The Sky Road

you by asking for ground troops. Or even teletroopers.”

“God, if it was that…” Jason had the long gaze again. “No, it’s a bit more complicated. You’re going to Ankara next, right?”

“What?”

“You’re going to ask the Turks for ground troops.”

“I don’t know where you got that idea,” Myra said, carefully not denying it. Ankara wasn’t on her itinerary at all, but she was very curious to know why Jason thought it was, and what bothered him about it.

“Sources,” Jason said. “Anyway, that’s what I’m here to tell you would be a very bad idea. If you want to get any help from the US, that is.”

“Hmm,” said Myra. She glanced at a soldier trawling a souvenir rack a few metres away. “I’m just looking at a US-made GI uniform, US KevlarPlus body armour, a US Robotics head-up with Raytheon AI, a US Colt Carbine- 14…”

“Yeah-yeah-yeah,” said Jason impatiently. “Valued customers. Old friends. Doesn’t mean we’d be happy to see their standard-issue US Army boots tramping all over Central Asia.”

“Even to stamp on the Sheenisov?”

Jason leaned his elbows on the table, steepled his hands in front of his face to mask his mouth, and spoke quiedy.

“Look, Myra, these ain’t communism’s glory days. I mean, in our glory days we’d have been pounding them with B-52s round the clock, for all the good that would have done. I understand your, ah, fraternal allies have tried that in their own inimitable way, with Antonovs. I’ve been authorised to let you know—off the record, and deniably—that if you come to New York or DC you’ll be welcome, and your requests will be listened to sympathetically. But. Our threat assessment of the Sheenisov—where the fuck did that name come from?—is pretty low-key. If a motorised horde of Mongols in plastic yurts want to plan their economy with steam-driven computers, that’s their problem, and if it turns out to be popular in your country, that’s yours.”

Myra stared at him, rocked back. “Jeez. That’s me told.”

“Hey, nothing personal. It had to be me—or someone like me—who told you this, because at the level you’re gonna be dealing with in NY or DC it’d be… undiplomatic and impolitic to put it to you so bluntly. I’m not saying you won’t get anything. You will, just—maybe not as much as you’d like.”

She narrowed her eyes, leaning forward again. He looked so straightforward, so frank. He couldn’t know about the nuclear card up her sleeve.

“OK, OK,” she said, as though not too bothered, which she wasn’t. “So, you’re more worried about the Turkish Federation expanding than you are about the SSU?”

“You got it. And, well, there are bigger concerns than that. The coup attempt has—let’s say it hasn’t made things easier for us.”

“How?”

Jason compressed his lips. “You’ll find out,” he said gloomily.

“All right,” said Myra. She swirled her beer, looked in it, divined no clues. She looked up and smiled at Jason. “Nothing personal, point taken. So let’s get back to personal.”

Jason relaxed suddenly. “Yeah, OIL.”

“And it’s from the Gaelic, by the way.”

“What?”

“The name—Sheenisov. I think it was David Reid who coined it.”

“Well, whaddaya know.”

“What I want to know,” said Myra, draining her glass and getting up, “is what’s this about them having steam-driven computers?”

“Ah,” said Jason, as they returned to the jeep, “I can tell you all about that.”

“Should you be driving?”

“Ah, I guess not’Jason switched the jeep over to autopilot, and as it took them back down the long road to Olu Deniz he told her all about the Sheenisov’s strange machines.

It was a strange machine that took her to America.

On her last morning she woke before Jason did, lay for a while, then reached automatically for her contacts. She was on the point of putting the disposables in when she noticed that she could see clearly, all around the room. A quick look out of the window confirmed that she wasn’t myopic any more. She brought her hand within two inches of her face, and it stayed in focus; she didn’t have long sight, either.

In the shower she looked down at her body, but apart from seeing her toes clearly she couldn’t see any difference. Towelling her head afterwards, she found a loose hair in her hand. She stared at it.

Jason, lookit that, lookit that!”

“Wha?” He sat up, looked at her, examined the hair.

“It looks like… a hair.”

“No, look at the end. No, the other end.”

“There’s something to see?”

Was he awake? She shook his shoulder again.

“There’s a quarter inch of blonde there! Not grey!”

“Oh, Jesus. I’ll take your word for it.”

“Hah,” she said. “Obviously the fix hasn’t done anything for your eyes. I’d have them checked, if I were you.”

“They’re good enough for the road, anyway.”

He helped her load her luggage on the jeep, disappeared politely—probably for another surreptitious phone- call—while she sweated through a final check-up by Dr Masound, and was waiting at the wheel of the jeep when she skipped out of the clinic and hopped in beside him.

“All set?”

“Yup. All clear.”

“Welcome to eternity,” he said, gunning the engine and slewing the jeep out of the driveway in a spatter of gravel.

“Just don’t send me there first!”

“Ah, I’ll be fine,” Jason said, turning right on to the road up into the hills, towards Fetiye. They climbed and climbed, overtaking taxis and trucks and dolmushes, being carefully polite to the troop-carriers. The valley farms and roadside stalls were almost all worked by astonishingly old people, who looked as though they’d had the basic metabolic rejuvenations but couldn’t afford the cosmetic ones. Instead of being small and stooped they were tall and straight, but their faces were like Benin masks, dark and corrugated, with bright eyes glittering out.

So, as Jason remarked, no change there.

They crested a rise and Myra could see again before and below them the impossibly blue, the Windolene-dark sea. A mile or so offshore, visible even from that distance, that height, was the ekran-oplan. Smaller craft buzzed around its hundred-metre length. Beyond them all the naval hovercraft and hydrofoils busily patrolled; still further away, across the strait towards Rhodes, Myra could make out their equally assiduous counterparts, the patrol-boats of the Greek Threat.

They followed the long swooping road down to Fetiye, passing the Lycian tombs in the cliffs and turning right before the mosque and down along the edge of the bazaar to the harbour’s long mole and esplanade. They pulled up at the embarkation point, beside a star-and-crescent flag and a glowering statue of Kemal.

The engine spun to a halt. Jason looked across at her.

“Well,” he said. “Will I ever see you again?”

“If we’re both going to live forever,” Myra said wryly, “probably yes.”

“I’ll take that as a no.” Jason stuck out his hand. “Still. It’s been a good few days. Keep in touch. And if the investigation turns up anything, VU be in touch.”

She caught his hand, her newly sharpened sight blurring suddenly. “Oh, don’t take it as a no!” she said, dismayed at his casual acceptance of her casual words as a permanent parting. This was like adolescence all over again, this was more than lust, she had a crush on him and she was saying the wrong things. She startled him with a fierce embrace, her lips wet on his, her eyelashes wet on his neck, and all the while thinking this wasn’t like her,