Ramez Naam - Apex

“Better than only one leg,” Feng said.

Sam had to agree with that. They’d been training together the last week. Twenty kilometer runs. Obstacle courses. Weights. Stretching. Sparring. Sam had approached Feng about it, as part of her own self-appointed program of mental health. Meditation was good. Mindfulness-based pushing through the painful memories was good. Long walks and contemplative talks with Ananda were good.

Playing with the kids was amazing , was about the best thing ever.

Work, for that matter, was good too. She’d done a lot in the last week, briefing Division Six leaders on cases she’d dealt with over the last decade. On the kinds of tech abuses she’d seen in the States. Nothing that compromised US security – but plenty that complemented their own experience here. Feng had his own trove of observations to add, as much from his six months in south east Asia as from his background in China. The meetings and briefings and research and discussions of protocol and procedures were a wonderful focus.

But she needed something physical. She needed to push herself, to feel her body work and sweat and strain.

She was pleased to find that Feng felt the same.

God, she was out of shape.

“You think you’ll ever go back to China, Feng?” Sam asked.

They were walking along Brigade Road now, past cheap electronics stores and custom software shops and on-the-spot device manufacturers and real-time hardware reverse engineering firms and some of the most delicious food stalls she’d ever encountered in her life.

Feng glanced over at her and took a big swallow of the mango and yoghurt drink he was enjoying for dessert.

“You reading my mind now?”

Sam smiled. “Projecting, more like.”

Feng took his time answering. “I don’t know. Not looking good right now. Bo Jintao, this guy in charge, I don’t think he likes my kind very much. Maybe someday.”

Sam walked. “What would you do if you did go back?”

Feng gulped down more lassi. Sam spooned sweetened rice pudding – khir – from a plastic cup into her mouth.

“Like the idea of serving my country,” Feng said.

“As a soldier?” Sam asked.

Feng shrugged. “Not serving my government . Serving the people . Not the same thing.”

Sam nodded at that. “Yeah. Not the same at all.”

“You?” Feng asked.

Sam shook her head. “There’s no way back to the States for me.”

Feng nodded. “Sorry.”

Sam shrugged. “I could fixate on it… I could stay attached to it… Like to so many things.” She smiled, ruefully. “But staying attached like that would just make it hurt more.”

Feng smiled slightly. “You’ve been talking to Ananda.”

Sam smiled back. “Every day.”

53

Decision Day

Thursday 2040.12.06

Rangan checked his NANCie for the hundredth time this morning, closing his eyes, burrowing Inside, using his inner eye to look over its control panel, the status it revealed via the tight link across the mere inches from his brain to the device in his backpack.

Green, green, green. Batteries, transmitter, peering to the other NANCies held by the members of the C3.

He opened his eyes, and what he saw was anything but green. The grass of the stretch of National Mall between the Washington Monument and the Capitol building was gone, covered in a sea of humanity, tens of thousands of people, maybe a hundred thousand now, a huge crowd, packed in cheek to jowl. He saw young and old, male and female, anarchist and socialist and mainstream, protesters in street clothes, protesters in festival wear, protesters with scarves around their necks or goggles on their brows, ready for tear gas.

Above them signs waved, signs calling for justice, for the release of Nexus children, for Stockton’s prosecution, for freedom to enhance one’s own mind. There were other signs, signs with faces, faces of heroes. He saw faces he didn’t know. He saw Kade’s face, held aloft. He saw his own face and had to turn away, and suppress his own sudden burst of fear that he’d be recognized.

There was Nexus everywhere, thoughts and emotions spreading like viruses across electromagnetic vectors to human mind hosts. Waves of excitement and anxiety warred across the crowd. The Supreme Court would uphold a voter’s right to change his or her mind in the face of such shocking new information, would effectively hand the election to Kim. No, the Supreme Court would throw the suits out, would back Stockton.

Above it all, the air was thick with drones. Quadcoptered camera drones buzzed by, taking video for newscast, for police forces, for Homeland Security. Long-endurance aerostats, helium-filled, floated higher, their robotic gondolas bristling with high-zoom cameras and microphones, surveiling the crowd, looking for… well, for people like him.

Higher yet, Cheyenne had seen fixed-wing drones circling, circling, had sent the image to them all over the tight directional beams their booster antennae facilitated. Why? Why did Homeland Security need those killer drones here?

Rangan resisted the urge to look up. There was nothing to be gained in exposing his face to the sky, no matter how well disguised it was.

They were spread all across this half of the Mall, the six of them. Tempest resented that he was here, but even she saw the value in it. They had a vast area to cover. Moving through the thick crowds wasn’t easy. More of them here was better. It meant they’d have a better shot of faster response, of being able to get two of three of them around the hostile transmitter quickly after it came online.

If it did. If they hadn’t just blown some set of coincidences out of proportion.

They all had their eyes open for anyone who looked suspicious, who looked like a possible instigator. The problem was they had an abundance of choices. There were plenty of people here who had scarves at the ready. Rangan was one of them, though he had a better mask in his backpack.

The other side was even more formidably prepared. Every entrance to the Mall was penned in now. The police had stopped letting additional protesters onto the Mall at eight this morning. Where there had been open streets there were lines of cops in riot armor. In front of the Smithsonian Museum of National History, the closest building to him, Rangan saw yet another line of police in riot gear. To his left, the Washington Monument formed the west barrier of the protest, and it too was held by a line of police in riot armor. On the other side of the Washington Monument, the long stretch of Mall leading up to the Lincoln Memorial was given over to the pro-Stockton rally, itself thousands strong, but puny and sparse in comparison to the anti-Stockton protest on this side.

Closer, at every entrance to the eastern half of the Mall, the half with the anti-Stockton protesters, the police had placed heavily armed and armored SWAT and urban counter-terror vehicles, scores and scores of them. Behind those were giant windowless police buses for hauling prisoners away. Interspersed were vehicles that looked even more lethal, squat armored things with tracks instead of wheels, with turrets on top mounted with weapons that looked like they were meant for battlefields, not protests.

Rangan didn’t like it. He didn’t like any of it.

A huge cheer went up from the crowd, snapping Rangan out of his reverie.

Ten o’clock,Cheyenne sent across the tight link of their antennae. Decision’s starting.

Kade waited until the office was emptying around 8pm. Then he tuned in to US news, brought it up on the screens in front of him.

He listened and watched for a while, as talking heads speculated on how the Supreme Court would rule, what it would mean.