North of the town lay the precast plants, the curing works and the functionally ugly blast furnaces used to process byproduct. Near to these monstrosities sprawled the loading docks and the immense shipping parks where bulk roadliners that hadn't made the coast highway run regularly for almost two years slumbered under grimy weather wraps.
"Seems delightful," said Falk.
"I've been looking to summer here," said Lukes.
They reached the edge of town and followed the road through three or more sets of wire gates that were wide open and seemed to have no purpose beyond the sculptural. Fuel drums weighted with set concrete dotted the roadlane, along with other trash like fence posts and some buckled signage, a makeshift slalom course to slow the advance of anything short of an MBT. The convoy steered around the obstructions, keeping line, bleeding little speed.
"Where is everyone?" asked Jeanot, peering out and recording footage with a tablet.
"There's a curfew," replied Selton, her attention primarily focused on her displays.
"It's late morning," said green hiker girl.
"It's a strict curfew," said Falk.
Something on Selton's display pinged. For a second, Falk felt himself tense up instinctively.
"Contact signal," said Selton, and typed something into a text pane.
Fucking dope, Falk admonished himself. You actually bought into it.
The FPG was coming out to meet them.
The members of the Forward Patrol Group were driving in Fargos of their own, and they had a fat, armoured Longpig gunbus as the centrepiece of their motorcade. The vehicles, and the SOMD troopers riding in them, were caked in air-blown dirt. Their kit was a little bit more personalised and non-reg than the fresh-on-this-morning look being worked by Selton and her unit. Their rollers came to a halt, engines running, in a little fan behind the rumbling self-propelled, laid out like playing cards wiped across a table. Troopers with pipers and RPG thumpers dismounted and locked off the thoroughfare, shoulders tight to stocks, cheeks to top rails, eyes to optics, fingers resting ready on trigger guards. The gunbus, twice the size of a Fargo, reminded Falk of some creature from a bestiary, a traveller's excited fabulation of a rhinoceros or a warthog. It was broad and fat, lethargic and ill-tempered. It sat heavily on its broad treads with anti-rocket armour skirts hanging down around its wheel hubs. It was almost black with grime. The M190 howitzer slanted at the sky like a unicorn's horn, vulgarly big, rendered preposterous by the massive, fluted, vented muzzle brake at the end of the barrel. The brake lent the whole machine an unpleasant fetishistic air.
The commander of the column was an SOMD major called LaRue. He and Selton chatted for a while, then he ambled over to greet the media crew. He seemed real to Falk, genuine. Falk wondered if he might actually have cynically overestimated the show-and-tell factor. He got the tingle of tension back, the feeling that he was actually in some fucker's crosshairs after all. LaRue looked like someone who'd been leading an FPG in the field for six weeks. He spoke like it. His body language was unmannered and tired. There was nothing scripted or autocued about what he said.
He told them that the FPG was about to conduct a room-by-room of Number Two Blast Furnace, following a tip-off from one of the labour watch teams. A forced entry overnight had lit a red light on the site foreman's security display. Selton's unit and the correspondents were welcome to accompany the FPG for the duration of the operation, provided that they followed FPG instructions explicitly and didn't get in what LaRue gently described as "the fucking way".
Unpatched, thought Falk. Unreconstructed.
Dropping the pitch of his voice, LaRue issued a bald statement about the risks. Shots might be fired. There might be full-on contact. Their lives would be in danger, despite the body-plate and the SOMD presence. Even if they followed every syllable, every letter of the instructions, there was still a chance that any one of them could get scorched. LaRue wanted them to know that. He didn't want anyone operating under the illusion that this wasn't the real deal. The real fucking deal, as he put it.
Anyone could duck out, no problem. They could stay under guard with the rollers, or be taken to a strongpoint to wait for the others. No one would be judged.
"Think about it for a minute," he said. "To be honest, I'd be happier if none of you came. It makes our job easier. But I will accommodate you. Think about it, then have a word with my staff sergeant here if you want to be included."
Falk felt an odd heat rising inside him. Tension and fear, a blend he hadn't tasted in a long time. Of course he was going to get himself included. Things had just got interesting. The most interesting thing of all was his unbidden response. He was excited. He was scared. He felt cynicism peeling off him like onion skin. He didn't want to get shot. Now there was a chance he could. He felt sore from the ride, nauseous from the night before and sick with trepidation. He was amazed at how upbeat these crappy physiological responses made him feel.
"Oh, there's something I want to show you," LaRue added. "Crazy. You'll love it. It'll give you a little perspective while you're making up your minds."
