She stood and strode away from him, up the hill, her angry
steps kicking dirt off the stones. She stopped and turned to face
him. 'Come on, Mister Gonzales,' she said.
Cautiously holding the thorny stem, he followed her up the
path.
#
Diana Heywood and Gonzales sat drinking tea. He said, 'I'm
the outside observer, yesthe spy, if you wantbut I don't think
we're at odds. They're asking you to do one job, me to do
another, but I don't see where our jobs conflict.' She turned to
look at him; one eye was blue, the other green.
She said, 'When Sentrax called me last week, that was the
first time I'd heard from them since they got rid of me years ago.
Not that they treated me badly, not by their standards. When they
fired me, years ago, they didn't just turn me loose, they paid me
well they're so prudentit was like oiling and wrapping a tool
before you put it away, because you might need it again. Now
they've found a use for me and unwrapped me and put me to work,
but I know they don't trust me. And of course I don't trust
them.' She stood up. She said, 'Come on, I'll show you what this
all means to me.'
She led Gonzales into the next room, where their entry
triggered the lighting systems. Silk walls the color of pale
champagne were broken with floor-to-ceiling rosewood bookcases;
teak-framed sling chairs and matching tables stood together under
a multi-armed chrome lamp stand.
She stopped in front of a 1:6 scale hologram of a thin-
featured man, apparently ill at ease at being holoed; hands in
pockets, shoulders hunched, eyes not centered on the lens.
'That's Jerry,' she said, pointing to the hologram. 'He's
what this is all about, so far as I'm concerned. He's been
terribly injured, and Aleph thinks something can be done for him,
and as unlikely as that seems, given the extent of his injuries, I
will help as best I can.' She looked at him, her face giving
nothing away, and said, 'Are we leaving tomorrow morning?'
'Yes.'
'Well, then, I'd better get ready, hadn't I? Where are you
staying?'
'I thought I'd get a hotel room.'
'No need. You can sleep here. I'll finish packing, and
we'll go out to eat.'
#
Diana Heywood and Gonzales sat high in the Berkeley Hills,
looking onto the vast conurbations spread out beneath them. To
their right, the carpet of lights stretched away as far as they
could see, to Vallejo and beyond. In front of them lay Berkeley,
the dark mass of the bay, then the clustered lights of Sausalito
and Tiburon against the hills. Oakland was to their left,
reaching out to the Bay Bridge; and beyond the bridge, San
Francisco and the peninsula. Connecting all, streams of
automobiles moved in the symmetry of autodrive.
Gonzales's mouth still tingled from the hot chilies in the
Thai food, and he had a buzz from the wine. They had eaten at a
restaurant on the North Side, and afterward Diana Heywood guided
the Truesdale up the winding road to an overlook near Tilden Park.
As minutes passed, the streets and highways and
municipalities disappeared into semiotic abstraction these
millions of human beings all gathered here for purposes one could
only guess atsome conscious, most not, no more than a beaver's
assembly of its structures of mud and wood.
A robot blimp passed across their line of sight. Beneath it,
a sailboat hung upside down. It swayed from lines that connected
its inverted keel to the blimp's featureless gondola. Lights on
the side of the blimp read EAST BAY YACHT OUTFITTERS.
Diana Heywood said, 'I know you people have your own agendas,
and that's finethat's the nature of the beastbut if you
complicate these matters because of corporate politics, I will
become very difficult.'
Gonzales said, 'I have no intention of being a problem.'
'Well,' she said. 'Maybe you won't be.' She turned to him.
'But remember this: you're just doing your job, but the stakes
are higher for me. Aleph, Jerry, and Iwe've known each other
for years, and I've got unfinished business up there. Also, I
want to get back in the game.'
'I don't understand.'
'Sure you do, Mister Gonzales. You're in the game, have been
for years, I'd guess. Unless I'm seriously mistaken, it's what you
live for.' She laughed when he said nothing. 'Well, I've done
other things, and for a long time I've been out of the game, but
I'm ready for a change. Silly SenTrax bastardsmanipulating me
with their calls, sending you oh yeah, you're part of it, you
remind me of Jerry years ago, if you don't know that.'
'No, I didn't.'
'It doesn't matter. Their machinations don't matter. They
want to convince me to come to Halo?' She laughed. 'My past is
there, when I was blind and Aleph and I were linked to one another
in ways you can't imagine and I found a lover I'd wish to find
again. Come to Halo? I'd climb a rope to get there.'
#
Gonzales had flown into McAuliffe Station once before, though
he'd never taken an orbital flight. In the high Nevada desert,
the station stayed busy night and day. Heavy shuttles composed
the main traffic: wide white saucers that lifted off on ordinary
rockets, then climbed away with sounds like bombs exploding when
orbital lasers lit the hydrogen in their tanks. Flights in
transit to Orbital Monitor & Defense Command stations were marked
with small American flags and golden DoD insignia. Cargo for them
went aboard in blank-faced pallets loaded behind opaque,
machinepatrolled fences half a mile from the main terminal across
