Columbia HyperMedia Encyclopedia had stated that the combined proportion of orks and trolls was something like thirty-three percent. What was it in Seattle? Closer to twenty-one, I thought. Well, I'd always heard that the Hawai'ians bred them big.
* * *
Through the customs nonsense at last, I started thinking about my next problem. Namely, where the frag was I going, and to do what? I'd be met—that's what the dwarf with the road-kill eyebrows had told me at Casper. By who, though, that was the question?
A question that was answered almost immediately. As I stood there looking vaguely lost, a figure separated itself from a passel of camera-laden Nihonese tourists, and approached. A large figure—an ork with a rather astounding set of shoulders and small tusks that looked impossibly white against his tanned skin—wearing a well-tailored business suit. In his big hands he held a little laser-printed sign that read "Tozer." This time I didn't have any trouble remembering that was supposed to be me, so I beckoned him over.
He gave me a broad smile that would have looked much more friendly without those fangs. "Mr. Brian Tozer?" he asked me in a voice like midnight and velvet.
I nodded. "That's me." I reached in my pocket and pulled out my credstick, the one with my digital password stored in memory, and offered it to him.
He chuckled—a sound like big rocks rolling in a fast-flowing stream—and waved it off. "I know you're you, Mr. Tozer," he said. "You look a lot healthier in person, y'know."
He'd probably seen my driver's license holo, or something like it, I figured. (If you ever actually look like your license holo, you're too sick to drive ...) I shrugged. "Have it your way ..." I hesitated, not knowing what to call him.
"Scott," he told me. "You can call me Scott, Mr. Tozer."
"Dirk," I responded automatically, then quickly corrected, "My name's Brian, but everyone's always called me Dirk." Frag, I had to be jet-lagged or something.
Scott's big brown eyes twinkled. "Dirk's chill with me," he said. "Let's get your luggage."
* * *
First-class passengers' luggage was routed to its own carousel, and most of my flight-mates had already collected theirs and cruised before the first bag even showed up in the cattle-class area. I pointed out my single bag, which Scott scooped up like it weighed nothing, then tossed it onto a little automated baggage cart that followed him around like a loyal spaniel. We led the spaniel-cart out of the terminal onto the road.
That's when the heat first hit me. Hell, it was only a little past oh-six-hundred, but I guessed the temperature was already around twenty-seven degrees, and the humidity was something horrendous. In seconds I felt my shirt start to stick to my back. Scott must have sensed my discomfort, because he chuckled again, and announced, "Going to be a nice toasty one, today. We're looking for thirty-one, thirty-two by mi
daftemoon." He touched the cloth of my black shirt. "Hope you brought something a little more practical to wear, brah." I glanced pointedly at his suit, and he smiled again. "Yeah, but I'm paid to be uncomfortable."
The sky was still dark—that's right, it was the tropics, wasn't it? Dawn would be later and more sudden than I was used to in Cheyenne—but the sodium lights were almost as bright as day. Under their yellow glare, I saw where Scott was leading me: a metallic charcoal gray limo, a Rolls-Royce Phaeton, or some close cousin. A huge, low-slung thing that looked like it was doing Mach 2 while still parked at the curb. I let out a long, low whistle to show I was impressed.
Scott shrugged those massive shoulders. "Yeah," he acknowledged. "I still feel like that sometimes." From his pocket he pulled a little remote and pushed a button. With a silky whine like a high-speed turbine, the engine lit, and a moment later one of the oversized doors into the passenger compartment swung silently open. As the ork-chauffeur retrieved my bag from the spaniel-cart and tossed it into a trunk big enough for a game of Urban Brawl, I climbed into the back of the Phaeton.
Mental note: I must acquire myself one of these things at some point. Not to drive. To live in.
