"Pitiful," stated the skinny male slumped in his seat. "Absolutely pitiful."

"Agreed," replied the distinguished woman, sitting alongside. She was lovely but severe in a restrictive dress of formal function. "And that was our best combat simulation so far."

"I can see why you hired me, Ms. Harvin."

"My Miami contacts recommended you highly. Lights, please!"

Instantly, the theatre was illuminated. Turning about in her chair, Barbara Harvin studied the old norm siting near her. Pole-thin, with gray hair and a chromed datajack in his temple, the decker wasn't physically impressive. On the other hand, she could hire all the street muscle ever needed, and it wouldn't do the job. Shawn Wilson could.

"So you agree with my assessment?"

The decker nodded. "Totally. Your people seem to lack the necessary . . . um, non-linear thinking mandatory to defend this type of installation."

"Pirates attack in a straightforward manner, why not? All the advantages are theirs. They're small and mobile, we're large and stationary."

"A single torpedo and the dome is gone."

"Oh, more than just one. Our althropic"-she stumbled over the word-"glass shell is the most resilient material known."

"Radio waves can't travel through salt water," he observed. "How do you communicate with your subs and control the torpedoes?"

"An acoustical phone called a Gertrude. It's limited only by the thickness of the water, compounded by the distance needed and the power of the sonic transmitter."

Wilson rubbed the chrome jack on his forehead. "Like shouting at a car in the wind?"

"Exactly."

He chewed that over. "Bad for your subs. The pirates can hear every command."

"We have a solution for that," she said, but that was all. Wilson gave a wry smile. "Only one way to shout in public and not have the world understand what you're talking about. Codes."

She nodded. "Changed daily."

"What about cutting off the problem at the source?" Shawn Wilson lit a cigarette. "The dead can't hurt you."

"If we knew the location of the pirate base, it would have been over long ago," said Harvin.

Wilson sent a puff of smoke toward the ceiling as a perfect ring. "You must have already tried capturing one and torturing the location of their main base out of him. What was the name of this gang again? IronHell?"

"Yes, that has also been tried and also failed. The pirates have cerebral bombs surgically planted inside their skulls set to explode if anything happens to them. We believe that the upper echelon do not, but so far it's been impossible to confirm this, much less find and capture one of their leaders."

"Drugs? Hypnosis? Magic?"

"All tried and failed," Harvin said. "Mr. Wilson, if these are the best suggestions you can offer, then perhaps it was a waste of time bringing you here."

"What about infiltration?"

"We already have a very special team working on that particular angle."

"Any progress?"

"Oh, most assuredly. Our contact is incommunicado at the moment, but we expect good news at any time. They are most resourceful." A pause. "Of course we'll never be able to use them again after this."

"Ah, they know too much," Wilson did not state it as a question.

Barbara Harvin stared at him. "Quite the contrary. They know absolutely nothing about what's really going on."

Thoughtfully, Wilson ground out his smoke in an ashtray, and lit another. "How much time have we got?"

"For the moment, all the time you need."

He raised his eyebrows in surprise. "How is that possible?"

"Gunderson currently has an ... agreement with IronHell. In exchange for leaving the city alone, we provide them with all the food and medical supplies they can carry in ten ships every month. Other times they want money, and sometimes they want ships."

"Expensive."

"Extremely expensive. It cuts our profit margin to the bone. It is, however, necessary for the present."

"Any reason this place is so attractive to them?"

"None to our knowledge. Aside from the obvious fact that they know it's here and can successfully extort supplies and nuyen and ships from us. Only the deep-water location of this city is unique. People have been successfully building underwater cities since the 1970s."

He stared at her.

"Incredible, but true." Harvin took a cigarette case from a pocket of her suit, removed a slim cigarette and puffed it into life. "The difference is that until now the dometowns have always been located in shallow waters. Old Japan and America both tried deep-water cities and failed. So did Brazil, Australia, France, and Russia."

Harvin gestured expansively. "The ruins are still out there somewhere. Secret cities of the dead. A fortune for anybody who ever finds one, figures out why they failed, and brings back the data."

