"Yessir, I understand that. In fact, I was a kind of thinking." An old idea of hers, half-formed at best. One that she'd been meaning to bring up for a while now, but hadn't had the opportunity.

"Kind of thinking," repeated N'Darie. "Huh. What about?"

"What if I spoke to someone? Maybe some of the senators, or the congressors? The marginal ones?"

"Charm them, you mean?" Vanessa commented dryly. Sandy shrugged.

"What would you say?" N'Darie asked.

"I don't know. I just thought that a if they saw me, and saw who I really am a"

"And who are you?" N'Darie's stare was very direct, within a small, rounded face. In another life, N'Darie might have looked slightly comical. In this life, no one laughed unless invited. "I know who you are. Vanessa and Rajeev know. Director Ibrahim certainly does. We've spent time with you, we've seen what you've done and we know what you're like to work with.

"Sandy, politicians are different people. If you approach them, they'll a.s.sume it's political. Which it is. And not knowing you better, they won't know whether you're being genuine or whether you're just lying through your teeth. You can't have a non-political conversation with a politician, not in this atmosphere, and certainly not coming from you. I'm sorry, it's a bad idea. It'd only cause more questions and more trouble."

"And I can't appeal to the public," Sandy said flatly.

"No way. Not unless you want to become a celebrity. We have a hard enough time managing media relations right now, Sandy. If you start attracting celebrity attention from this mob, it'll be a zoo, we'll get buried. Right now they're happily misdirected, and we're happy to let them be. If you make yourself the spotlight, everyone will want to target on you, and that's exactly what we don't want. Don't stick your head up in a crossfire, Sandy, you're a soldier, you ought to know that."

"They think I'm a killer."

"So we'll keep reminding them otherwise."

"How?" Fixing the a.s.sistant-Chief with a firm, unblinking stare. "By reminding them of the Parliament Ma.s.sacre? I killed twenty people there, it's not the advertis.e.m.e.nt I'm looking for."

"You killed twenty GIs, Sandy. That's different."

"GIs are people."

Silence in the aircar but for the m.u.f.fled whine of engines. Pa.s.sing tower light threw N'Darie's dark face into half-light, then angling back into darkness as they pa.s.sed. She sighed.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean it like that. But there's no easy answers here. We just have to try and survive, and do our jobs as best we can, in spite of those well meaning morons appointed to try and stop us. And we need to convince people that the SIBs have taken their eye way off the ball, and get them focused on what really matters. Until then, we can't do anything but keep our heads down and protect our turf with everything we've got."

Intel HQ remained as busy as ever, despite the hour. Screens flashed across the operations room. Holo-projection charts tracked movements, unit positions, traffic flows. Sandy sat in the side office above the main pit, where many eyes trained upon their screens, deciphering com-flows and encryption routines. Above and around them, on the higher walk, broader scale a.n.a.lysis was offered from surrounding offices. The pit was large and terminals numerous, many eyes bleary in the lingering hours of nightshift, with dawn approaching. Central operations was much larger. Intel Ops was merely a side branch, keeping tabs. a.n.a.lysing, always a.n.a.lysing.

She sat on a desktop with a leg curled up for balance, an arm locked about, watching the screen-a young man behind a blank interview desk. Date and time scrolled by in the corner. She rubbed her eyes and took another sip of lukewarm coffee with her free hand.

The door opened and Naidu entered, a brief intrusion of Ops-pit noise. Silent again as the door closed.

"Girl, what on good Earth are you still doing here?" He walked to the side of the desk, looking at the screen.

"I dunno," Sandy said wearily, eyes not leaving the screen. "I just wanted to see the interview tape. Know what he's up to."

Naidu leaned a hand on the desk, the other thumb tucked characteristically into his belt below a moderate overhang of stomach.

"Jurgen Chavinski," he said heavily, "Human Reclamation Project. You know what the HRP are?"

"Lunatics," Sandy murmured. The young man on the screen appeared sullen, tired and disturbingly normal. His responses to questions were brief, at best. He remained determinedly uncooperative, and had been for the last hour.

"One of about fifty mid-range lunatic groups in Ta.n.u.sha, to be more precise. Farts, in Intel lingo."

Sandy spared him a brief, sideways glance.

"They just kind of float around," Naidu explained.

"Oh." Eyes back to the screen.

"Young Mr. Ruben had the HRP rather higher up on his alert list than I did, I must admit." He sighed, running a tired hand through longish, unruly hair. "I really should listen to Ari more often. As the name might suggest, they're virulently antibiotech, but, unlike Christian Vanguard, it's not for religious reasons."

