Scared hell out of a guy—Porey, as Meg would put it, doing courtesy.

“Shit,” Ben said, closing ranks with him and Meg; and Sal said, close after, “So that’s Porey up close.”

“That’s Porey,” Dekker said.

“Po-lite chelovek,” Meg said. “Nice place, and all.... You wouldn’t ever mink it, would you? Son of a bitch.”

A massacre, a slaughter of the innocent. Graff braced his finger against his lips, watched the vid in dismay, the crowd, the peacers shouting, the blond woman with the stringing hair looking distractedly left and right over the crowd like something trapped. Reporters asked, “Is your son the model they’re basing this tape on? Are you in communication with him?” Ingrid Dekker shook her head in bewilderment, saying, “I don’t know. I don’t have anything to do with him, nothing he did has anything to do with me... it’s aever had anything to do with me...”

God.

He sat there, watching the alien scene, steps of some ornate building, a cathedral, they said, in London, the placards and banners, the sheer mass of human beings...

A bas la Compagnie, they were yelling. Down with the EC.

And elsewhere on Earth’s life-rich surface, a UDC spokesman was claiming that the attitudes of the rab movement were infiltrating the Beet, that the real aim was to disarm Earth’s local forces, that the Earth Company was attempting to use the Fleet and the whole construction push in the Belt to take political control of the UDC and establish a world dictatorship...

Disaster. Utter political disaster.

“The tape is the damning thing. Someone’s given out details. Someone in a position to know what we’re doing—”

Saito said, “Don’t discount Tanzer. The UDC has those records at their disposal, a lot of damaging data. We had to accept the UDC structure in place, and after the takeover, we knew it was a bomb waiting to go off.”

“What side are they on, Com, for God’s sake? Do they think it’s a bloody game we’re playing?”

“Their power is in question. Their sight has unquestionably shortened. The question whether or not they’re in control of the EC or whether the EC is in control of Earth’s policy—it’s a very large, a very sensitive, issue in this system. The EC has enormous power, a constituency spread over the stations and the refineries and worlds outside this system. And we outsiders only know the EC. But there are governments, many governments on Earth, that consider the situation out there solely the EC’s war.”

“But it is the EC’s war. Do any of us doubt it’s the EC’s war? The EC’s cursed emigration restrictions created the mess, they motivated the dissidents to move out, they insisted on micromanaging at lights distance. Every stupid decision they ever compromised their way into created this war, but the fact is something very foreign is coming here, that’s the point. They’re worried about tape-training off a rab model because the rab movement is foreign? The rab isn’t azi. The rab isn’t designed personalities. The rab isn’t an expansion into space so remote we don’t know what may come out of it or what in hell they’re going to provoke... Belters are foreign? They should worry about me, Com. I’m foreign. I’m more alien than anything they’ve ever met!”

“Maybe they do worry. Maybe that’s what that mob in Geneva is really saying. Give us back our control over things. Make it stop. Make it the way we always thought it was.”

“It never was. Not for one moment was the universe the way they imagined.”

“Of course it wasn’t. But they thought they knew. They thought they controlled it all. Now they know they don’t. And that poor woman—is the symbol of their outrage.”

“Alyce Salazar has to be the EC’s greatest internal liability. Why in hell do they go on letting her take the offensive?”

“Principally because Mars wants its independence. Because Mars has gotten quite different, quite alien from Earth. That’s what I’ve turned up on the Salazars.”

“Cyteenization?”

“Something like. Something like the Belt—with nostalgic conservatism as the engine, instead of the radical reform that drove the rab to the Belt. They cling to an Earth that never existed. They’re the pure article, more Earther than Earth is—maintaining the true opinion, the true Earthly tradition. Never mind the outbackers are eccentric as they come. The corporate management runs the government, quite conservative, quite protective of their personal interests and their family influence.”

“I thought that was illegal.”

“It is. But it’s the driving force in Martian society— who’s in whose camp. Understanding what the daughter’s desertion meant to Alyce Salazar—simplistically, face-saving has to be a large part of her motive, by what we’ve turned up. The girl escaped her mother’s authority by literally slipping through customs and eluding her mother’s personal security: that was one blow to the Salazar corporate image; more extravagantly, she embarrassed her mother by dying, quite publicly, quite firmly associated with Belter rab in a fullscale Company disaster. The daughter was clearly a dynastic hope on her part—a bid to extend Salazar’s influence into another generation. A lot of Salazar alliances were built on that assumption.”

“Which had to be revised at the daughter’s death.”

“Which to a Martian corporate, was a major disaster. A threat to her immediate control. It’s radicalized the Salazar influence: she’s—certain people think, calculatedly—offended certain elements that oppose the Company. The consensus I’m getting from intelligence is she’s not mad, she calculatedly created a cause and an opposition to force the EC itself down her path in a move to come out of this more powerful man she was. That’s what we’re dealing with. She’s maneuvering for power equal to the EC president—and the EC so far is paralyzed, because of who’s backing her. They can’t betray the conservatives in Bonn, or it erodes a structure they’ve built up over decades. The conservatives mere are in fear for their lives over the radical resurgence. And that promotes Company hardliners, like Bertrand Muller. Muller is for the war, incidentally. He wants us to ‘recover Cyteen.’”

“My God.”

“He calls it a colony. What do you want? He’s ninety years old, he formed his current opinion on his fortieth birthday, and he says the Company police who fired on the rab were defending civilized values.”

“We’re in the hands of lunatics.”

“Of financiers. Far worse.”

CHAPTER 17

HIT it, hit it, hit it—” Breathless dive down the handlines for the seats, one, two, three, four... in place, switches up... Launch. Surreal burst of static while the screens and the V-HUD spieled numbers and lines...

“Shit!” from Ben. You couldn’t cure him—or Sal; and there wasn’t a miracle, they’d screwed the first run, the second and the third, but damn, Meg thought with half a neuron to spare, it felt better of a sudden... wasn’t garbage she was screening, it was starting to shape itself— Objective wasn’t there, God, intelligence gaffe— Time to sweat. Ben was on it, logicking his way for the current location. Dek said, “What the hell?” and Ben confirmed a fire-zone. Virtual ordnance blasted out into virtual reality and she figured—yes! “Got it, got it, got it—” “Watch that mother!”

Fan of junk in the carrier path. Dek repositioned and gave Sal the window on a roll to the main objective, and Meg input him the latest calc in long vision, new definition to the hostile fire-paths he was ready to see, more precise positions she was inputting to Sal and to him.

Feeling too good, too damn good, you didn’t cut a rip like that, couldn’t sustain it...

Couldn’t get overconfident, the damn sim kept throwing them targets and you couldn’t believe you were getting them, effin’ sim had to be playing with them...

Couldn’t go on this way—she was the only one in the crew who had time to worry, worry was the job description, taking the long view, mission objective, degree of criticality, sight and target, sight and target, priority was seen to, ride home couldn’t be this—