"Interesting."

"However, until confirmed, the reason those primitive arcologies are believed to have failed is thermal inversion. There are rivers of water running through the ocean, some hot, some cold. They shift about and move freely, so there can be a dynamic difference of twenty degrees in ocean water within a mere ten meters. For a dometown a thousand meters tall, the differences can be incredible, and deadly. Mini-fissures are created by the temperature differences. These lead to a general weakening, then cracks and explosive decompression and total dome failure. Millions, and in some cases, billions lost in an eyeblink."

"Then how is it that yours is still standing?"

She inhaled deeply, letting the smoke trickle out her nose. "That information is on a need-to-know basis only."

He took a deep drag on the cigarette, the tip glowing red as a laser sight. "I may need to know," Wilson informed her.

"Demonstrate that, and I shall personally brief you." Another puff and the cigarette was ground out on the expensive carpet underfoot.

"Fair enough."

Harvin rose and started for the exit, trailed by her entourage of guards and aides. "There is a tremendous profit to be made down here from pressure-welding unique alloys, superconductor chips, and the near limitless supply of food for the surface."

"Which you will happily sell to the starving of the world."

"Of course. Gunderson is a business. The ocean is also a pharmaceutical cornucopia of plants with fantastic medical, and even recreational, properties."

Barbara Harvin held out a hand, and a dapper aide proffered a small wooden box. She lifted the lid and drew out a handrolled cigar with a golden band bearing the Gunderson logo. She offered it to Shawn Wilson. "This is deepweed, a prime example of the resources down here. It has much more nicotine than land tobacco, and a good dose of the chemical THC, just like fine Colombian marijuana. The world market potential for such a luxury item is staggering."

With a pocket lighter, Wilson lit the tip and inhaled, lolling the smoke on his tongue like an expert. "Draws like a good Havana," he complimented. "Very mellow."

"Yes, it is very popular in the lower districts." Harvin watched him puff contentedly on the cigar for a moment, then turned and started along the hallway. "So you see, we desperately need the freedom to harvest the sea without hindrance or interference. The Gunderson Corporation wants those pirates dealt with once and forever."

Continuing along the plush hallway of the theatre lobby, Wilson looked at her over the cigar. "By the way, exactly how do you get staff down here?" he asked. "Not many folks would want to work in a fish tank situated in a warzone."

"Normally, we hire them in gangs through fake ads," Harvin said. "We have many thousand workers at present, but always need more. And if there is a specialist we need and cannot lure here"-she shrugged-"we simply kidnap him."

"Such as mages?"

Barbara scowled at him. "There are no shamans or mages in the city. This is important for us to maintain absolute control. Riggers and deckers we allow because of their tremendous usefulness, and because the dometown is not connected to the world computer grid. With no access to the Matrix, there is little harm a decker can do. And if they're foolish enough to try a run against our coldframe, then the problem solves itself." She smiled at this last.

"If babies are being born, you're going to have mages someday."

"When a child shows the talent, we kill him or her in an accident."

Wilson frowned. "Crude."

"But efficient. It has served us so far."

"No mistakes?"

Barbara Harvin stopped at the elevator, and an aide pressed the button for them. "Only once. And it was also corrected. Although there have been complications from the solution. However, that was before my administration, and such an event will not be allowed to occur again."

With a sigh, the elevators doors parted, and then parted again. Wilson blinked. "Just like an airlock."

"It is one," Harvin informed him. "All major doors to the executive quarters of Old Dome are. For the safety and protection of our people in case of a minor dome leak."

"What do you tell the workers when they want to go home? Pirates again?"

"Oh, no. We control all the submersibles and Jym suits.

Nobody leaves without our consent. Also, upon arrival we give them a medical injection to help their bodies cope with the terrible pressures down here. Actually, it's a powerful narcotic extracted from deepweed and genetically altered. Once administered, the worker must continue to take more of the substance daily for life. If an unauthorized person escaped to the surface, he'd be unconscious within hours, dead in a day without the antidote." She smiled. "Because, you see, they don't even know about the drug. We place it secretly in their food, beer, soymilk, candy, even the free cigars and cigarettes we regularly distribute from quote-manufacturing excess-end quote."

