He squeezed Rocket Boys shoulder and walked away, no longer seeming drunk at all.
Rocket Boy watched the black lake mirror starbursts exploding in the black sky. Yan Yane said,
“He’s right about one thing. I talked with an old friend of mine who has a high position in the government. There’s no official plan to assassinate you, but people talk about it all the time. The Minister of Health in particular wishes you dead. He has never forgiven you for that warehouse job.”
“I can deal with him, and with anyone else who moves against me.” Rocket Boy felt himself smile. “You heard the captain. I’ve been given carte blanche.”
“There may be a more equitable way of dealing with the situation.”
Rocket Boy waited, still smiling. In the rare moments when he was alone these days, he’d taken to studying his face in any nearby reflective surface, trying on different expressions. It seemed to be the face of a stranger, as if he was an actor impersonating himself.
Yan Yane said, “I can arrange, through my old friend, a meeting with the Prime Minister. I am told that he is very willing to negotiate a settlement with you.”
“Is he offering me a job?”
“There is a position, if you want it. The Minister for Security is willing to step aside.”
“Do it,” Rocket Boy said, and Yan Yane bowed and walked away towards the far corner of the splendid, crowded room, where the Prime Minister held court.
It had warned Rocket Boy that sooner or later someone close to him would bring an offer like this. “The one who brings you the offer will be a traitor,” it had said. “He will have made a deal with your enemies. He will be seeking his own advancement in exchange for your life.”
If only it had been anyone other than the old man, Rocket Boy thought, feeling a splinter of ice prick his heart. But the moment of regret quickly passed. As usual, the pistol was right. Ordinary human sentiment was a luxury he could no longer afford. There was too much to do, and too much al stake. “We must finalize our plans” he said, whispering as if to himself.
We have already discussed this. It is too early—
“Examine your tactical database. Use your war-gaming capability. Find a way for me to prevail.”
Six days later, just an hour before the meeting with the Prime Minister was due to take place, Yan Yane came into Rocket Boys penthouse apartment and said, “If we don’t go now, we’ll be late.”
“I want to show you something,” Rocket Boy said, and took the old man by the arm and steered him across the dimly lit room to the big picture window.
They looked through their reflections in the armored glass at the twinkling grid of the city’s lights. Rocket Boy pointed to the spaceport, glittering beyond the boundary of the city like a satellite galaxy. “We’ve come a long way,” he said.
“And now is the time to consolidate what you have gained,” Yan Yane said.
Rocket Boy glanced at his watch. It was a few minutes shy of ten o’clock. “When I was living under the intersection, I always dreamed of escape. I sat up at night and watched the airplanes and space shuttles take off and land. And whenever I could scrape together a little spare money, I’d ride the bus to the entrance of the spaceport. I couldn’t go inside, of course, but I could stand at the gate and watch the people coming and going. The people from other stars who come here to do business or hunt the big animals of the wild. The people who crew their ships. I would dream that one day I would be like them.”
Yan Yane said nervously, “If you want to negotiate for the position of Minister of Transport, it’s a little too late—”
“I’m not going to be any part of the puppet government. They were responsible for the murders of my parents and thousands of others. If I joined them, I would share in their blood guilt.”
Rocket Boy walked across the room and picked up the pistol from a side table and turned to face Yan Yane, who stood straight-backed and quite still by the huge window in his expensive slate-blue suit, his white hair gleaming in the half dark of the room.
Rocket Boy said, “If you feed this simple elements like carbon and iron, nitrogen and phosphorous, it produces bullets that are little different from those fired by ordinary guns. But if you feed it more exotic elements, it can produce bullets that are really complicated little machines. The last batch looked like beetles. They flew off into the city to search out their targets, armed with detectors that can sniff out specific patterns of DNA, and stings that deliver a neurotoxin that is instantly fatal.
The men you were supposed to be taking me to meet, by now they are all dead.”
“I should have destroyed that thing a long time ago,” Yan Yane said.
“You are the only person close to me who does not carry a bullet to ensure loyalty. I trusted you.
I believed that you were my friend, and you broke my heart.”
“When you took the weapon from the spacer, you made a bargain with the devil,” Yan Yane said. “I’ve seen how using it has changed you, day by day. You’re no longer the innocent boy I befriended.”
“I changed when I decided that I had to kill Kalim,” Rocket Boy said. The pistol in his head was counting now, counting backwards from ten. “How you kill someone, whether you use a stone or a bullet or your bare hands, it doesn’t really matter. What matters is the intention, the resolve. That’s the real weapon.”
Spots of light flared in the center of the city, defining the boundary of the Green Zone. A moment later the armored glass trembled and sang as the shock waves of the explosions reached the penthouse. The lights flickered out for a moment, then came back, dimmer and redder now, running on battery power. The power grid was down, and apart from the fires flickering under rising columns of smoke, the city had gone completely dark, lit only by secondary explosions that were detonating here and there in the Green Zone.
“You’ve started a war you can’t win,” Yan Yane said.
“The pistol plugged itself into the information grid and downloaded copies of itself. It controls power and water, the information grid and the transport systems. It controls thousands of carts and mechs. It also controls the security systems of the police armories. Right now, my militia is arming itself.”
Vance entered the room, followed by half a dozen men carrying guns. Yan Yane barely flinched when Vance took his arm. The old man straightened his back and said, “You don’t see it, but you’ve become a monster.”
“I’m the weapon used by my people to free themselves from the enemy.”
Vance began to lead the old man out of the room, the armed men falling in behind them. As he went through the door, Yan Yane turned and said, “And who will free them from you?”
Then Rocket Boy was alone with his thoughts, and the pistol. He set the weapon on the table and walked to the window. Across the darkened city, thousands of sparks were springing into life at every intersection, where the people were setting up barricades. To the east, the lights of the spaceport still glittered—it had its own fusion generator.
Rocket Boy asked the pistol for a status report.
“My people are fighting for their lives and their homes. Everything in your database tells me that very few invading armies have prevailed against a resolute population. We will drive the enemy back to its borders. We must do to them what they did to us.”
“Freedom is not worthwhile if it is easily won.”
Something glinted as it passed through the light of a nearby lamp. It was one of the assassin bullets. It moved straight towards Rocket Boy, stopping a yard away, the needle in its blunt tip flicking in and out as if tasting the air.
“Are you frightened of me?”
