Mirrored Heavens

away with telltale signs she knows too well—the green of the old man’s eyes, the soft tone of his voice, the particular ambience of a room. It seems there was a room. It seems she was there, out upon some sea. But that chamber had no windows. The one in which she sits now does. Each one is covered with a plastic shade. She reaches over to the nearest.

But now the dreams surge in upon her. They remind her who she is. They remind her who’s been at her mind again. Those dreams: there was a time when she regarded them as her succor. There was a time when she grew to hate them worse than death. But lately it’s been both thrill and revulsion simultaneously—and with such intensity that she’s no longer sure she can even tell the difference. And what does it matter? All primary briefings of agents take place under the trance, get remembered by those agents only in retrospect. It doesn’t matter how she feels about that. Emotions are incidental. Facts aren’t—her charge, however difficult, her lot in life for now, is to tend these thoughts that aren’t hers, to shelter them and incubate them, and then do whatever they may ask.

And now she’s waiting for that moment. But her hands aren’t waiting. They grasp the shade. Her fingers fumble with the clasp. She rips aside plastic to reveal window. She blinks. She stares.

And draws back as she realizes what she’s looking at.

Marlowe’s got two minutes. Lighted arrows show him the way, but he no longer sees them. Disembodied voices goad him on, but he no longer hears them. All he hears is the soundless noise that’s building up within him—the silent siren that accompanies the moments that play out before the run…out of that formless dark in which the word goes down, out into the events in which he writes that word across flesh. He races down another corridor. It’s getting narrower. Up ahead, a door slides aside. He runs through the opening and down a ramp.

He’s in the underbelly. The ceiling’s lower here. Technicians step in from left and right. They check his suit’s seals. They check the thrusters on his back and wrists and ankles. They make some adjustments to the minigun that’s perched on his right shoulder. They wave him onward. Marlowe moves past more ladders, closes in upon one ladder in particular. Blank screens are everywhere. He feels the stare of invisible eyes upon him. He’s going straight for the door at his feet. It seems to lead directly into a crawl space—a tiny alcove that he might have missed had the arrows not led him straight here. But it’s not an alcove. It’s not a crawl space.

It’s his ride to ground.

“Get in,” says the voice.

But Marlowe’s paying no attention. He climbs in, activates magnetic clamps. The door folds in over him, encloses him in darkness. But only for a moment—and then screens snap on inside his skull as his armor’s software syncs with that of the craft. Coordinates click into place. System specs parade past him. A vibration passes through him. The locks that hold his craft in place retract. He starts plunging toward the city stretching out below him.

One orbit almost done, and now the Andes rise toward the Operative’s ship. They don’t get very far. A few more minutes and those peaks are crumpling back into what’s left of jungle. The remnants of that green are cut through with great brown and black streaks. Amazonia’s seen better days. From up here, the cities are shrouded in smog so thick they look like little more than massive craters. If a meteor plunged into them, it’d be hard to tell the difference.

“And this is on a good day.”

The voice is coming from the speakers. It’s one of the pilots. But it may as well be a million klicks off. The Operative feels it slowly impinge upon his consciousness. He feels so high he feels he was never anything else. He waits for all eternity.

And then he speaks.

“And when it’s bad?”

“All you’ll see is junkyard.”

“Price we pay for cheap launch real estate.”

“The only people down there doing any paying are the Latins,” says the pilot. “For shortcutting their way into the modern era.”

“That’s one way to look at it.”

“It’s hard to understand anything down there without understanding that.”

“Didn’t realize you flyboys studied history.”

“Nothing we don’t study,” the pilot says languidly. “Nothing but ways of killing time.”

“So come on back here and let’s have a chat.”

A spluttering emerges from the speakers. The Operative assumes it’s a laugh. “I don’t think so.”

“Why not.”

“No fraternization with the cargo. Cockpit door remains shut.”

“Says who.”

“Says the ones who told us to add you to that cargo. As you well know.”

“So why are you speaking with me?”

“Because this isn’t a social call. I’m just letting you know we’ve got clearance for the burn to Moon. As soon as we hit Atlantic, we’re in the window. Which will take us within a hundred klicks of Elevator.”

“No shit?”

“None at all.”

“Visible from this window?”

“Eventually. But visible on the screens right now.”

“Put it through.”

But the thing is, there’s no vantage that’s advantaged to frame the foremost wonder of the age. There’s no such thing as the whole thing. The joint construction of the superpowers: the Elevator is four thousand klicks long. It circles Earth twelve times each day. It stretches from the lower orbits all the way toward the mediums. Any view that takes in the entirety is too removed to register the thickness. Any view that catches that thickness can’t hope to catch the length. So now something that looks like a luminescent tendril cuts in on the screen. It rises from the horizon. It vanishes into the heavens.

“So that’s it,” says the Operative.

“Come on, man. You must have seen it before.”

“Only on the vid.”

“How’s this any different?”

“Because now I’m up here with it. Where do we hit closest proximity?”

“Where Amazon hits Atlantic,” replies the pilot.

“Belem-Macapa? That’s almost where we launched from.”

“Yeah. That window’ll give you a great view of the whole town.”

“What’s it like?”

“I’ll give you one guess.”

It’s like being underwater. The architecture of Belem-Macapa’s visible only indistinctly: buildings towering out of the smog, towering back into it. Stacks of lights shimmer through the haze. There’s no way to see the ground. There’s no way to see the sky. Haskell cycles through the optical enhancements she has at her disposal. All they show her are the other vehicles in her convoy—several other ’copters in the air about her, several crawlers roaring at speed along the skyways and ramps that twist among the buildings. And those are just the ones in sight. A quick glance at her screens reveals the real extent of it: at least forty vehicles in the immediate vicinity, several flanking formations off to either side, and—two klicks up—ships roaming through this city’s upper reaches, ready to swoop down at the first sign of any trouble. She wonders if it’s all for her. She’s tempted to feel flattered. It’s the closest she’s come to feeling anything all day.

But that’s starting to change. She shouldn’t be this close to the action. Not physically, at any rate. She’s a razor. She’s supposed to sit back and work the wires from afar. She’s not supposed to be thrust into a live war