Mirrored Heavens

“If you don’t enjoy federal blessing, then where’s the razor who configured your identity? And how come you ended up on my door out of all the doors out there? Listen, Linehan: I can take ordinary rudeness. I can take working on a need-to-know basis. I can even take not knowing if you’re going to try to stab me through the heart. But what I can’t take is not even knowing enough to get the job done. So you’d better start giving me a little bit more to go on.”

“Listen,” says Linehan, “what you gotta under—”

But Spencer’s just talking over him: “And you know how you can get some extra credit while you’re doing it? By giving me a little bit more of a fucking hint about what I’m going to get at the end of all this. Otherwise, I promise you, this isn’t worth it to me. I’ll jump ship at some point and take my chances on a lightning run.”

“Fine,” says Linehan, “you win. The others are dead.”

“What happened to them?”

“Blown out of an expresser about fifteen klicks up.”

“When?”

“Two days ago.”

“Two days ago? You mean—”

“Right,” says Linehan. “With all that Elevator shit, the fact that a suborbital bound for Paris had bought it in mid-flight and scattered itself all over Greenland several hours earlier got knocked off the headlines and never made it back. They’re saying structural integrity was lost. I don’t exactly know what the reasons for that were, but I can tell you that they weren’t accidental. Awful lot of fuel on those fuckers. They’re fuel-bitches, really. All it takes to send one up’s a little spark. And that was all it took.”

“And what set off that spark?”

“What didn’t? See, you could say that we were expendable. You could say that. But you’d be lying. We were worse than expendable. We were marked for disposal from the start.”

“Why?”

“Because we learned things we weren’t supposed to. That’s all, really. I’d reverse it, you know. I really would. If I could, I’d ditch my memory. I’d ditch it all. I’d go back to them and tell them I was gonna do all that. But they wouldn’t believe me. They wouldn’t listen. And even if they did, you know what this business is like. Dead meat— safer than live. Right, Spencer?”

“Sure,” says Spencer. “Dead meat’s always safer. Who are we talking about?”

“We could be talking about anyone,” says Linehan. “That’s the point.”

“So point me in the right direction.”

“No,” says Linehan. “Gonna give you a little bit now, and you’ll get the rest when we cross the border.”

“The rest of what?”

“The rest of the story, asshole. Way I heard it, you like stories. Right? That’s why you’re in this country in the first place. That’s all that gets the Priam Combine’s rocks off, right? You broker information. You profit from data. You find the juice, your masters sell it to the highest bidder. Well, this one’ll get bid so high it’ll melt the fucking auction. Think your team’s good enough to take that heat, Spencer?”

“Do you?”

“Does it matter?”

“Of course it does. Surely you wouldn’t sell to someone who wasn’t going to be able to handle it.”

“You’re confusing me with someone who gives a fuck, Spencer. As long as I pull it off, I don’t really care if you do. And it’s not like I had that many options. Couldn’t trust anyone I knew, now, could I?” Linehan coughs. “So had to think about some possibilities I’d laid out in advance for just such a day. Some of the people I considered weren’t even guilty of espionage. But all of them had something they were trying to hide.”

“And I was one of them.”

“Yeah, Spencer. Just one among many. It’s true. But don’t feel bad. I chose you all the same. Because it wasn’t just a matter of being proximate. It was a matter of connections.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning I put my stash of names together from two different sets of sources. One was keepers of the records within this country. I had the inside track on some of them. Lots of records. Lots of keepers. Lots of data that some know, but not everyone. See, Spencer, the people who rule this country keep a lot of things hidden from one another. Always have, always will. And if you know how to work it, you can make that fact work for you.”

“What was the second set of sources?”

“Neutral data. I’m a little bit of a traveler, Spencer. Bit of a globetrotter. And if you want to get neutral dirt, best place to do it is beyond the Atlantic and Pacific firewalls. Right? So that became another asset that I had at my disposal. Things I dug up via the first set might have sufficed, but the second was my top choice. Especially now that a lot of shit that’s been buried deep is getting stirred up. So when the rubber met the road, I thought of you, on my second list and not on the first so far. Not too far away, either—and undoubtedly more than capable of helping me out. If you felt like it. If you could be made to see reason.”

“And your colleagues? When did you ditch them?”

“When they split for Kennedy. I figured that they’d be able to stay below the radar screen until they reached passport control. But I figured that after that they were gonna get busted. I didn’t place as much confidence in our razor as the rest did. Fucking optimists. They must have thought they had it made when they put the ground behind them.” He shakes his head. “Me, I cut loose. I turned to my portfolio of options. I turned to you, Spencer.”

“I’m touched.”

“You wanted more. I’m giving you more.”

“So tell me how you’re moving around.”

“Standard procedure. Our razor locked each of us into our new identities and threw away the key.”

“I’m surprised he didn’t hold on to your reins himself. Given how frisky you seem to be.”

“I had an understanding with her,” says Linehan. His lip curls upward in a half smile. “She helped me get away without alerting the rest of the team. I pointed out that my enhancements were going to make it tough for me to get through an ever-tightening border security.”

“Combat enhancements?”

“Look at me, Spencer. Take a good look. Even without weapons, I’m built for one thing. That’s going to be obvious to any halfwit customs software.”

“And now your razor’s dead.”

“She is,” says Linehan. “Turns out she couldn’t configure an identity strong enough to get out of the country. So she bought it. Along with the rest of them.” He shakes his head.

“Someone was willing to do a lot to make sure they never made it to Europe.”

“Someone was. Someone still is. So how do you propose we get there?”

“I propose we do what we’re doing, Linehan. Straight run to the Mountain.”

“Yeah. And then what?”

“Why should I tell you?”

“I’ve been giving. It’s time for some quid pro quo.”

“Oh really? So it’s quid pro quo day, is it? Tit for tat, huh? You haven’t even begun to level with me, Linehan, and now you’re saying I’m the one who owes you?”

“We’re on the same team, Spencer.”

“We’re not on the same team at all. This fugitive life has warped your fucking brain.”

“Then I’m gonna spell it out for you. We’re both professionals. Those who aren’t can never understand what that’s like. What those places are like. The one we’re in now. The one I’m coming from. But we can both come out of this winning.”

“Define winning,” says Spencer.

“Us both living,” says Linehan. “Tell me your plan.”

“You already know my plan.”

“I do?”

“If you know about Priam, then you know why we’re going to the Mountain.”