The passenger compartment looked bigger than some lower-class dosses I've rented; a huge, overstuffed couch where you'd expect there to be a rear seat. No, I corrected instantly, it wasn't a couch ... unless you consider four-point harnesses to be standard equipment for your living room furniture. I settled down and felt the opulent upholstery wrap itself lovingly around my fundament. (Did the limo come with some device—a crane, perhaps—to pry passengers out of the deep seat again as an optional extra?) Impulsively, I pulled off my shoes and made fists with my toes in the deep-pile carpeting. (One of my favorite flat-film movies from the last century recommends it as a cure for jet-lag, and who am I to disagree?)
From the outside the big wraparound windows had been opaque, charcoal mirror-finish to match the coachwork. From inside they seemed to totally disappear ... except for the fact that some subtle polarization removed the glare from the brilliant sodium streetlights. Between me and the driver's compartment was an array that looked like a waist-height entertainment wall unit: trid set, various formats of optical players, a stereo system that would give my technophile buddy Quincy wet dreams for the rest of his life, and something that looked like a scrambled satellite uplink commo unit. And, oh yes ... a small liquor cabinet/wet-bar arrangement. Above the entertainment suite was a transparent kevlarplex screen. Through it I saw Scott slide into the front seat, push back a hank of hair, and slip a vehicle control line into his datajack. He turned around and grinned at me through a centimeter of reinforced kevlarplex. "Ready to go, Mr. Dirk?" His voice came from a hidden speaker somewhere behind my left ear.
"Only when you get rid of this thing," I told him, leaning forward to rap on the bulletproof screen. "I feel like I'm in an aquarium."
His chuckle sounded clearly from the hidden speakers as the screen whined down into the top of the entertainment suite. "Better?"
"Much." Another couple of centimeters of my anatomy was engulfed by the upholstery as Scott put the Phaeton into gear and pulled out smoothly. "Scott," I said after a moment, "your call. Do I need the four-point?"
"Hey, I know some tourists pay to be strapped down." I saw his large head shake. "You can get by with the lap-belt if you like, but you want something to keep you from rattling around if I have to do any heavy evasion."
As I fastened the lap-strap, I asked the next logical question. "Is that particularly likely? Evasion, I mean?"
My chauffeur shrugged. "Likely? No. Possible? Yeah." He snorted. "We've had a couple of wild moves against corp higher-ups this year, and the shooters might not bother to find out who's in the limo before they start busting caps, y'know what I mean?"
"Who's behind the wild moves?"
"ALOHA, who else?"
I blinked. "ALOHA? They're still around?"
"They're always around, brah. Some people are never satisfied with what they got. Yanks out, Japs out, haoles out..."
I cut him off. "Howlies?"
"Haoles." He spelled the word. "Anglos, brah. White folk. Foreigners ... like you, okay?" The smile I could hear in his voice robbed the words of offense. Then he continued, "Like I said, haoles out, corps out ..." He snorted again, letting me know what he thought about that attitude.
We pulled out of the airport compound, and onto a modern six-lane freeway. Scott opened up the throttle, and the Phaeton's turbine sang. I glanced at the wet bar, thought about it, then—what the frag anyway?—cracked it open and searched through the miniature bottles inside for some Scotch. Glenmorangie, twenty-five-year-old single-malt—well, that would certainly make the grade. The limo's active suspension ate up the road vibration so I had no trouble pouring a healthy shot into a heavy crystal glass and adding a splash of water. I silently toasted the back of Scott's head, and in the rearview mirror I saw his eyes crinkle in a smile. I sipped, and let the Scotch work its magic.
"Scott," I said after a couple of minutes, "you know who I am, right?"
He paused, and I knew he was thinking about how best to answer. "Of course I do, Mr. Tozer," he said at last.
I smiled. "Call me Dirk," I reminded him quietly.
He smiled again and admitted, "Okay, yeah, I know who you are."
"And Jacques Barnard told you what I was here for?"
"Don't know any Jacques Barnard," he lied firmly. "My boss is Elsie Vogel at Nebula." He paused. "But yeah, I know you're here to deliver a message, and I know who you're going to deliver it to."
"Tell me."
