Mirrored Heavens

where it is. But everyone knows this: if the Rain got into the Elevator, there may be very little that’s beyond their reach.”

“Do we have evidence of them reaching?” says Haskell.

“I’m sure we do,” says Sinclair. “Probably right under our noses. We just haven’t recognized it yet. It’s not like we’re not trying. We’ve been tearing up the Latin cities street by street. At our request, the Euro Magnates have frozen the assets of the Lvov and Wessex Combines, and have allowed the joint tribunal to deploy investigators across the Earth-Moon system to audit the assets of those combines. I say ‘allowed,’ but we were only going to ask once. Though I can tell you right now that angle of inquiry isn’t going to reveal a thing. There’s only cutoff conduits and burnt-out trails down those routes. Whoever the Rain are, they’re not leaving clues that obvious. And as for the Elevator—well, there’s not much evidence left there, is there?”

Neither Marlowe nor Haskell replies.

“But, to your point,” continues Sinclair, “the biggest question isn’t what the Rain have done so far. It’s what they’re going to do next.”

“Sure,” says Haskell, “but what do we do next?”

“Hit the Moon. Stop them.”

“The Moon?”

“The equations stipulate a convergence of circumstantial evidence and current vulnerability,” says Sinclair. “We know they got inside the Imbrium mining contingents. That may or may not have been their main way in. But it’s one of the only things we have to go on. The main risk is that’s two days in transit when you won’t be fully leveraged. Jason won’t be able to do a run on anything, and Claire, your hacks will be at a disadvantage due to the distance to either Earth or Moon. But we have to take that risk. The Moon’s essential. Half our fleet is in its vicinity. If anything goes down there on the scale of the Elevator, we would be profoundly discomfited.”

“When do we leave?” asks Marlowe.

“As soon as I stop talking.”

“I mean, when do we leave the planet?” asks Marlowe.

“As soon as we can launch you,” says Sinclair.

“From where?”

“Houston. We’re prepping a booster even now. It’s ours—crewed by CICom personnel. But it flies the merchant marine colors. We’ll slot you right into the freight routes. You’ll go to ground in the lunar cities. You’ll rendezvous with other assets. And then you’ll start the hunt in earnest.”

“And the plan of operations?” asks Marlowe.

“What else do we know?” says Haskell.

But Sinclair just holds up one hand.

“All in good time, my children. All in good time. You’ll get the second phase of the briefing when you arrive at Houston. And the third when you reach the Moon itself. Staggered updates to ensure that we keep pace with events. All I can say right now is that we have to throw the dice. The tension between East and West is rising even as the hunt for Rain intensifies. All our agents are going into the field. All the training you’ve received, all the runs you’ve done—all of it’s just been preparation for these times. Trust each other. Trust no one else. Trust me when I say that Autumn Rain represents a threat without precedent. They will strike again. I guarantee it. Unless you stop them. Unless you hit the Moon and stop them.”

The screen goes blank.

As specialization became the order of the day—as seekers of truth drilled ever deeper into the unknown, creating ever more minute taxonomies of knowledge, branching out along ever more arcane classifications… inevitably, the most significant discoveries in science lay more and more in the blurring fault lines among disciplines. The mapping out of the subconscious can be considered just such a development. As can the attempt to manipulate it through the nervous system. Yet even by the early stages of the twenty-second century, the pincer movements converging across mental and physical realms had yet to link up completely.

Which means that it’s not entirely unsafe for the Operative to dream.

Which hardly makes it safe. So if the Operative dreams, he doesn’t know it—insofar as he has them, his nighttime reveries have been deliberately situated at the fringes of his cognition. Thus he lies sleeping after his arrival, in a room deep within Agrippa Station, on the Moon’s nearside equator. Only to suddenly come alert in a single instant:

Wake. Wake in a chamber. What chamber? This chamber. Darkness surrounds you, and walls surround the darkness. Surround the instant. But cannot isolate the question: why have you woken? Why are you lunging forward? Reflex: the Operative’s thoughts trail his actions by a long chalk; he’s moving at a speed that belies the low gravity, pivoting out of the bed, careening into the man who’s entered his room, pinning him back against the wall panel with a heavy thud.

For a moment all is still.

The Operative is the first to speak: “Well?” His lips might be parting. His teeth definitely aren’t.

“Carson,” the man says, “it’s Lynx. Don’t you recognize me?”

“Christ.” The Operative releases his grip. He half-pivots, takes a step or three backward, and triggers a glow- light, though his eyes don’t really need it. Still: the man thus revealed wears a SpaceCom uniform. His skin’s ebony. His hair’s dyed silver. A thick pair of opticals perches on the bridge of an aquiline nose. The ears aren’t small. The mouth hung between them is grinning.

“It’s nice to see you too, Carson,” says Stefan Lynx.

Brain and muscles and reflexes keep open channels within the Operative. He stares at Lynx.

“How did you get through the door?”

“Who says I used the door?”

The Operative glances around with his peripheral vision. Notices that one panel of the wall is tilting ever so slightly askew.

“Shit.”

“Is right.”

“Christ, you’re taking a risk. Is this room wired for sound?”

“You bet,” replies Lynx, “and all the wires lead back to me.”

“So we can talk.”

“That’s what we’re doing, isn’t it?”

“Sure,” says the Operative, “that’s what we’re doing. What do you want to talk about?”

“I want to talk about your trip, Carson. How was it?”

“You know damn well how it was,” says the Operative. “It was a little too eventful.”

“Eventful?” Lynx’s laugh sounds like a cat being strangled. “That’s one way of putting it. Another’s luckless. So much for standard transits. That was supposed to be the easy part. Your dice had better up their fortune quick if we’re going to get much further, Carson.”

“They already have,” says the Operative. “I got out of it, didn’t I?”

“Sure,” says Lynx. “You got out of it. Albeit not without a dip in your white blood cell count. I should imagine things got pretty tight in that metal tin. I hear you even called planetside.”

“Yeah,” says the Operative. “They were real helpful.”

“Of course they were,” says Lynx. “Your sarcasm notwithstanding. Sometimes the best form of help we can receive is to learn that we’re going to get none. But the little dustup you got dealt into at least let me dispense with my envy, Carson. You were supposed to travel in style. You were supposed to get the shortest route possible. Unlike mine. I had three layovers before I’d even got past the geo.”

“I presume that’s called covering your trail.”

“Yeah,” says Lynx, “it’s also called economics. But you’re special, Carson. Even with the complications, you got to hitch a fast ride.”

“So?”

“So someone down there likes you.”

“I doubt like has anything to do with it.”

“You’re damn right it doesn’t,” says Lynx. “You’re at Agrippa now. Deep in SpaceCom territory. So let’s get