Halo

by Tom Maddox

  Myanmar trembled on the edge of chaos, beset by a multi-ethnic mix

  of Karens, Kachins, and Shans in various political postures, all

  fierce, all contemptuous of the central government. They fought

  with whatever was at hand, from sharpened stick to backpack

  missile, and they only quit when they died.

  A high-pitched wail built quickly until it filled the air.

  Within seconds a silver swing-wing, an ungainly thing, each huge

  rectangular wing loaded with a bulbous, oversized engine pod, came

  low over the dark mass of forest. Its running lights flashing red

  and yellow, the swing-wing slewed to a stop above the field, wings

  tilting to the perpendicular and engine sound dropping into the

  bass. Its spots picked out a ten-meter circle of white light that

  the aircraft dropped into, blowing clouds of sand that swept over

  Gonzales in a whirlwind. The inverted fans' roar dropped to a

  whisper, and with a creak the plane kneeled on its gear, placing

  the cockpit almost on the ground. Gonzales picked up his bags and

  walked toward the plane. A ladder unfolded with a hydraulic hiss,

  and Gonzales stepped up and into the plane's bubble.

  "Mikhail Gonzales?" the pilot asked. His multi-function

  flight glasses were tilted back on his forehead, where their

  mirrored ovoid lenses made a blank second pair of eyes; a thin

  strand of black fiberoptic cable trailed from their rim. Beneath

  the glasses, his thin face was brown and seamedno cosmetic work

  for this guy, Gonzales thought. The man wore a throwaway

  "tropical" shirt with dancing pink flamingos on a navy blue

  background.

  "That's me," Gonzales said. He gestured with the shock-case

  in his right hand, and the pilot toggled a switch that opened the

  luggage locker. Gonzales put his bags into the steel compartment

  and watched as the safety net pulled tight against the bags and

  the compartment door closed. He took a seat in the first of eight

  empty rows behind the pilot. Cushions sighed beneath him, and

  from the seatback in front of him a feminine voice said, "You

  should engage your harness. If you need instructions, please say

  so now."

  Gonzales snapped closed the trapezoidal catch where shoulder

  and lap belts connected, then stretched against the harness,

  feeling the sweat dry on his skin in the plane's cool interior.

  "Thank you," said the voice.

  The pilot was speaking to Myaung U Airport traffic control as

  the plane lifted into twilight over the city. The soft white glow

  from the dome light vanished, then there were only the last

  moments of orange sunlight coming through the bubble.

  The temple plain was spread out beneath, all murk and shadow,

  with the temple and pagoda spires reaching up toward the light,

  white stucco and gold tinted red and orange.

  "Man, that's a beautiful sight," the pilot said.

  "You're right," Gonzales said. It was, but he'd seen it

  before, and besides, it had already been a long day.

  The pilot flipped his glasses down, and the plane banked left

  and headed south along the river. Gonzales lay back in his seat

  and tried to relax.

  They flew above black water, following the Irrawady River

  until they crossed an international flyway to Bangkok. Dozing in

  the interior darkness, Gonzales was almost asleep when he heard

  the pilot say, "Shit, somebody's here. Partisan attack group,

  probablyno recognition codes. Must be flying ultralightsour

  radar didn't see them. We've got an image now, though."

  "Any problem?" Gonzales asked.

  "Just coming for a look. They don't bother foreign

  charters." And he pointed to their transponder message flashing

  above the primary displays:

  THIS INTERNATIONAL FLIGHT IS NON-MILITARY.

  IT CLAIMS RIGHT OF PASSAGE

  UNDER U.N. ACT OF 2020.

  It would keep on repeating until they crossed into Thai airspace.

  The flight computer display lit bright red with COLLISION

  WARNING, and a Klaxon howl filled the plane's interior. The

  pilot said, "Fuck, they launched!" The swing-wing's turbines

  screamed full out as the plane's computer took command, and the

  pilot's hands gripped his yoke, not guiding, just hanging on.

  Gonzales's straps pulled tight as the plane tumbled and fell,

  corkscrewed, looped, climbed againsmart metal fish evading fiery

  harpoons. Explosions blossomed in the dark, quick asymmetrical

  bursts of flame followed immediately by hard thumping sounds and

  shock waves that knocked the swing-wing as it followed its chaotic

  path through the night.

  Then an aircraft appeared, flaring in fire that surged around

  it, its pilot in blazing outlinea stick figure with arms thrown

  to the sky in the instant before pilot and aircraft disintegrated

  in flame.

  Their own flight went steady and level, and control returned

  to the pilot's yoke. Gonzales's shocked retinas sparkled as the

  night returned to blackness. "Collision averted," the plane's

  computer said. "Time in red zone, six point eight nine seconds."

  "What the hell?" Gonzales said. "What happened?"

  "Holy Jesus motherfucker," the pilot said.

  Gonzales sat gripping his seat, chilled by the blast of cold

  air from the plane's air conditioner onto his sweat-soaked shirt.

  He glanced down to his lap: no, he hadn't pissed himself.