"Where'd he get the bomb?"

"He won't say. We think he wrote the trigger code, and probably the sleeper Ari found. But there's any number of ways to make plastique with basic materials. The question is why, and what was he hoping to achieve. And the answer is that we don't know. His friends aren't any more communicative. All ex-university students, graduated or dropped out. All from Ricardo College, same year, obvious connection. Progressive Philosophy, all of them. Mr. Chavinski here graduated with honours. Stirling report card, you should read it. Said he was headed for big things."

Sandy made a face, and sipped her coffee. "They got that much right, I suppose."

"Nay, young lady, do not denigrate the grand designs of Ta.n.u.shan higher education." Grandly, but the humour was forced through lack of sleep.

"And everyone on the boat was okay?"

"Very wet," Naidu said decidedly. "Very wet, very frightened, and complaining of eye and skin irritation through an overexposure to firer.e.t.a.r.dant foam. No one badly hurt, except for a nesting parrot family in one of those riverside trees, the local environmentalists were quite upset. They're demanding we add cruelty to animals to the charges."

"Maybe the parrots were the target," Sandy murmured wryly.

"Ah yes, the right wing Anti-Parrot Alliance, I know them well." Sandy smiled. "Anyway, there were three business committees on the boat, Lexi Incorporated, Lantern Digital and Alitas Micro. All with plenty to talk about, of course, given how much business could change if Callay breaks away a There's the usual civil servants there, special invites, nothing serious. Lexi and Alitas are biotech." Of course, the obvious connection. "Both local."

Sandy blinked, and gave him a long, frowning look.

"Local? Not lemmings?"

"No a" Naidu rumbled, deep-throated consideration. "There are thousands of leads and possibilities, of course, so we're running the usual traces a but it could take a long time. Difficulties, you under stand, are not from lack of leads in this game, they come from having too many. Most always there is something important directly under our noses, but to find it is like finding a teardrop in an ocean."

"Yeah." Sandy was coming to understand that only too well. And stared back at the screen.

"But you, young lady," said Naidu, "should go home and go to bed." He walked to the monitor, and turned it off. Sandy frowned. She'd been watching that. Unconcerned, Naidu stood before her, and put both hands on her shoulders. Looked hard into her eyes at that close range. "Are you all right?"

"All right?" She blinked. "Sure." Naidu looked at her for a long moment. She could see clearly the lines on his face, up this close. Worn wrinkles on dark brown skin. The pepper grey streaks through his light brown hair. His eyes were deep with acc.u.mulated years, and he held her gaze in a strange kind of paralysis.

"We do appreciate you here, you should know," he told her. And Sandy could think of nothing to say to that. "We appreciate what you've done, and who you are. The Boss and little Benny Grey might not always be able to stick up for you as much as they'd like, or we'd like, but never think we don't care. When the balloon goes up, young Sandy, you're one of us. Don't you forget it."

Sandy stared at him. Wondering exactly which balloon he was referring to, and why it should go up and not down. And wondering further if she ought to be insulted at being called "young Sandy." She was a combat veteran of many years' frontline experience. She was unaccustomed to condescension. Fear and loathing were far more familiar.

But Naidu was more than one hundred years old. Reputedly. He'd been in CSA Intel, the story went, before Ta.n.u.sha was even built. An Old Earth native, from Bangalore, old India. Still the accent held, beyond the Ta.n.u.shan-Indian tones. Like an artifact upon one of her apartment shelves, it held her attention, suggestive of things old and wise, and important.

"I won't forget it," she replied. "I know the politics aren't your fault."

Naidu gripped her shoulders more tightly. "And don't you worry about little Benny," he said, leaning forward for emphasis. Benjamin Grey, he meant. "No secret he doesn't like you, no secret at all. But he doesn't call the shots with the Boss, he just does the paperwork and stamps the forms."

"Why wasn't he at the Senate Chamber?" she asked.

"Because he's Administration. Neiland's Administration, you understand. Neiland's got her t.i.ts in a wringer on this, Sandy. Her own party don't like her position where you're concerned, and now the Senate's putting the wind up her. The last thing she can afford is to be caught up in a furball between CSA and SIB. That might force her to take sides, and that's the last thing she wants right now. So we're effectively on our own a and to be quite frank with you, I prefer it that way."

Sandy frowned at him. "But shouldn't Ibrahim have been there? He's the head, I'd have thought if we don't have Neiland entirely behind us, he'd at least put himself up there a"

"To defend you?" Naidu's eyes gleamed. "Definitely he would, over something like this. Never underestimate the old man, young Sandy. He sent the Beetle for a reason." The Beetle, Sandy had gathered, was N'Darie-small, black, round, and very hard-sh.e.l.led. She wondered what the CSA a.s.sistant Head thought of her nickname, a.s.suming she knew about it.