Escorted by a bunch of troopers carrying their primary weapons ready across their chests, LaRue walked the media correspondents a little way back down the roadway, and then off onto the dirt, into the yard behind a derelict construction works.
"There," he said. He said it with pride, like he was a breeder parading a prize-winning steer, or the patriarch at a bris.
He was showing them a wall. It was peppered with hard-round holes from small-arms fire.
"Un-freeking-believable," murmured Falk.
FIVE
She wasn't at the GEO bar. When he called her on his celf, she told him she was at Hyatt Shaverton and he should come and meet her there.
"Why are you acting so freeking® pissed off about it?" she asked. "I told you that's what they'd do. Bullet holes. I told you."
Cleesh had been having dinner with the nondescript man from SO Logistics, and another guy Falk didn't know. They'd had chicken-effect parmigiana, and pushed the plates into the centre of the table when they were done. Falk wondered about ordering some food for himself, but the service in the Hyatt was clearly terrible.
"I'm acting pissed off because I am pissed off."
"That I told you so?"
He sniffed.
"The SO thinks we're stupid. It treats us like we're idiots."
"You must have had that kind of shit before," said the man Falk didn't know.
"Have we met?" Falk asked him. He didn't feel like making a terribly big effort, socially.
"No," the man said. "But I know who you are. I was on Seventy-Seven for a work contract. Used to read your stuff. Enjoyed it."
"Thanks," said Falk.
The man stuck out his hand.
"Bari Apfel," he said.
Falk shook. "What do you do?" he asked.
"Consultancy work. I used to be with Liitz, then Norfolk-Zumin. Now I'm doing a short-term consult with GEO."
"What sort of consultancy?" asked Falk.
"Dull stuff. Corporate image, PR. I'm pretty good at what I do."
"He is," said Cleesh.
"GEO needs all the help it can hire right now," said Apfel.
A hearing- and vision-impaired waiter went by, ignoring Falk's waggling finger.
"The service blows," said the SO Logistics man.
"Why are you eating here?" asked Falk.
Cleesh and her friends exchanged a brief, awkward look. Falk was so busy jonesing for a Scotch-effect he barely cared. It had to be something to do with the big-deal secret thing she was working out.
"It just made a change," said Apfel. "We go to the GEO all the time."
Falk scraped his chair back.
"I'm going to get drinks from the bar. If I wait for these fucking idiots, I'll die of thirst. Get anybody anything?"
He could. He made a mental note and went over to the bar. His hip was still hurting from the ride in the Fargo, a dull, sore pain. He wondered
if he should get a medical report and then use it to sue the SOMD.
The bar was up a few steps from the bistro in a corner alcove with vast windows. They were on the mast's fortieth floor. Outside, the night hung there as black and heavy as a theatre's safety curtain. Coloured blurds banged against the outside of the glass and left dusty splashes of wing scales.
The moon was out, a headlamp disk, small and high up. Down below, the lights of Shaverton twinkled like guttering votive candles at a kerbside vigil. In the western sky, three quick meteorites sketched lightpen tracks and vanished.
Falk ordered a Scotch-effect, and drank it while the barman was making another and filling the rest of the order. Gulping, Falk scanned the bistro. More of the ubiquitous Early Settlement Era furniture, repro and still shabby and worn. Corporate employees with over-loud voices and cosmetic laughs. The lemon stink of InsectAside. Falk turned three-sixty, took in the view again. He suddenly saw the familiar face he'd seen that first night at the GEO, the old, careworn version of a man he had once known.
He realised it was his own reflection. It must have been his reflection back at the chrome-and-glass GEO too. He felt heavy, deflated. He didn't want that medical report now, not even to sue the SOMD. He didn't want to know what was wrong with his sore hip. He didn't want to know what else it would turn up.
He didn't want to know how fucked up he'd got riding drivers and living poorly. He didn't look the way he assumed he looked any more. He wondered how long he hadn't.
"I need another Scotch-effect here," he told the barman.
"Want a hand with those?" asked Bari Apfel, appearing at his shoulder. "We thought you'd been kidnapped."
"Sorry," said Falk. "Deep in thought."
"Come to any interesting conclusions?"
"You know, I came here because it seemed like an easy score. Notch up some expenses, do some basic coverage. I knew the SO wouldn't play along. I knew it would be media tourism. I knew before Cleesh had to tell me. I didn't care."
"You didn't?"
"It was just the next thing to do. The next excuse not to do something else."
"Displacement activity?" Apfel asked.
"Yeah. I don't give a fuck about what's happening here on Eighty-Six."
"But now, what? You've had a rethink?"
