“Taking me to Joe?” I ask.
A quick hard look. We ascend the ramp. Palm leaves cover the rear deck, along with boot- and tire-impressed cakes of mud. Could have been flown up from California. Could be from Pendleton. The leaves and mud crunch and crumble as we squeeze forward and take our seats. The whole frame of the Valor vibrates, the cabin sways back and forth, doesn’t feel reliable, doesn’t feel good. Behind us, the ramp rises with chuffing, shuddering slowness.
I buckle in. “Something’s screwy!” I shout over the roar. “You couldn’t do this without major pull. But all I see is desperation.”
Borden looks sideways. She doesn’t like looking right at me. She’s scared of me. “Smart boy!” she says.
From the flight deck and the copilot’s seat, a red-lit profile turns and stares back at us—calm, cool. High forehead. Paki or Indian. My interrogator.
The chief wizard.
I lunge. Borden shoves her arm across my chest. “He’s why you’re here!” she shouts over the roar. “Right now, he’s your best friend.”
My tormentor languidly blinks.
“I don’t even know his fucking name!”
“He’s Kumar,” Borden says.
I thump my head back against the rest. “Fuck this, begging your pardon, ma’am. Let me know something! Where are you taking me?”
Borden shakes her head. “Away,” she says.
The Valor lifts from the ground—barely. My stomach doesn’t like the suspense. Then the engines rise in pitch and the vibration smooths, the rotors tilt forward, and we’re really moving, soaring lickety-klick over airfield, farmland, highways—mountains—above a big, ghostly, glaciered volcano, like God dropped His ice-cream cone—
The whole beautiful, wide-open world.
Despite everything, I have this insane grin on my face. Away is good. Away is fucking awesome.
AN HOUR IN the air. I manage a sweaty little nap. When I come awake at rough air, I sit up and lean to look out the port by my right side. More farmland and rocky knolls, all golden in the morning sun. The sleep has improved my mood if not my outlook. I look at Borden. She’s slumped, also sleeping. The Valor shudders and makes a wide turn, and the rising sun blasts her with light. She jerks up like a startled doe and rubs her eyes.
“Good morning,” I say.
“Coffee and newspaper?” she grumbles.
“I’ll ring the butler.”
I’m rewarded with a wan smile. She’s rank and geek steel, but she’s the only female I’ve seen in months, and she’s not bad-looking. Kumar, if that’s his real name, leans back again, surveys us with those shining dark eyes, and says, “Barring difficulty, we will take you to Oklahoma. From there, we will all transfer to another conveyance and fly to South Texas.”
I lean forward and say, louder than strictly necessary, “When do I get to beat the crap out of you, sir?”
Kumar doesn’t bat a lash. “No foul, no regrets. I’m way outside your chain of command.”
“Wait Staff?”
“No longer,” Kumar says.
Borden leans over, says, “He might make a decent piñata, but if you treat him right, he’ll shower you with candy—no need for the stick.”
This provokes a twitch of Kumar’s lips. “I’ll apologize if you desire,” he says with that same slow blink. I think it over. Amazing how long-held emotions vanish when plucked out of context. I may yet beat the crap out of him, but for now I shift my shoulders and release my death grip on the seat arms. Breaking me out of Madigan could be apology enough. Everyone on this aircraft is taking a huge risk.
“No need, really,” I say. “What’s in Texas?”
“Blue Origin Skyport.”
“Fifteen minutes,” the pilot announces.
I settle in and look at Borden. “What’s going on out there? I’ve been cooped up for months.”
“Nothing you want to hear about,” Borden says.
“I’ll be the judge. Tell me.”
“Everybody’s happy,” Borden says. “Economy is booming. Hardly anyone complains.”
“The Gurus have asked that we offer up a new religion,” Kumar says. “It’s becoming quite popular.”
Borden looks like she doesn’t think this discussion is strictly necessary.
“It’s not too bad, actually,” Kumar says. “Unifying, really.”
“Gurus want to be gods?” I ask.
“No. They insist that worshippers of this new religion respect all other religions. No prejudice. Choose and let choose. All equal.”
“So?” I look between them. “How’s that bad?”
“We are to worship the electron,” Kumar says. “Apparently all electrons are the same, they just swap out around the universe, so the One Universal Electron shares all points of view, everywhere, across all time. Voilà. Deity.”
“God is a minus,” Borden says.
“God is a diffuse cloud, sometimes a wave, sometimes a particle,” Kumar adds, sort of getting into it. “Physicists in particular are pleased.”
“Wow,” I say. “I didn’t see that coming. They still hate us saying ‘fuck’ or otherwise disrespecting sex?”
“Still,” Kumar says.
“So watch yourself,” Borden says, expression sternly neutral.
“Joe had a story about fuck,” I say.
“Later,” Borden says.
In a few minutes, Kumar says to Borden, “Time to speak of Wallops Island. Before we land. Might bring some clarity to our situation.”
Borden twists in her seat. I’m peering across her sight line, out the opposite port, so again she takes my jaw and rotates my head a couple of inches, then asks, “What do you know about the silicon plague?”
I like being touched. Not this way, but it’s better than nothing. Long swallow. “Is that its name?”
“Among several. Tell me.”
“Sounds like what happened to some of our Skyrines when they tried to lay charges in the Drifter, in the Church. They turned hard and dark, inert—but with lights inside. Then the lights faded. Dead, I guess.”
Or maybe not.
“Could it have been some sort of defensive mechanism?” Kumar asks.
“We thought so,” I say, unhappy to relive that shit and be reminded of even weirder shit. Then I get it. The docs kept asking if I or anybody I knew brought back specimens from the Drifter. “Wallops Island got infected?” I ask, looking between them.
Borden dips her chin. “Thousands of square kilometers are under quarantine. No flights, no entry, a tight cordon for fifty miles around the entire facility. They shoot and collect animals exiting the area, but there isn’t much they can do about insects, the ocean… dust in the air. They’re pretty damned scared.”
There goes my Virginia Beach apartment.
“What happened?”
“Somebody on Mars bagged and returned a piece of the black stuff. Somebody else tested it for potency. It was potent. Now they’re in panic mode. That’s probably why you were scheduled to be executed.” She looks to Kumar, who nods: She can tell me more. “They call it ‘turning glass.’ Sky Defense has canceled all transfers or drops on Mars for the semester. No more offensive or defensive actions.”
“What about the Antags?” I ask.
“Quiet, but beyond that, nobody knows,” Borden says. “Anyway, the question you should be asking is, how far is this crap going to spread?”
“Turning glass?”
“No. Executing recent visitors to Mars. Quite a rift has opened up between Wait Staff and Sky Defense. And that is one reason why we’re hauling you cross-country.”
“I was once in command of Division Four,” Kumar says. “Division Four went against the express orders of Division One and ordered your release.”