"What reason? All she did was blow up and yell at people, I thought everyone knew she had a short fuse a" And stopped as it occurred to her. Blinked at Naidu.

"Ahhh." Smiling broadly. "Yes. Everyone does know. Never underestimate the old man, Sandy. The SIB thinks they won that round. Instead, they are only being manoeuvred into a more convenient position."

"Which is?"

"I have no earthly idea." Eyes gleaming with humour. "Trust the old man. He has more moves than a chess set." And he released her shoulders with a firm, departing whack on her arm. "Now get you to bed, and get some sleep before the next day's hard toil. It's more than I'll get myself, that is for certain."

When she arrived back at her apartment, it was to find that it had been searched. She dumped her day's kitbag upon the table, uplinking through the minder system to the security recorder, and watched the search progress, two hours beforehand, striding about the apartment as she did, checking for things missing, damaged or out of place.

The SIB-for clearly it was them-had gone through her things but moved or handled little. Doubtless they'd known they were being watched and that she'd review the security tape herself. And she saw, on the tape, the second gearbag removed from her closet, unzipped and searched through, and then shouldered.

She strode to the bedroom closet and opened it-the kitbag was gone, along with all her backup SWAT gear. Weapons included. And her specialised interface module. Dammit, she shouldn't have left it in there. It annoyed her no end. As did the doc.u.menter who had followed them about, taping the entire scene. At one point standing before her well decorated living room walls and scanning over her acc.u.mulated artifacts, as if they could reveal some deep, dark secret of her malevolent psyche, to be decoded later by specially selected SIB "experts."

She strode back to the main room and scanned about, visionshifting in search of suspicious traces. No bugs, they'd grown too wise for that. But doubtless she was being watched, even now. She uplinked a connection and the windows polarised to ninety per cent black, though the gleaming view of lights faded only slightly from the inside. And she stood, in the centre of her room, and thought dark thoughts for a while. Wondering if she should call Vanessa. But that would only get her annoyed too, and disturb her sleep. There was nothing to be done about it, and no one to contact. Obviously, if she'd been officially suspended by a court order, the SIB would have received permission to enter her apartment and remove her remaining weapons and equipment. They were government issued, after all. As was the apartment, rent or no rent.

Well. She uplinked again to the door controls and wiped the original access codes. Transplanted her own. A temporary measure, she would do better later a but, for now, it would do. She accessed the room com and did the same there. A reasonable security measure, and if the SIB complained a well, if the SIB could get in, so could someone else.

She then removed her clothes, showered, stretched, and went to bed. And noticed, before she closed her eyes, that the wood carved Chinese dragon was slightly out of position beside the bedside comp. She turned it, so that its sharp, snarling fangs were facing directly toward her head upon the pillow, and its dark, wooden eyes gazed directly into her own. Then she turned over and went to sleep, content that her apartment was newly secured, and that the dragon by her bedside would watch over her, protectively, and guard her while she slept.

he was awoken at 9:03 by Vanessa, ringing the call b.u.t.ton. Sandy blinked her eyes awake, uplinked to check the outside corridor through the cameras there, and unlocked the door. Curled up again as Vanessa came in and shut it behind her.

She came through the bedroom doorway a few moments later, and took a running leap onto the bed, and onto Sandy in the process. Shouted, "Wake up!" into Sandy's ear, propped over her on all fours, as Sandy pretended to ignore her, liking bed better than the promise of the new day dawning. The sunlight was bright despite the polarised windows, but somehow the glow was missing, failing to warm her skin properly in the now not-so-early morning.

"Come on," Vanessa said, lying heavily on Sandy's side, "GIs aren't supposed to be lazy, you're setting a very bad precedent."

"Go away," Sandy complained, pulling the sheets more firmly about her.

"Hey, you due for your five hundred thousand K check-up, or what?" Rapped her repeatedly on the head. "Did your elastic band break?" Sandy snorted, and made no effort to move. "Come on, Sandy, don't do this, this is a bad sci-fi plot-revolt of the machines, y'know? What if our toasters stopped working in the mornings, the hot water systems went on strike, the cars decided not to start? You can't go on strike in the middle of a techno-metropolis a the next thing you know, all the kitchen appliances will be demanding better hours and the refrigerators will refuse to turn on their little lights when you open the door, and then the entire city will go weak with hunger from not knowing what to eat a"

Sandy grabbed her into a fast headlock and stuffed the pillow over her head. Vanessa protested, with little effect beyond a m.u.f.fled shouting, and ineffectual whacks from flailing limbs.