  Really, everything happened too quickly for him to get that

  scared.

  A Mitsubishi-McDonnell "Loup Garou" warplane dived in front

  of them and circled in slow motion. Like the ultralights it was

  cast in matte black, but with a massive fuselage. It turned a

  slow barrel roll as it circled them, lazy predator looping fat,

  slow prey, then turned on brilliant floods that played across

  their canopy.

  The pilot and Gonzales both froze in the glare.

  Then the Loup Garou's black cockpit did a reverse-fade;

  behind the transparent shell Gonzales saw the mirror-visored

  pilot, twin cables running from the base of his neck. The Loup

  Garou's wings slid forward into reverse-sweep, and it stood on its

  tail and disappeared.

  Gonzales strained against his taut harness.

  "Assholes!" the pilot screamed.

  "Who was that?" Gonzales asked, his voice thin and shaking.

  "What do you mean?"

  "The Myanmar Air Force," the pilot said, his voice tight,

  face red beneath the flight glasses' mirrors. "They set us up, the

  pricks. They used us to troll for a guerrilla flight." The pilot

  flipped up his glasses and stared with pointless intensity out the

  cockpit window, as if he could see through the blackness. "And

  waited," he said. "Waited till they had the whole flight." The

  pilot swiveled around abruptly and faced Gonzales, his features

  distorted into a mad and angry caricature of the man who had

  welcomed Gonzales ninety minutes before. "Do you know how fucking

  close we came?" he asked.

  No, Gonzales shook his head. No.

  "Milliseconds, man. Fucking milliseconds. Close enough to

  touch," the pilot said. He swiveled his
seat to face forward, and

  Gonzales heard its locking mechanism click as he settled back into

  his own seat, fear and shame spraying a wild neurochemical mix

  inside his brain

  Gonzales had never felt things like this beforedeath down

  his spine and up his gut, up his throat and nose, as close as his

  skin; death with a bad smell burning, burning

  2. Anything I Can Do to Help You

  As the morning passed, the sun moved away from the stained

  glass, and the room's interior went to gloom. Only monitor lights

  remained lit, steady rows of green above flickering columns of

  numbers on the light blue face of the monitor panel.

  A housekeeping robot, a pod the size of a large goose, worked

  slowly across the floor, nuzzled into the room's corners, then

  left the room, its motion tentacles beneath it making a sound like

  wind through dry grass.

  #

  The cockpit display flashed as landing codes fed through the

  flight computer, then the swing-wing locked into the Bangkok

  landing grid and began its slide down an invisible pipe. They

  went to touchdown guided by electronic hands.

  The pilot turned to Gonzales as they descended and said,

  "I'll have to file a report on the attack. But you're luckyif

  we had landed in Myanmar, government investigators would have been

  on you like white on rice, and you could forget about leaving for

  days, maybe weeks. You're okay now: by the time they process the

  report and ask the Thais to hold you, you'll be gone."

  At the moment, the last thing Gonzales wanted to do was spend

  any time in Myanmar. "I'll get out as quickly as I can," he said.

  Now that it was all over, he could feel the Fear climbing in

  him like the onset of a dangerous drug. Trying to calm himself,

  he thought, really, nothing happened, except you got the shit

  scared out of you, that's all.

  As the swing-wing settled on the pad, Gonzales stood and went

  to pick up his luggage from the open baggage hold. The pilot sat

  watching as the plane went through its shutdown procedures.

  Do something, Gonzales said to himself, feeling panic mount.

  He pulled the memex's case out of the hold and said, "I want a

  copy of your flight records."

  "I can't do that."

  "You can. I'm working with Internal Affairs, and I was

  almost killed while flying in your aircraft."

  "So was I, man."

  "Indeed. But I need this data. Later, IA will go the full

  official route and pick everything up, but I need it now. A quick

  dump into my machine here, that's all it will take. I'll give you

  authorization and receipt." Gonzales waited, keeping the pressure

  on by his insistent gaze and posture.

  The pilot said, "Okay, that ought to cover my ass."

  Gonzales slid the shock-case next to the pilot's seat,

  kneeled and opened the lid. "Are you recording?" he asked the

  pilot.

  The man nodded and said, "Always."

  "That's what I thought. All right, then: for the record,

  this is Mikhail Mikhailovitch Gonzales, senior employee of

  Internal Affairs Division, SenTrax. I am acquiring flight records

  of this aircraft to assist in my investigation of certain events

  that occurred during its most recent flight." He looked at the

  pilot. "That should do it," he said.

  He pulled out a data lead from the case and snapped it into

  the access plug on the instrument panel. Lights flashed across

  the panel as data began to spool into the quiescent memex. The

  panel gonged softly to signal transfer was complete, and Gonzales

  unplugged the lead and closed the case. "Thanks," he said to the

  pilot, who sat staring out the cockpit bubble.

  Gonzales stood and patted the case and thought to himself,

  hey, memex, got a surprise for you when you wake up. He felt much

  better.

