“The sats could spot dust twinkle and do Fourier, then downlink.”
“Why would they?” Gamecock asks doubtfully. “Antags can spot twinkle as well.”
“If any sats survive,” I add.
“Well, what if some do?” Tak says. “Sir, we can’t not take chances. We need to compare our own tactical in real time, the updates between Captain Coyle’s launch and drop and ours—not just chew over old news. Our angels are terrible at computing command decisions, especially when the shit sets up. But you know they will. And then, we have to do what they say.” We have been instructed to follow angelic orders, even barring updates. That threat chills us all—all except Coyle, who stays cool, indifferent.
I note this with a slight itch in the back of my head.
“We’re the deciders,” I say.
Gamecock considers. “Captain Coyle—you, me, Tak, let’s draw in the dust. Michelin, you and whomever the captain assigns work the layout with Rafe. Venn, take Teal back to that watchtower and look around. Keep her away from the Voors. And get back in your skintights, all of you. DJ… go outside through the southern garage. Shoot some beams. See if we can raise a sat.”
DJ looks unhappy.
“Twenty minutes,” Gamecock tells him. “Then get the fidge back in here.”
“Just say ‘fuck,’ sir,” DJ grumbles. “Bloody Gurus can’t fucking hear us.”
“Assume nothing,” Gamecock says. “Go.”
BACKGROUNDER, PART 3
I sit in the apartment’s high morning light, flipping the inscribed platinum disk between my fingers, basking in a multicolored and subdivided square of reflected spring sun—with coffee. The lone box of breakfast cereal has long since become a village of weevils, a movable feast—if I regard them as food rather than company.
Doesn’t matter. I’m not hungry. The dubious delights of being alone have worn off. I’m waiting for Joe to show up and tell me the outcome, as far as it goes, of his part of our long story.
I feel weirdly biblical this morning. Smiting and being smitten.
Lo and behold, heavenly visitors came to Earth, and at first it was good, though many were sore amazed, and some were affrighted and did rise up and protest.
That’s all I got. Never did get into that shit much.
But about two-thirds of us decided it was okay, why be a wallflower at the orgy? The second year after the Gurus outed themselves, the major industrial nations recorded near-zero unemployment. All who could work, worked—there was that much to do to exploit what little they had begun to reveal.
But everything is context. Before the real kicker, the mother of other dropped shoes—the announcement that the Antags were in our backyard—the Gurus led with an opening poke, a diagnostic of our will, of our submission.
Maybe.
Gurus seemed reasonable, mostly. They took a larger view. No surprise, given their celestial origins. They didn’t mind their benefits expanding to all nations, even those that refused to acknowledge they were real. They also didn’t mind satires or outright blasphemies against their persons or activities—seemed at times to encourage them. Lets off steam. So be it. They are not really God or gods, after all. Like us, mere mortals.
And yet, like the God of Abraham, shrouded in His secure sanctuary, the Gurus do not show themselves to the greater world. In the early years, speculation ran rampant, but those in the know managed to keep quiet about what they saw and experienced, in the presence of our visitors.
And to them—to the Wait Staff, just before the truly shitty boot dropped—was passed the first edict of Guru kind. Call it a firm request.
The Gurus made it clear, however magnanimous they might seem, that they found offensive any and all sexual profanity. Words that showed disrespect to the sacred biological functions of reproduction. Blaspheme against the Lord or Allah or Krishna or Buddha or Brahma if you will, but the F-word and its irreverent equivalents were a foul stench unto core Guru beliefs.
No physical punishment would ensue should that word continue to occupy its favored place in literature, entertainment, and common discourse—that was not Guru style—but they would be highly displeased, and if sufficiently highly displeased, they could reduce their revelations, perhaps even pack up and depart.
Some found that amusing. Upon threat of suppression, the floodgates opened. For a few months, the channels of human discourse overflowed with sexual profanity of an amazing level of creativity and vigor.
And then, as promised, the Gurus clammed up. For three months, nothing new passed to the outer world from the Wait Staff. So began the worldwide clampdown on the F-word. After all, geese with sensitive ears who laid golden eggs now rocked our economy. No reason to be ungrateful. For the first time in human history, humans managed to mostly clean up their language.
Way back in the twentieth century, creative types conjured substitutes for F-words by the dozens, like ersatz coffee or fake cigarettes—or bootleg gin—to avoid purely human censors. That talent was now revived. A young blogger in Beijing, whose reports, in admirable English, were popular worldwide, made up the word fidge as the new expletive of choice. He carefully explained—for sensitive eyes and ears—that nowise and nohow did fidge have a sexual connotation.
Fidge it became: fidge this, fidge that.
Gamecock was always extra cautious.
And that’s not all. Don’t know if there’s any relation, but respecting reproduction…
Maybe you know about the lists, the unsolved disappearances all around the world. They seem to have begun about three years after the Gurus arrived. A select group of men and even a few women are vanishing. Some have been connected with or accused of sexual crimes. Violent stuff. Like Corporal Grover Sudbury. Remember him?
The disappearances continue to this day. Certainly not mystery number one, but interesting.
WAKEFUL THOUGHTS FOR SLEEPLESS GRUNTS
I think more this morning of the Red. How, wearing a skintight and standing on a flat, lifeless prairie of old lava and blown dust and sand, sometimes, even before a battle, I could feel free, liberated, useful; whereas here, in the apartment, the walls are closing in worse than any faceplate; the ample air seems denser and more confining than the sour smell of packed filters.
There’s an untouched bowl of cereal on the table. It’s still moving. The weevils are active. I don’t know whether to throw them out or sit down and talk to them. I’ve got it bad. I’m shaking, and it’s not just the pure caffeine of freshly ground black coffee, a luxury hardly ever available on Mars. I’m shaking because my extended cat whiskers tell me a moment is arriving that will both explain and traumatize. I do not want to know. I’ve switched off my phone, cut the intercom and buzzer; nobody in, nobody out who doesn’t already have a key. No news. No updates. Just the closing in and restlessness and shivering. No more, please. I’m a man without a center. I have no idea where the hell I am. Waiting for Joe. Waiting for anybody who can tell me what the hell happened and how long I have to lie low.
Christ, I am well and truly fucked.
I look at the door, above the rise and beyond the small flight of stairs, framed by the upstairs loft, clearly illuminated by rising glory reflected from a glass-walled skyscraper a few hundred meters across the downtown neighborhood—blue-green windows redirecting the eastern sunrise.
Someone’s coming. It won’t be Joe. That much my whiskers tell me. Someone new. I get up on autopilot, shivering uncontrollably, and move toward the door.