Mirrored Heavens

how on edge they are. He’s never felt more relaxed.

“It’s the reason I knocked,” he adds.

“Ah,” says Riley.

“And now you’re going to tell me what’s going on.”

“Who says we know?” says Maschler.

“You know a hell of lot more than I do.” The faintest edge is starting to creep into the Operative’s voice. “You’re in the cockpit of an Antares. You’re hauling a few hundred tons of cargo. Your communications are supposed to be continual throughout the initial ramp. You’ve got cameras pointed in every direction. You’ve cut me off from the outside world because you thought I might be involved with what’s going down. And I am. But only in the same way you are. So help me out here, gentlemen. Because it’s the only way I can help you.”

“You can’t help,” says Riley. “I wish you could.”

“What’s going on out there has nothing to do with us,” says Maschler.

“It does now,” replies the Operative softly.

“We just want to run our freight,” says Riley. “We never looked for trouble.”

“We should have shut off those cameras,” says Maschler.

“It’s okay,” says the Operative. His voice is soothing. “It’ll be okay.”

Maschler and Riley look at each other. “You tell him,” says Maschler.

“No you,” says Riley.

“You start,” says Maschler.

And Riley does.

* * *

The journey upriver. Once you start along that winding road you don’t stop. You just keep on rushing toward that distant source.

“You’ve set the water on fire.”

“Like I had a choice.”

He didn’t want to. But there was too much floating hardware chasing them. So Marlowe’s hit downstream with jets of flame. The fact that there’s more pollution than water in that river means it’s burning merrily. Now the only thing they have to outrace is fire. Smoke is wafting everywhere. The temperature’s starting to rise.

“How you feeling?”

“Warm.”

“But still breathing.”

“I’ll let you know when that starts to be an issue.”

Marlowe figures that will be soon. The tolerance of a breath-mask is far lower than a suit’s. The people out there must be dying in the thousands. And that’s just in this district. He doesn’t even want to think about the rest of it. The rising that the Jaguars had sought to bring about is finally underway. The city’s final demise has finally begun. The canopy of smoke is growing ever thicker. The topography’s getting ever more complex. The river keeps on forking—into channels that diverge, converge, intersect with one another. But Marlowe steers his way through them with the confidence of one who’s got nothing save the latest maps.

“Complicated,” says the razor.

“It’s Amazon,” he replies.

Roof closes in above this channel of the river. The smoke in here’s too dense for anyone lacking masks to breathe. But through that smoke they can see the combat all around them. Looks like this is the day of reckoning among the river-pirates. Shantytowns along the shore are in the throes of combustion. The combatants spare scarcely a shot for the ones now streaking past them and back into the open. Though open’s a relative concept. The smoke’s almost thicker than it was within that enclosure. The heat is overwhelming. Marlowe’s temperature readouts are climbing inexorably.

“We’re not going to make it,” he says.

“I know.”

Not that it’s not obvious now. The fires sweeping the buildings on both shores are merging, covering the river ahead. They’re blocking the way forward. There’s nothing but smoke and flame in front of them. Oxygen’s being sucked up to heaven, taking God knows how many souls with it.

“One choice,” he says.

“Right,” she replies.

They streak upward.

Somewhere in that sky two men regard a third. They’re not accustomed to having their cargo crash their party. They’re not down with the notion of taking orders from their freight. They’re used to being firmly in control.

They’re making a rapid adjustment all the same.

“We don’t know the whole story,” says Riley.

“We don’t know what the hell’s going on,” says Maschler.

“No one’s told us a goddamn thing. We’ve been cut off.”

“We only know what we can see.”

“That’s all I want,” says the Operative.

“The missiles.”

“Yes,” replies the Operative.

“They weren’t just from Belem-Macapa.”

“They came from all the Latin cities.”

“The damage is near total.”

“Damage where?” says the Operative.

“They wiped out Cabo Norte.”

“And three other major bases.”

“Must have been quite a sight,” says the Operative.

“But that was only half of them,” says Riley.

“The other half were pointed upward,” says Maschler.

“Pointed where?” asks the Operative.

Maschler and Riley look at one another. They look back at the Operative.

“Pointed where?” he demands.

“At the Elevator.”

“And did they hit?”

“Of course not.”

“They were climbing the whole way. They were sitting ducks.”

“But they were just the first wave.”

“The first wave,” repeats the Operative.

“Yes,” says Riley.

“And the second?”

“Was fired by the neutral satellites,” says Riley.

“Seventeen of them,” adds Maschler.

“All in close proximity to the Elevator.”

“They unleashed space-to-spacers.”

“At point-blank range.”

“But the def-grids rallied.”

“They turned those weapons into powder.”

“They did the same to the satellites.”

“Sure wish you guys had let me catch this live,” says the Operative.