"God, no," said Falk. "I still don't give a fuck. But I do give a fuck about being treated like an idiot. I don't want to know the story, but now I want to get it, just so I can ram it up the SO's backside. There's something you should never give a tired old hack like me."
"A third drink?"
Falk grinned.
"Yeah, that. I was going to say a challenge."
"I know you were," said Apfel.
"The SO's sheer mindless attitude just engaged me in a way a thousand decent stories never could. Not any more."
"You going to stick it to the man, Falk?"
"I'm going to find something," said Falk. "I'm going to work some angle. If the SO had thrown me a bone, I'd have been gone inside a month. Now I'm going to stay on, and worry at this until I get something, however small, that I can slap in their faces."
"How far are you prepared to go?" asked Apfel.
"I'm not familiar with the concept of too far," said Falk.
"Man, are you pissed off tonight."
Falk nodded and took a drink.
"I think that's what it's all about, by the way, if you're interested."
Falk looked where Apfel was pointing.
"The moon?"
"Yeah," said Apfel. "God knows, you won't care what some corporate consultant whore thinks–"
"Say it anyway."
"Fred," said Apfel. "The second moon."
"Notable in-system resource 86/b, locally known as 'Fred'. Third highest concentration of extro-transition elements in settled territory."
"Exactly."
"Fine. You're suggesting… this isn't a land-grab fight about Eighty-Six. It's a fight to secure Eighty-Six because of its moon?"
Apfel smiled, lifted his glass off the tray and sipped.
"It makes a certain amount of sense," he said. "Since settlement began, we haven't seen fit to actually, properly go to war with anybody over land, because there's always plenty of it, worlds of it, at a time. It's got to be something pretty big to make us do it here."
"If that's what's happening," said Falk. "I just got shown some holes in a wall."
"Oh, it's happening."
'How do you know?"
"I've been here eight months. You hear stuff. Nothing you could use, but stuff that's still got substance to it. The Central Bloc is involved."
"You subscribe to that theory?"
"I think so. The rumour's just too persistent. If EightySix is going to US dominion, that'll shut off the Bloc's development access to Fred. If you look over the SO reports, the last nine big extro-transition element sources all ended up in United Status ownership. The Bloc's got territory, but it's getting hungry for a slice of the more lucrative pies."
Falk thought about it.
"I never did find out why it was called Fred," he said.
"Named after Frederick Shaver, captain of the first pioneer mission," Apfel said. "The first moon's called Ginger, after his wife. That's the story I heard anyway."
"I should not be talking to you," said Tedders.
"You look nice," said Falk. "Out of uniform. Not out like naked. I mean not in uniform."
"Smooth," she said. "I have a weekend pass. I'm wasting one dinnertime of that with you, even though it's not a date, and an understanding of that condition was a strict requirement for me saying yes."
"I know. Plus, I asked nicely."
"But you don't assume this is some kind of date arranged via a reverse 'not a date' code?"
"No. This is just a correspondent buying an SOMD officer dinner so they can have a nice, informal chat."
Tedders looked at their surroundings dubiously. Falk had chosen a small, family-run restaurant just off Equestrian.
"Why here?" Tedders asked.
"I heard the chicken-effect parmigiana was better than the Hyatt's."
"It's chicken-effect parmigiana," said Tedders. "Define 'better'."
"It arrives during your lifetime," he said.
A waitress brought wine and a warm dish of re-baked bread rolls.
"I don't know what you expect me to be able to do for you," Tedders said.
"Just talk."
"Seriously, Falk, if your complaint is that the SO isn't giving you the access you need, the best I'm going to be able to do is listen and nod sympathetically."
"That was a pointless excursion we went on," he said.
"Yeah, it was. Isn't it always?" She stared across the table at him. "It always surprises me when the media is shocked that the Office can manage its own message. It's like you think that because we wear uniforms and drive tanks we must be too dense to know about subtext and nuance. The SOMD looks like a modern army should, but it's just a very, very slick PR company with added guns."
He didn't answer. He was waiting to hear what she said next.
"Someone once told me that back in the day, the Queen of England used to think that the world smelled of fresh paint, because everywhere she went a team of workers had been there the day before pimping the place up for her. That's all we do, Falk. We paint over the rough patches and make everything user-friendly."
He split a roll with his bread knife.
"Sometimes, that's not in the public interest," he said.
"Not your call to make," she replied. "Really, not in this day and age, not in situations on this magnitude."
"Let me ask you this," he said. "Just for my own interest. Do you personally know something and are just not telling me, or do they keep you in the dark too."
She smiled a quick version of her compact, portable smile.