Greg Bear - Mariposa

The chief lifted one gloved hand, game over, then gave him Fouad a knowing wink, one warrior to another. "Some show, huh? We'll take care of him from here. Get back to whatever you were doing-and not a word to anybody."

Fouad agreed that would be best.

Lion City

Sunset painted the empty land like a sheet of flame, oranges and reds on the horizon, blazing gold overhead. Dusty late summer days in Texas were bookended by wind-blown glimpses of hell. In the morning, the hell began yellow and pink and nearly silent; before nightfall, the sky gates opened, fierce and fiery.

South and east of Lion City, the main campus of Talos Corporation-classrooms, barracks, dining halls, mock towns, firing ranges-sprawled over ten thousand acres, larger than Lion City itself, and prouder, as well. Proud and remote.

The walled, moated, razor-wired campus lay quiet under the hot dusk sky, divided into four compounds like a gigantic cross carved into the west Texas flatland. Each compound was devoted to an aspect of Talos's overall mission: to train the world's police and armies in special tactics.

The gunshots, cannon fire, and explosions of the morning and afternoon had stopped. A couple of helicopters still hovered like lost dragonflies, dropping searchlight beams. The beams danced in the ascending heat. Hours would pass before the Earth cooled enough to kill all the shimmers and dust devils, the djinn of mirages.

Fouad was glad to be driving away from this day. He needed to communicate with his handlers and tell them he had what they wanted.

He pulled up to the lonely blockhouse at the Monarch gate, rolling slowly between three pairs of arched silvery wands, fringed like moth antennae. A guard scanned his iris, then swept batons over his arm chip and the windshield, while another ran mirrors and sensors on low carriages under the frame. Nothing broke this routine, unless they did not want to let you pass.

The guards pulled back the trolleys and mirrors and grimly waved him through. Nobody at the gates ever smiled. Their attitude was always, you made it through this time, but we're waiting for you to slip up big time.

Even after years in America, to Fouad, many English phrases still seemed wonderfully colorful, both cryptic and visual.

The chief of security back in Buckeye had not detained him. So perhaps he had not slipped up big time, after all.

He drove in sinusoid arcs around the concrete and steel barriers, then down the long, straight black access road that led to Old Tejano Trail, the main north-south artery of Lion County.

Fouad smiled and bared his teeth. Air rushed dry and hot through the open car window. He hung his arm out the door and waved his hand in the oven breeze. In the rearview mirror, his skin glowed and his eyes glittered like a demon's.

Only now did he allow himself to reflect on what had happened back in Buckeye. He had not dared to do so earlier, since one's thoughts were often reflected in one's features, and guards were trained to be alert to such.

As for the programmer, Nick-given his superhuman strength, skill, and startling speed-madness seemed out of the question.

Lion City had received its name from the color of the surrounding land-tawny brown-gold, like a lion's pelt. It was no more than a midsize town, laid out respectably on a square grid, with two big parallel streets lined with shops topped by apartments whose windows looked out over square overhangs and faded awnings.

Nine or ten longer, narrower streets cut crosswise like railroad ties, lined with Chinkapin oaks and modest but neatly kept homes fronted by dying lawns.

Bumped up around them came a scatter of outlying neighborhoods, more industrial, less reputable. People who did not work for Talos Corporation lived out in those neighborhoods, and for them, these were hard times.

Fouad's stomach growled, but he never stopped at the eateries and truck stops that serviced local traffic and the Talos day and night shifts. All they offered was beef or pork and potatoes. Some had salad bars, but he had become superstitious of late about cross-contamination, perhaps because of long acquaintance with the American manner of fixing and eating food: their was a world ingeniously designed to frustrate any Muslim's attempt at keeping to halal.

Though no doubt the prochines within him were also haram-forbidden.

Still, these were good people, mostly; hard-working and religious, roughly pious, all of the same God, (there is no God but Allah), but Fouad rarely spoke of religion.

For twenty years, Talos's biggest contractor had been the Pentagon, whose officers and troops were trained in the Monarch compound. In the past five years, however, the U.S. military presence at Talos had been reduced to a minimum.

Expansion of the mercenary training program-mostly Haitians-had filled the gap, filling both Buckeye and Monarch.

The second largest bloc of contracts had traditionally come from security agencies of the U.S. government; they had once occupied Swallowtail. Those numbers had been reduced as well of late.

The third largest, considered as a cluster-police from states and municipalities around the United States-took up Birdwing. Several hundred were still in residence, receiving local antiterror (and anti-illegal immigrant) training.

The fourth largest-foreign police and security forces-had expanded in the last two years, and now helped fill the barracks and grounds of Buckeye. Buckeye was also the home of the Talos security and computer system.

Fouad had worked in all four compounds, training forces both foreign and domestic in Islamic languages and culture, with a side emphasis on special tactics in Middle Eastern war zones.

Talos had been pleased with his performance, awarding him two substantial bonuses.

A mile from the campus, Fouad switched on the radio and listened to the news. Food prices were up. They rose each month as more nations cut food exports, preferring to focus on feeding their own.

Bloody civil war finally raged in Burma, as did yet another drug-fueled insurrection in northern Mexico; three assassinations in Russia in the past twenty-four hours; oil prices falling to levels not seen since 2010.

America was finally on a course to energy independence from the Middle East and South America, thereby threatening economic instability in both regions.

As he drove, apartment buildings and condos and gated housing developments popped up like forts on the bare Texas land.

New slender black roads linked them all to Old Tejano.

He switched off the radio, turned west, and swung into the apartment complex that served as home, away from the instructor dorms.

He had spent more time here a few months ago while dating, but that relationship ended and the woman went back to her family, of old Mexican descent; they had not approved of Fouad. No risk-good for his cover. Talos encouraged and expected roots in the community, like Alexander in the east.

Fouad climbed the steps by the enclosed garage and opened the door with a brass key, then stood for a moment on the first floor, in the stuffy, air-conditioned darkness, peering into shadows, checking corners.

The blinds were drawn on the windows and the rear patio door.

He switched on lights in random sequence-never the same. A quick tour showed that nothing had been searched, nothing moved or rearranged except perhaps with micrometer precision.

He assumed the apartment was wired and that sensors were embedded in the paint, the furniture, the carpet. Elsewhere, computers would assemble amorphous streams of visual data into crystal-clear pictures, like so many virtual lenses.

Being watched was a perpetual assumption for anyone who worked for Price. Best not to bet otherwise.