He shook his head. "You don't need to know that yet," he said, and for the first time I could hear the hint of steel under the friendliness. This well-dressed ork wasn't just any corp gofer, I realized, he had some juice. "I'll drive you there when the time comes," he went on, and again his voice was geniality itself. "Don't you worry about that."
"When?"
"Tomorrow, probably. The man you're to meet—he's on one of the outer islands today—won't be back till late tonight, early tomorrow morning. Emergency trip, or something like that." He turned for a moment and grinned at me over his shoulder. "Means you've got the whole of today and tonight to see the sights, brah. And me at your disposal." He hooked a large thumb at his chest. "Number one tour guide, that's me."
I sighed and contemplated that over another sip of Glenmorangie. I didn't really want to admit it, but I was enjoying myself. I kind of liked Scott—even knowing he had corporate steel under the good-ol'-boy exterior—and I certainly liked the idea of having a chauffeured limo at my beck and call. But . . .
But I had to keep my level of paranoia up. Despite all the trappings, this wasn't a vacation, this was biz. And, worse, I was in the dark about a lot of what the biz entailed. I didn't know who I had to meet, or why. I didn't know what would happen to me afterward. And I didn't know who or what had any interest in getting between me and the objective. I was out of my territory—I had to keep reminding myself of that—playing in someone else's yard, and out of my comfort zone. Who knows: Everything might come off as smooth as synthsilk. I deliver the message, maybe receive a reply, then Scott ferries me back to Awalani, and I'm winging my way home to Cheyenne. But if it didn't, and I suddenly found myself rather dead because I hadn't taken precautions, then I wouldn't even have the satisfaction of being able to haunt Barnard through all eternity. The fault would be my own, not his. I was exposed—that's what I had to remember, every moment of every day. And I had to do what I could to minimize that exposure. Which reminded me . . .
"Scott."
"Yes, Mr. Dirk?"
"I had to leave some ... personal effects .. . behind me on the mainland, if you know what I mean." The back of his neck wrinkled, and I knew he was grinning like a bandit. "I want to correct that problem. Can you help me out?"
"You really don't need it, y'know." He rapped on the driver's side window with a bulging knuckle. "Do you hav
e any idea what it takes to punch through this stuff?"
I wasn't going to be put off that easily. "Even so," I pressed. "Call it a good-luck charm .. . like a rabbit's foot. I just wouldn't feel comfortable without it."
He laughed aloud at that. "Yeah, a nine-millimeter rabbit's foot, I bet." He sobered quickly. "Okay. It's chill, brah, I'll buff you out." He glanced back again. "And I'll get you some appropriate clothes, too. Okay?"
"I've always been partial to kevlar," I told him, "if you can get it in one of my colors."
Ahead of us, against the blackness of the sky, I could see the lighted ziggurats of skyrakers. For a moment I had one of those moments of disorientation. I could as well have been cruising north on Highway 5 toward downtown Seattle as west on Hawai'i Route 1. In the dark most cities looked the same.
Again, Scott seemed to pick up my unspoken thought. "Too bad you had to catch the red-eye. This is a real nice view—a good intro to the city, y'know what I mean?"
"So what's Honolulu like?" I asked him. "You live in the city, don't you?"
"Yeah, I've got a place in the Nebula complex." He shrugged. "It's a city, y'know? It's got its good points and it's got its bad points. Places you shouldn't miss, and places you shouldn't be caught dead. It's got its corporators, it's got its burakumin"—he used the Japanese term for the homeless or dispossessed, an insulting word that was gaining currency among corp suits to refer to people without corporate affiliation—"and it's got its tourists." He laughed. "Bruddah, does it have its tourists."
"High-level corps types?"
"Most of them, yeah. Whole swarms of them coming over from Asia, and some from Europe. But there's still the mom-and-pop types who've saved for years to get away and splash money around for a while."
"That's what drives the economy, isn't it? Tourism?"
"That's what the mainland guidebooks say," he agreed. "But most of it's corp-driven, really. Hey, Hawai'i's the biggest corporate free port going. Where do you think the money comes from?"
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