Greg Bear: Mariposa

Fouad laid down his poleax.

William lifted him off his feet and spun him around on the concrete.

"Mr. Nabokov, I presume?" he said, putting him down.

"Mr. Griff, it is excellent to see you, after all this time," Fouad said.

"That's my father's name," William said, hanging back from their hug.

"Yes," Fouad said. "The cub is now the lion. But tell me-how is it you come to be here, on this of all days?"

"Later. Let's find some water," William said.

"Absolutely. It is parched out here."

"What happened?" William asked as they walked back toward the airport buildings.

"I have only a small idea," Fouad said.

"Did you arrange for this?" William asked.

"No. Did you?"

A Torq-Vee came rolling through the smoke, around two disabled airport maintenance trucks.

The passenger door flung open and a woman in black body armor stood on the running board. She whipped off her combat helmet and waved vigorously.

"Who is that?" Fouad asked, wiping his one good eye to see more clearly.

"Rebecca Rose," William said. "I think she's offering us a ride."

"Our own Rebecca Rose? Will she have water?"

"Probably."

The Torq-Vee stopped ten yards from Fouad and William and four men in black armor jumped out to surround them, weapons ready.

"Stand down!" Rebecca called. "Is that you, William?"

"Yes, ma'am!" William called back.

Forester held up a gloved hand and called for a medical kit.

"Fouad? I hardly recognize you."

Fouad could not bring himself to speak.

"We're meeting Jane Rowland at Buckeye," Rebecca said. "Can you show us where that is?"

Fouad pointed in the general direction of the campus.

"Climb aboard, gentlemen," Rebecca said. "Buckeye apparently has a hardened server farm. We've been told to take it out, and then get the hell out of Texas."

William and Forester took hold of Fouad and guided him to the Torq-Vee, where the team offered bottled water and began to administer first aid.

Corpus Christi

Nathaniel pulled a chair into the focus of the projector and sat watching as MSARC went deaf, dumb, and blind. The lines of code and floating symbols announcing his success-or Jones's success, more appropriately-were suddenly interrupted by straight ASCII.

Is that you, Jones?

Nathaniel watched for a moment as the old-fashioned cursor blinked and another message wrote over the old one.

Who is this?

No harm in replying.

Not Jones. Who is this?

And then,

Tom Cantor. Do I know you?

Nathaniel responded,

We met at MIT ten years ago. How's tricks?

CANT› Won't do any good to complain. You must be Nathaniel. Becky Thatcher says hi.

NATH› Hi back.

CANT› We're knocking out Talos business and bank records.

NATH› Me too.

CANT› Did you get the backups in Dubai and Iron Mountain?

NATH› They're wiped, all but the offline memory. That will go the next time somebody tries to access.

CANT› Mr. Price is going to have to start from scratch-wherever he is.

NATH› OK

CANT› You should vacate pronto.

NATH› You too.

CANT› 30 on all bad guys. We'll be watching. That means you, genius boy. Say hi to Jones. Outta here.

NATH› Copy that.

Nathaniel shut down the projector and sealed off his portals. He closed the heavy door behind him, cinched up his tie, and waited for the elevator.

Carlos was watching the news on his desk monitor and barely looked up as Nathaniel passed. Then he jumped and checked him out as if seeing him for the first time.

Nathaniel shook his head. "Lots of shit going down," he said.

"Sure as hell is," Carlos said. "What's it all about, do you think?"

"Some kind of weird weather," Nathaniel said.

He was in the Bentley and driving away when the Vertexion building's external alarms went off and steel shutters began to fall over the big windows.

Carlos was going to lose his job.

Nathaniel turned left and drove along the beach, studying the ragged front.

Definitely heading east.

El Paso

Jamey and Curteze walked like two ragged beggars along the lines of stalled cars and their puzzled, impatient passengers waiting to cross into Juarez.

The cars weren't going anywhere soon, perhaps ever; the offices and the security gates were dark, El Paso was quiet, and Juarez was equally quiet, but for sporadic gunfire and shouts.

The boy was no longer a boy, and Curteze had no idea who or what he was-only that their walk was almost over, the job almost done.

Jamey turned around between the lanes of cars and watched Curteze patiently as he caught up.

"Want to do this together?" Jamey asked.

"Turn ourselves in?" Curteze asked.

"Whatever it takes."

"Sure," Curteze said.

"I wanted to thank all of you," Jamey said. "Wish I could, now."

"We were idiots."

"Still…"

A few border security officers were trying to keep order in the lanes despite dead radios, fused spex, down Lynx networks, and no power anywhere.

"One of them should do," Curteze said, and prepared to flash his sparks-reveal that he was an agent, whatever that might mean in this part of the world.

"Am I your prisoner?" Jamey asked, staying close. "I mean, I don't want to get shot just because somebody's confused."

"You're nobody's fucking prisoner," Curteze said. "Once we're across, call your Daddy and tell him to pick you up in New Mexico. And then-we're done. You're a free man. You don't ever want to see me again, right?"

Jamey wiped his eyes with the back of his hand, then agreed with a nod.

They both straightened at the approach of a tall officer with thick spiky black hair. The officer looked sure and confident, even in the chaos, as if he was the man in charge-and he was drawing a visual bead on Jamey and Curteze because they were filthy and bloody and did not look at all like tourists.

"Help you two with something?" he asked, then stopped dead and stared. "Jesus Christ," he said. "Jamey Trues. I got people searching all over the desert for you. Welcome home, boy. My name's Mason."

"Can we get across to New Mexico, Mr. Mason?" Jamey asked. "As soon as it's convenient."

"Right. Follow me. Are you Kapp or Curteze?" Mason asked the dusty man in the denims and work shirt, noting the tissue and blood on his shoulder.

"Curteze," came the muttered reply. He remembered to lift his credentials. "Special Agent Kapp is dead. They blew his head off, the bastards."

"Either of you know what the hell happened around here?" Mason asked.

The two shook their heads.

"Not a fucking clue," Curteze said. "You?"

ONE YEAR AFTER

Pensacola Beach, Florida

Rebecca Rose picked a picture window seat in the long, flat, air-conditioned Fisherman's Shelter Inn, and started with a big stoneware bowl of thick white clam chowder and seven bags of oyster crackers-twenty crackers per bag, one with twenty-two-plus a red plastic basket carrying seven slices of fresh baguette.

Then she moved on to a huge salad-crab Louie with avocado halves and six spears of steamed asparagus and two hard-boiled eggs.

Everything tasted unbelievably wonderful-as if she had never truly used her taste buds before now.

She had been stripped of all that she owned and faced at least half a dozen warrants for her arrest and detention. She was on the run, sought by state and federal authorities from Maryland to Texas, alleged by the Raphkind administration's newly appointed Attorney General to be part of a vast domestic terrorist conspiracy to bring down the nation's power grid.

Life had never been better.