  #

  A carry-slide hauled Gonzales a mile or so through a

  brightly-lit tunnel with baby blue plastic and plaster walls

  marked with signs in half a dozen languages promising swift

  retribution for vandalism. Red and green virus graffiti smeared

  everything, signs included, and as Gonzales watched, messages in

  Thai and Burmese transmuted, and new stick figures emerged with

  dialogue balloons saying god knows what. A lone phrase in red

  paint read in English, HEROIN ALPHA DEVIL FLOWER. Shattered

  boxes of black fibroid or coarse sprays of multi-wire cable marked

  where surveillance cameras had been.

  Grey floor-to-ceiling steel shutters blocked the narrow

  portal to International Arrivals and Departures. Faceless

  holoscan robotsdark, wheeled cubes with carbon-fiber armor and

  tentacles and spiked sensor antennasworked the crowd, antennas

  swiveling.

  All around were Asian travelers, dark-suited men and women:

  Japanese, Chinese, Malaysians, Indonesians, Thai. They spread out

  from Asia's "dragons," world centers of research and

  manufacturing, taking their low margins and hard sell to Europe

  and the Americas, where consumption had become a way of life.

  Everywhere Gonzales traveled, it seemed, he found them: cadres

  armed with technical and scientific prowess and fueled by

  persistent ambition.

  They formed the steel core of much of the world's prosperity.

  The United States and the dragons lived in uneasy symbiosis: the

  Asians had a hundred ways of making sure the American economy

  didn't just roll over and die and take the prime North American

  consumer market with it. Whether Japanese, Koreans, Taiwanese,

  Hong Kong Chinese-Canadiansthey bought some corporations and

  merged with others, and Americans ended up working for General

  Motors Fanuc, Chrysler Mitsubishi, or Daewoo-DEC, and with their

  paychecks they bought Japanese memexes, Korean autos, Malaysian

  robotics.

  Shutter blades cranked open with a quick scream of metal, and

  Gonzales stepped inside. An Egyptian guard in a white headdress,

  blue-and-white checked headband, and gray U.N. drag cross-checked

  his i.d., gave a quick, meaningless smileteeth white and perfect

  under a black moustacheand waved him on.

  Southeast Asian Faction Customs waited in the form of a small

  Thai woman in a brown uniform with indecipherable scrawls across

  yellow badges. Her features were pleasant and impassive; she wore

  her black hair pulled tightly back and held with a clear plastic

  comb. She stood behind a gray metal table; on the floor next to

  it was a two-meter high general purpose scanner, its controls,

  screens, and read-outs hidden under a black cloth hood. Dirty

  green walls wore erratically-spaced signs in a dozen languages,

  detailing in small type the many categories of contraband.

  The woman motioned for him to sit in the upright chair in

  front of the table, then for him to put his clothes bag and cases

  on the table.

  She spoke, and the translator box at her waist echoed in

  clear, neuter machine English: "Your person has been scanned and

  cleared." She put the soft brown bag into the mouth of the

  scanner, and
the machine vetted the bag with a quiet beep. The

  woman slid it back to Gonzales.

  She spoke again, and the translator said, "Please open these

  cases" as she pointed toward the two shock-cases. For each,

  Gonzales screened the access panel with his left hand and tapped

  in the entry codes with his right. The case lids lifted with a

  soft sigh. Inside the cases, monitor and diagnostic lights

  flashed above rows of memory modules, heavy solids of black

  plastic the size of a small safety deposit box.

  Gonzales saw she was holding a copy of the Data Declaration

  Form the memex had filled out in Myanmar and transmitted to both

  Myanmar and Thai governments. She looked into one of the cases

  and pointed to a row of red-tagged and sealed memory modules.

  The translator's words followed behind hers and said, "These

  modules we must hold to verify that they contain no contraband

  information."

  "Myanmar customs did so. These are SenTrax corporate

  records."

  "Perhaps they are. We have not cleared them."

  "If you wish, I will give you the access protocols. I have

  nothing to hide, but the modules are important to my work."

  She smiled. "I do not have proper equipment. They must be

  examined by authorities in the city." The translator's tones

  accurately reflected her lack of concern.

  Gonzales sensed the onset of severe bureaucratic

  intransigence. For whatever occult reasons, this woman had

  decided to fuck him around, and the harder he pushed, the worse

  things would be. Give it up, then. He said, "I assume they will

  be returned to me as soon as possible."

  "Certainly. After careful examination. Though it is

  unlikely that the examination can be completed before your

  departure." She slid the case off her desk and to the floor

  behind it. She was smiling again, a satisfied bureaucrat's smile.

  She turned back to her console, Gonzales's case already a thing of

  the past. She looked up to see him still standing there and said,

  "How else can I help you?"

  #

  The machine-world began to disperse, turning to fog, and as

  it did, banks of low-watt incandescents lit up around the room's

  perimeter, and the patterns of console lights went through a

  series of rapid permutations as Gonzales was brought to a waking

  state. The room's lights had been full up for an hour when the