Mirrored Heavens

water’s draining out—conveyed through sluices that lead down even farther. The ship decelerates through the diminishing flood. It keeps on losing speed as the water lowers past the windows. It slides along in darkness. It slows still further.

And stops.

“Zone’s gone entirely,” mutters Spencer.

“Does that surprise you?” says Linehan.

“Not in the least.”

Which doesn’t mean he’s come to terms with it. It’s all he’s known all his life. Now suddenly it’s vanished, leaving him alone in the midst of endless tunnels. All the interstices upon which his mind abutted have faded from existence. He’s been reduced to just himself.

It’s going to take some getting used to.

“So what now?” says Linehan.

“Now we keep moving,” says Spencer.

He reactivates the ship’s power and switches on the headlights. They show tunnel stretching into dark. He fumbles with the ship’s controls, fires up its rockets. The headlights vanish in the reflected light of flame. The ship lurches, starts to move, starts to accelerate. Spencer calls up the map of the tunnels once again and pinpoints their position as best as he can. He no longer has the zone to moor him, so he has to extrapolate precisely what shaft they’ve been swept into, has to line it up against the map that gleams within his head.

Even as that map starts changing.

Lines start to expand through Spencer’s mind. What’s dark is suddenly being thrust into light. What were edges are fast becoming core. The whole of the old map becomes the center of the new one. And what the new represents is no longer just the corridor that surrounds the main line from Mountain to London. It’s the whole of the North Atlantic. Spencer watches as it keeps on growing. He realizes that if he isn’t crazy yet this map will probably take over his mind and make him so. Because it’s Control’s creature. He sees that now. He gets it. Control’s given him autonomous software able to adapt to the situation—able to help Control’s razor to assess that situation correctly. The zone’s gone. Spencer’s in the dark. But the lights of the map within him play upon him anyway. He reads the riddle embedded in their shifting patterns. He sees the route that’s tracing itself through them. He sees what Control wants him to do.

He starts discussing options with Linehan.

“What’s there to discuss?” says Linehan. “We’re ten minutes out from border.”

“What’s to discuss is that we’re not going there,” says Spencer.

“What?”

“I said we’re not going there.”

“Says who?”

“Says me.”

“What the fuck’s your problem?”

“There’s no problem,” says Spencer slowly. “There’s just logic. And logic says that we aren’t going to try to run the border.”

“We almost have!”

“Linehan. We’re still almost two thousand klicks west of where the Euro Magnates take over.”

“So?”

“So our chances of doing a stealth run have basically dropped to nothing flat. We were running beneath the radar before the zone went. We still are. But now it’s for a different reason. And it’s a safe bet that somewhere in the next couple thousand klicks the zone reasserts itself. Which means we’re essentially hiding in what amounts to a local disruption. Let’s hope that means that they can’t see what’s going on within it. But let’s not make any plans that don’t presume that they’re sending craft in right now. And let’s not kid ourselves for a moment that they aren’t waiting with all forces they’ve got for whatever comes out.”

“Which may not matter if this disruption extends all the way to the border!”

“You don’t need to have a zone to seal a border.” And with that Spencer veers the ship down a southward fork.

Linehan shakes his head. “You’re dead,” he says.

“By all means,” says Spencer. “Off me and add me to the trail of bodies you’ve left strewn in your wake. It won’t change a thing about all the heat in front of us. Nor will it save you when you run smack into fire.”

“We’ve already hit that fire,” says Linehan. “Are you fucking blind? We’re carving through it. We’re on the cusp of London, man. How can you deny it?”

“As wishful thinking,” says Spencer. “As embarrassing. The thought that we could slip on through the zone’s border membrane: events have rendered it a fantasy. We could have done it in that train. We could have even done it in this. But, like you said—every alarm and then some has been raised. The nuke didn’t kill us, Linehan. We’re alive. How about we face the consequences?”

“How about we shape the consequences, Spencer? How about we do something besides running home with our tails between our legs?”

“I want to go home more badly than you could know. But you forget my home’s in front of me. And your home, that’s nowhere. You’re rootless, Linehan. Your soul’s even more mechanical than your flesh.”

“So what’s your point?”

“This: I don’t see you ripping me away from the controls and ripping me in pieces. I don’t see you ripping through the tunnels and making hell for London. I don’t see you doing much except for sitting there and sneering. In fact, I don’t see you doing anything save admitting that I’m absolutely right.”

“And if we don’t go for the border—”

“It’s no if.”

“And if we don’t go for the border, where the fuck are we going to go?”

Spencer tells him.

PART III INVERSION

Midnight at the Moon’s south pole. Always midnight down here. Always these voices in your head when you’ve been on the run too long. Always these voices that help you stay out in that cold for even longer.

Especially when they don’t know the whole story.

“Carson. You’ve done it.”

“Done what.”

“Killed him.”

The voice of Stefan Lynx is flush with triumph. The Operative just feels tired.

“Tell me you have more to tell me than that.”

“Confirmation is always good news, Carson. Was it hard?”

“Hard enough. What do his files say?”

“I mean was it hard to pull the trigger?”

“Not especially. What do the files say?”

“Would you do it all over again?”

“What do the fucking files say, Lynx?”

“That Leo Sarmax was one tricky customer.”

“I could have told you that.”

“You could have guessed that. What you just uploaded confirms it. There doesn’t seem to have been any game up here he didn’t have himself dealt into.”

“That’s great, Lynx. Was he dealing with the Rain?”

“There’s no evidence of that,” says Lynx. “Not yet anyway. But I have found a lot of