than New York or Boston or Los Angeles or Chicago. It felt much more like a Southern U.S. town than a big city. As the taxi took him to his hotel, he looked at the people and buildings, recently washed clean by rain and now basking in bright sunshine. Here was the head of the superpower that was the United States, and it looked so… ordinary…
Looks could be deceiving, of course. Chang knew this as well as any. He recalled an old joke he had heard as a younger man, here in the States.
Chang smiled at the memory. No matter how you disguise it, an alligator is still an alligator.
Here in this city, this unique district, lived men who had more power than the greatest rulers in all of history. With a spoken command, their leader could more or less wipe out every human being on the planet. There were enough atomic and hydrogen bombs in America’s arsenal to directly destroy hundreds of millions, with the resulting fall-out killing millions more. And if the scenario of nuclear winter was true — that awful theory that enough smoke and dust in the air would cast a pall over the whole of the world and bring about massive weather changes — it might be that one man could destroy most of the life on Earth. It was a frightening thought. Nobody knew this for certain, and Chang hoped nobody would ever have to find it out the hard way.
Washington might look innocuous to a visitor, but it was, like the yellow dog in the joke, more than it appeared on the surface. Just like the people of this country. Many in the world thought that Americans were overfed and lazy, concerned only with their toys and their easy lives.
That kind of thinking was a mistake. Americans were an affable people, sure enough, but when attacked, they did not shrink from a hard response. Witness what they had done to Afghanistan, to Iraq, and what they were almost certainly going to do to any other nation that was stupid enough to threaten them. To attack such a country was to court a terrible retribution.
Chang smiled. Such was certainly not his intent. The new China was more interested in commerce than war — there were more than a billion mouths to feed, and business was growing better and better.
Before he went to visit Net Force, he had appointments with several software and hardware dealers eager to have Chang’s business. There were some limitations on the technology he could legally acquire, of course, and there probably always would be, but such restrictions had lessened in the last few years. Nothing Chang wanted to get his hands on presented a threat to the U.S.’s national security. At least, he didn’t think so.
The cab arrived at the Constitution, a small but well-appointed hotel on Chang’s approved list. It wouldn’t cost much more than staying in a comparable place back home.
Chang alighted, paid the driver, then followed the bell-boy who collected his luggage into the building.
A sunny day in a sunny city, and he was a man about his business. What could be better?
Well, he thought as he approached the check-in desk, a beautiful and sunny woman with which to share it would be nice. He was between relationships at the moment, no girlfriend back home. He had thought to be married and a father by now, but work had gotten in the way. He would have to spend some time in that arena when he got home. A loving and passionate wife, sons and daughters, these were things he wanted. Life wasn’t all about work, after all. The Prophet had said so, and Chang believed it.
The sun was warm on Jay’s bare back. He wore a pair of ragged shorts and nothing else. The hot sand made little
In such a place, the set of small footprints on the wet sand at the shoreline was easy to spot and follow. Once Jay caught up with the person who had made those prints, he would have access to a vital bit of information. Which, at this point, would be a lot more than he currently had — which was to say, at this point, he didn’t have anything at all.
Jay was not used to being stymied. Part of the problem with being really good at what you did was the realization that a lot of people weren’t able to run with you. You started to take it for granted that, when given a problem, not only would you be able to solve it, you’d be able to do it fast. Like being an international chess grandmaster, most of the players you ran into simply weren’t in your league. But even the world champion lost now and then — nobody was perfect. Nobody stayed champ forever. Sooner or later, somebody better came along and beat you.
Intellectually, Jay knew this. Emotionally, however, it was hard to accept.
Jay Gridley did not like to lose. Ever.
The track followed the shoreline for maybe a quarter of a mile, then veered into the dry sand, heading away from the beach. The footprints weren’t as distinct here, but still easy to see across the otherwise smooth sand. Two hundred yards away from the water, there was a line of trees and underbrush, and there the footprints disappeared. But even so, there was a trail, narrow and winding, and no sign of broken branches or disturbed bushes leaving the path. A couple years back, Jay had learned how to track a man on foot, even one trying to hide his trail, and whoever this was, he was sticking to the easy way.
There was a gentle rise, and it was cooler here in the trees, but not enough so that Jay needed a shirt. The dirt and moss underfoot were soft and warm. Birds cheeped, some kind of small creature chittered in the trees, and Jay enjoyed the hike.
After another fifteen minutes or so, the animal track widened into a clearing, ringed by banana and palm trees.
In the middle of this glen stood a woman dressed in a sarong, a bright red patterned wrap that covered her from her breasts to just above her knees. She had a Polynesian look to her, silky black hair that hung to the middle of her back, dark skin made darker by the sun, and a flashing white smile. Altogether gorgeous, Jay decided.
He returned her smile. Well. This was easy enough. About time.
He walked toward her. She waited.
Fifteen feet away, he stepped onto a broad palm leaf and felt his belly lurch as he fell into a pit.
He landed heavily on his feet, collapsed, and stood up again, shaking his head, already angry with himself. Fortunately, the trap had not been lined with stakes; but it could have been. As it was, the edges of the pit were two feet above his outstretched hands. He jumped up, caught the edge, and it gave way under his grip. He fell, cursing.
He shook his head again, disgusted with himself. And here he’d just been thinking about how great he was.
Jay shook his head. He would have to dig climbing notches in the dirt, which, with his bare hands, was going to take a while, even in the soft soil. And he knew that the smiling woman he had been following would be long gone by the time he reached the surface.
Gritting his teeth, and biting back a few more choice curses, he got to work.
Locke wished that the Concorde SSTs were still flying the Atlantic route between Paris and New York. Yes, he was in first class, and certainly there were things he could do to pass the time; still, commercial air travel was so much less interesting than almost any other mode of transportation. There was nothing to see, just clouds and distant ocean. The air on board a modern jet was dry, stale, and full of enough germs to infect an entire army.
A train, a riverboat, those gave you sights. Even an old prop plane chugging along at low altitude was better. Riding a bike or walking was the best of all — you could interact with the scenery. You saw things while walking you’d miss in a car or on a train, and certainly would miss on a jet roaring along at six hundred miles an hour.
Still, if you needed to get somewhere quickly, the jet was obviously the way to travel. Crossing an ocean on a
