The Sky Road

posture. Leave aside the fact that the Third World War did for nukes what the First did for gas. At least in terms of using them on Earth—the UN got away with the Heaviside Layer blasts, but that was a bit of a fluke. Leave aside the fact that the big money in orbit is becoming virtually Green with paranoia about nukes in space, too.”

Aha, Myra thought. She would not leave that aside, at all. This was the crux, however valid the rest of Sadie’s points were.

“Leave aside the fact that there simply aren’t that many big nukes left around. Suppose somebody came to us with, I dunno, a stash of old post-Soviet city-busters: laser-fusion jobs, long shelf-life, low maintenance. They still wouldn’t be any use to us, because our whole military doctrine has shifted away from reliance on nukes. There’s a lot more to maintaining a credible strategic nuclear deterrent than maintaining the actual weapons. You need missile and bomber crews, tactical boys, analysts, constant practice. Hell, I should know, I worked hard enough at dispersing the teams and scrubbing the records, back in my disarmament days. We don’t have people with the relevant skills any more, and we don’t have the people to train new ones. We need all our available skill pool to keep our stealth fighters flying, and our teletroopers, smart-battle tactics and techniques up to scratch.”

“1 think I see your point,” Myra said dryly. “So, by the same kind of reasoning, our offer of, uh, mining rights in Kazakhstan isn’t really of interest.”

“You could say that. That is the analogy, yes.”

Myra doubted that their reversal of analogy and actuality would have fooled any snoop for a second, but there was a protocol to be followed on these things. It was, she recalled, illegal for public officials under UN jurisdiction —after the Fall Revolution as much as before—to even discuss nuclear deterrence as a serious policy option.

And of course they hadn’t. Not in a way that would stand up in court, which was all that mattered.

“There is of course one advanced country that isn’t a banana republic just yet…” Myra said. “Never even rejoined the UN, come to that.”

Sadie shrugged. “Go to the Brits if you like,” she said; lighdy, but she acknowledged the implied threat. “Not my problem. But it will be somebody else’s.”

“Just so long as we know where we stand,” Myra said, likewise taking the hint. “OK Forget about the package deal. What about ground troops and air support?”

“The latter, maybe. At a pinch. And hardware. Hardware, we got. Troops, no.”

“Oh, come on. Even mercenaries. We can pay good rates.”

“Mercenaries?” Sadie laughed. “Mercenaries are the best we have. We use them to put some backbone into our crack regiments. And the crack troops are about all that’s left. It’s become just about impossible to raise ordinary grunts. Conscription? Don’t even think about it.”

Myra still looked sceptical. “I’ll show you,” Sadie told her.

They chatted amiably for a while longer, agreeing to dump on Khamadi and Ibrayev the detailed work of negotiating what little aid the US had to give; but basically, the discussion was over. Myra settled the bill, left a generous tip and followed Sadie out. As they recrossed the crowded pavement to the limo, Sadie startled Myra by walking boldly up to a bunch of Andean lads hanging around a headware stall. The boys looked her up and down, lazily curious.

“Hi, guys,” she said. “How’re you doin’?”

“Fine, lady, fine.”

“How ’bout work?”

“This our work.” They grinned at the stall’s owner, who smiled resignedly back.

“Ever thought of joining the Army? Good pay, great conditions. Tough guys like you could make a good go of it.”

They had to hold each other up, they were laughing so hard.

“Not gone get killed fighting hicks and geeks,” one of them said. The sweep of his arm took in everything from the Two Mile Tower to the stall’s bristling headware whiskers. He spat away, on to the pavement.

“You preferred tech to men,” he said. “Let tech defend you.”

11 The Rock Covenant

I followed Druin out of the tunnel and into the gallery of the seerstone growers without any idea of what he intended to do. Like him, I had my rifle slung and my hands empty. He strolled across the floor to a central aisle between the ranks of stone troughs and turned down it, walking in the same overall direction as we had been following in the tunnel—downwards, towards the old power-station.

“Hey!”

One of the growers came hurrying up. He was a stocky, dark man with sharp, darting eyes. His overalls were blue, dusted with white powder that caught the light like ground glass. He stopped a couple of metres in front of us and glared.

“What are you doing here?” he demanded. “How did you get in?”

“We’re—”

Druin motioned to me to be quiet.

“We’re just passing through,” he said. He gazed around the chamber with an expression of slack-jawed wonder. The other tinkers had stopped work and stood about watchfully. “It’s a fascinating place you’ve got here, I must say.”

“How did you get in here?” the tinker repeated, taking a step closer.

Druin jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “Oh, we were out chasing the deer,” he explained casually. “We came across a kind of—” he looked at me, as if searching for a word “—a manhole, would you call it? In the woods up there. We went down it for a bit of a lark, like, and made our way down through yon tunnel.”

Druin hitched his thumb under the rifle’s strap and added, “So if you don’t mind, we’ll just be on our way.”

The tinker showed more real amazement than Druin had feigned.

“You came through the tunnel?”

“Aye,” said Druin. “It’s got some real eerie hollows in it,” he added, with an appreciative wink. He began to walk forward, and I beside him. To my surprise the tinker stepped aside, with a glance and a small shake of the head to his colleagues. I suspected that no outsider had made it past the cavern’s spectral guardians for a long time, and that the tinkers here just didn’t know what to make of us.

On either hand of us were the stone troughs; the ones we passed first each contained a layer of tiny stones, gravel almost; subsequent ranks had larger and fewer stones, until we reached the very end, where a trough—or rather, by this point, a large circular tub—might contain a single boulder. On the floor below the troughs were oddly shaped stones, apparently discarded; some of these casualties of quality-control had evidently ended up in the tunnel. However, we saw no hollows in that chamber, and I wondered if I’d misunderstood the implied sequence of events, or if the light in there was too bright for such displays.

Within the stones themselves, queerly distorted by the rippling water, strange fleeting scenes played themselves out with a coherence that increased with the size of the stones. I had no leisure to inspect them, but several times I felt that the faces flickering across these smooth surfaces were faces I had seen in the tunnel.

The walls and ceiling of the unnatural cave converged to an entranceway to another passage, about two and a half metres high and two wide. It continued for about thirty metres ahead of us, beyond which a darker doorway loomed. This corridor was unmistakably artificial, its squared walls and ceiling being made of the same glazed substance as the shaft. Its lighting, too, was subdy different from that of the growing-gallery—though it came from similar glass panels, it had that overtone of yellow which marked it as ordinary electric lighting, if more powerful than usually encountered. Our footsteps rang on the ceramic floor, echoing sharply.

“You carried yourself cool in there,” I said to Druin.

“Ah, it’s all bluff,” he said. “They’ve got used to folks being scared by their bluff. But I reckon we’ll soon meet some who’re ready for us—our friends back there will have signalled ahead.”

“You’re not bothered?”