In abject horror, Shawn Wilson dropped the cigar from nerveless fingers. It fell to the floor and lay there smoldering at their feet, slowly dying on the plush carpeting. Nobody made a move to retrieve the item.

"Welcome to Old Dome," said Barbara Harvin, motioning him with a smile into the upholstered corporate cage.

25.

Waddling through the ankle-deep silt, the five Jym suits clumsily moved along the bed of the ocean. Thankfully, their underwater armor was in good condition, batteries fully charged, air tanks at max, the DeCamp joints flexing freely, and the heaters toasty warm, although the insides did smell of old beer and sour sweat like a locker room after a game. Operating at the bottom of the sea, the runners had six hours to find some place to recharge both, or die. The suits weighed a good ton apiece and there was no way even magic could float them to the surface. Which gave them only one option.

Every shuffling step of the group puffed up little clouds of silt that settled with amazing speed. The pressure was tremendous, and they all kept a close watch on the quivering needles of the dynamic-tension gauges set with the other controls and meters along the jaw line of each helmet.

With their shoulder-mounted lights off and the sonar deactivated, the black suits were silent invaders into the briny depths. Thermographs, struggling against the polar currents, only offered them vector graphics of the world around them, sketchy green outlines devoid of color or details. It made the whole scene seem unreal. Schools of cartoon fish swam by like the radioactive ghosts of trout long past. Unbelievably, plant life was abundant in the crevices of the flat plain, waving fronds, bushy clumps that shrank inside themselves at their approach, and weird things resembling upsidedown octopi. And crabs, of course.

Silver knew that radio waves couldn't travel through salt water, not at this pressure and temperature. However, the Jym suits carried something called a Gertrude, an acoustical sea phone. The five of them could talk, and it was supposed to be impossible to tell the scrambled sonic signals from natural biological background noise. Or, at least, that was the theory. The darkness compounded with silence was intolerable, so the risk was worth it. Besides, she had other uses for her radio.

"How much further?" asked Thumbs, wheezing slightly, the faceplate of his helmet fogging.

"Decrease your oxygen," snapped Moonfeather. "You're getting too much."

"Thanks," he panted. "Thought I'd need more cause I'm big."

"No."

"Another two, three klicks," said Silver, wiggling an arm free of her sleeve. As it came out, she flexed the limb in the scant confines of her torso area and happily scratched her nose. "The explosion threw us farther away than I thought."

"If you hadn't zapped the sub, it would have sunk and we could have looted the wreckage for air tanks," grumbled Boomer.

"To what end?" asked Delphia, in the lead. "You saw that scout come to look over the blast zone, and then leave. It wasn't a rescue sub. It was a recon looking for survivors to geek."

"Yar? And how do you know that?"

"Their airlock was sealed, torpedo tubes flooded."

A pause. "Oh. Bidamned, you're right."

Easing the fiber-optic cable from her jacket pocket, Silver spoke. "External temperature, minus fifty. We're in the middle of the polar river now. Should be close."

"Gods, I wish we could use the lights!" said Moonfeather. "Don't!" snapped Boomer. "It'll attract everything alive for klicks. And some of the larger ones will be hungry."

"Or armed."

"Gotcha. Dark it is."

Reaching an arroyo, they circled a copse of kelp stretching upward out of range of their thermographs. Fish darted in and out among the strands of kelp like birds in a tree.

"There it is!" cried Thumbs, gesturing.

Everybody hurried toward him. The clump of brain coral was sitting alone and innocent near the exposed gnarled roots of the kelp. A single squat crab peered out at them like a prisoner from his jail cell window.

Delphia moved around the illusion, hands spread wide. "Don't go near it!" he reminded them sternly. "There will be more defensives. Deadlier ones."

"Natch, kemosabe. What am I, stupid?"

"I can answer that."

"Lick my pud, mage."

"Arc-store it troll."