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
