Dark Rivers of the Heart

my granpap."
        "Of course," Roy said as they reached the door at the end of the hall.
        "Boomer got palsied his last year," Dubois said, hesitating with his hand on the doorknob. "'Course he was older than dirt by then, so it wasn't any surprise. You should've seen that poor hound shake.
        Palsied up something' fierce. Let me tell you, Roy, when old Boomer lifted a hind leg and let go with his stream, all palsied like he was-you dived for cover or wished you was in another county."
        "Sounds like someone should have put him to sleep," Roy said as Dubois opened the door.
        The Texan followed Roy into the satellite-surveillance center.
        "Nah, Boomer was a good old dog. If the tables had been turned, that old hound wouldn't never have taken a gun and put granpap to sleep."
        Roy really was in a good mood. He could have listened to Bobby Dubois for hours.
        The satellite-surveillance center was forty feet by sixty feet.
        Only two of the twelve computer workstations in the middle of the room were manned, both by women wearing headsets and murmuring into mouthpieces as they studied the data streaming across their VDTS. A third technician was working at a light table, examining several large photographic negatives through a magnifying glass.
        One of the two longer walls was largely occupied by an immense screen on which was projected a map of the world. Cloud formations were superimposed on it, along with green lettering that indicated weather conditions lanetwide.
        Red, blue, white, yellow, and green lights blinked steadily, revealing the current positions of scores of satellites. Many were electronic-communications packages handling microwave relays of telephone, television, and radio signals. Others were engaged in topographical mapping, oil exploration, meteorology, astronomy, international espionage, and domestic surveillance, among numerous other tasks.
        The owners of those satellites ranged from public corporations to government agencies and military services. Some were the property of nations other than the United States or of businesses based beyond U.S. shores. Regardless of the ownership or origin, however, every satellite on that wall display could be accessed and used by the agency, and the legitimate operators usually remained unaware that their systems had been invaded.
        At a U-shaped control console in front of the huge screen, Bobby Dubois said, "The sonofabitch rode straight out of Spaceport Vegas off into the desert, and our boys weren't equipped to chase around playin' Lawrence of Arabia."
        "Did you put up a chopper to track him?"
        "Weather turned bad too fast. A real toad-drowner, rain coming' down like every angel in heaven was takin' a leak at the same time."
        Dubois pushed a button on the console, and the map of the world faded from the wall. An actual satellite view of Oregon, Idaho, California, and Nevada appeared in its place. Seen from orbit, the boundaries of those four states would have been difficult to define, so borders were overlaid in orange lines.
        Western and southern Oregon, southern Idaho, northern through central California, and all of Nevada were concealed below a dense layer of clouds.
        "This here's a direct satellite feed. There's just a three-minute delay for transmission and then conversion of the digital code back into images again," said Dubois.
        Along eastern Nevada and eastern Idaho, soft pulses of light rippled through the clouds. Roy knew that he was seeing lightning from above the storm. it was strangely beautiful.
        "Right now, the only storm activity is out on the eastern edge of the front. 'Cept for an isolated patch of spit-thin rain here and there, things are pretty quiet all the way back to the ass-end of Oregon. But we can't just do a look-down for the sonofabitch, not even with infrared. It'd be like trying to see the bottom of a soup bowl through clam chowder."
        "How long until clear skies?" Roy asked.
        "There's a kick-ass wind at higher altitudes, pushing the front east-southeast so we should have a clear look at the whole Mo'ave and surrounding territory before dawn."
        A surveillance subject, sitting in bright sunshine and reading a newspaper, could be filmed from a satellite with sufficiently high resolution that the headlines on his paper would be legible. However, in clear weather, in