"Silence can be so relaxing," Sandy told the pillow. "Don't you think?" Removed the pillow. Vanessa stuck her tongue out defiantly. Sandy pushed her off the bed, and she landed with a thud.

"Ow."

Vanessa's head reappeared over the bedside, dark hair in disarray, grinning broadly.

"Pain," Sandy accused her, head back on her pillow, pulling her sheets back into some kind of order.

"You getting up? It's not like you're short on work, SWAT or no SWAT."

"Just a half hour longer." Burrowing back into her pillow.

Vanessa sat back on her heels, studying her with a smile.

"You're getting slack. This isn't the military spec cps officer I know and love. I mean, look at you, you're getting into fights with your superiors, your hair's getting long a" She messed Sandy's already dishevelled hair, Sandy swatting her away. "a your apartment's sprouting all kinds of unnecessary decorations, and now you're sleeping in late."

"I'm evolving," Sandy mumbled into her pillow.

"Into what?"

"Vanessa, the SIBs just searched my apartment and confiscated my gear," she said plaintively. "I'm feeling very p.i.s.sed off. Have some sympathy."

"You're feeling sorry for yourself," Vanessa said with amazement as it dawned on her. "That's a first."

"I told you, I'm evolving."

"No, you're not, you're regressing. I can see your maturity and self control plummeting before my eyes."

"Good. I'm due a little self obsession, I've been serving other people's interests all my life and look what I've got from it."

"You've got me," Vanessa said reasonably.

"I've got a whole city whose President's b.u.t.t I saved and whose security I restored after a mountain-sized breach, all of whom now hate me and want me dead. Why the f.u.c.k do I bother?"

No reply from Vanessa. She hadn't spoken loudly, or with great emotion, but now, somehow, a silence hung in the air. And she blinked her eyes open, realising exactly what she'd said. Where had that come from?

Vanessa sighed. Hauled herself to her feet, and sat on the bed beside her.

"Sandy a I think about two months before I met you, there was a big news story here because a senior businessman had been caught having s.e.x with a high cla.s.s prost.i.tute. This guy was a bigshot, head of some political advisory committee or other, I forget. Anyway, he was found out because he and the girl he was s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g were getting real adventurous on the ninetieth-floor balcony-she was hanging onto the railings, he was giving it to her a and somehow she slipped and fell.

"Yeah, exactly," as she saw Sandy's wince. "She put a big hole in a pa.s.sing car, made a real spectacle on the news. Just this pair of legs sticking up through the roof, high heels and all."

"Can see why the media liked it."

"Sure you can. And it's horrible, right? I mean this girl was a col lege student, she was just working so she could afford the tech-lessons that went with the fancy tape-teach she was getting, had a whole career plan laid out in front of her, a whole life and everything a and what a f.u.c.king stupid, undignified way to end it all in front of the whole planetary media-and then become a part of the circus sideshow of this guy's divorce and court proceedings a and the rearrangement of that whole advisory committee.

"And you know what? Within days, people were laughing themselves stupid about it." Sandy rolled her head on the pillow to meet Vanessa's meaningful gaze. "There were jokes on all the talk shows, traffic advisories on the aerial net warning airborne commuters to watch out for rapidly descending prost.i.tutes below three hundred metres in the Ranarid District a Some people at the mardi gras the next month even had a car as a float, with a big pair of plastic legs mounted on top of the roof. A live street theatre group did this thing with hordes of desperate technogeeks wandering the streets of Ranarid staring skyward with great big fishing nets, hoping to catch beautiful naked women falling out of the sky a" Sandy finally lost control of the grin that had been building up, against her better judgment. Vanessa pointed at her in knowing triumph.

"You see, it's funny, right? And why's it funny?"

"It happened to someone else," said Sandy, sobering up immediately.

"Exactly. And this girl, she wasn't a person to them, or to anyone but her family and friends, she was just this a this joke a this prost.i.tute who became a Ta.n.u.shan urban legend. And, of course, it sums up what every cynical person ever thought about this city, that one day we'd all party or drug or booze or f.u.c.k ourselves to death. She was just a symbol, not a person, not someone's daughter, or someone's sister or best friend.

"So, now, what are you? To all the people out there? Who do they think you are?"

"Either death incarnate, or every lonely male technogeek's masta-batory fantasy."

"Well there, you see? You're already bringing happiness to thousands of lonely young men throughout the city a"

"If it made the general populace any happier," Sandy muttered, "I'd do the full spread, literally and figuratively."