The Mirrored Heavens Read Free Page B

swirls of sea are far more real than the swirling in his head. He remembers the way his handlers prowled his dreams—remembers the bit about SpaceCom and the bit about Lynx and the rendezvous somewhere on the nearside. And that’s about it.
    Save for one other memory of the time before he boarded. A memory of the launch complex spreading out beneath him as the elevator trundled up sixty stories of rocket. He could see all the way to jungle. He could hear the tanks pressurizing for main-engine start. But that was an hour ago. Ignition’s long past. That rocket’s gone.
    All that’s left is spaceship.

    C laire Haskell’s coming awake. It doesn’t come easy. Her head hurts. The seat in which she sits is shaking. She’s in motion. She opens her eyes.
    To find herself in the rear of what looks to be a jet-copter. A low ceiling curves above her. The straps of her seat curl over her. The cockpit door is plainly visible from where she sits. It’s shut. She feels the same way. She feels there are things she can’t recall. It’s always like this when she wakes from trance: before awareness folds in, lays bare the residue of dreams. Ostensibly, those dreams look the same as any others. But they give themselves away with telltale signs she knows too well—the green of the old man’s eyes, the soft tone of his voice, the particular ambience of a room. It seems there was a room. It seems she was there, out upon some sea. But that chamber had no windows. The one in which she sits now does. Each one is covered with a plastic shade. She reaches over to the nearest. But now the dreams surge in upon her. They remind her who she is. They remind her who’s been at her mind again. Those dreams: there was a time when she regarded them as her succor. There was a time when she grew to hate them worse than death. But lately it’s been both thrill and revulsion simultaneously—and with such intensity that she’s no longer sure she can even tell the difference. And what does it matter? All primary briefings of agents take place under the trance, get remembered by those agents only in retrospect. It doesn’t matter how she feels about that. Emotions are incidental. Facts aren’t—her charge, however difficult, her lot in life for now, is to tend these thoughts that aren’t hers, to shelter them and incubate them, and then do whatever they may ask. And now she’s waiting for that moment. But her hands aren’t waiting. They grasp the shade. Her fingers fumble with the clasp. She rips aside plastic to reveal window. She blinks. She stares. And draws back as she realizes what she’s looking at.

    M arlowe’s got two minutes. Lighted arrows show him the way, but he no longer sees them. Disembodied voices goad him on, but he no longer hears them. All he hears is the soundless noise that’s building up within him—the silent siren that accompanies the moments that play out before the run…out of that formless dark in which the word goes down, out into the events in which he writes that word across flesh. He races down another corridor. It’s getting narrower. Up ahead, a door slides aside. He runs through the opening and down a ramp.
    He’s in the underbelly. The ceiling’s lower here. Technicians step in from left and right. They check his suit’s seals. They check the thrusters on his back and wrists and ankles. They make some adjustments to the minigun that’s perched on his right shoulder. They wave him onward. Marlowe moves past more ladders, closes in upon one ladder in particular. Blank screens are everywhere. He feels the stare of invisible eyes upon him. He’s going straight for the door at his feet. It seems to lead directly into a crawl space—a tiny alcove that he might have missed had the arrows not led him straight here. But it’s not an alcove. It’s not a crawl space.
    It’s his ride to ground.
    “Get in,” says the voice.
    But Marlowe’s paying no attention. He climbs in, activates magnetic clamps. The