Fall Revolution 4: The Sky Road

neither of us can guarantee that that’ll last. A word
in the wrong place and there could be severe market jitters on my
side. Which, I hasten to add, would not be to your benefit,
either, so we have a mutual – ’
    ‘Assured deterrence?’
    Reid gave her a shut the fuck up look. ‘You could
say that… but I’d rather you didn’t’
    Myra grinned evilly. ‘OK,’ she said.
‘It’s still no deal, Dave.’
    He gazed back at her, expressionless, but he couldn’t
hide the plea in his voice. ‘Will you at least agree not to
dump your assets during the takeover bid? Not to make any offers
to the competition?’
    Oh, Jeez. This was a tricky one. She had no intention of doing
any of the things he feared. On the other hand – if he were
to fear them (even if only theoretically, and only at the margin,
but still… ) it might restrain him. It might keep him, and
his allies, from crossing that invisible border, that terminator
between the daylight and the dark. Let them hate, as long as they
fear.
    She shook her head, and saw her multiple reflections do the
same, in solemn repetition. The act of observation collapses the
wave-function, yes: the die cast, the cat dies.
    ‘Sorry, Dave,’ she told him. ‘I can’t
make any promises.’
    His gaze measured hers for a moment, and then he shrugged.
    ‘You win some, you lose some,’ he said lightly.
‘See you around, Myra.’
    She watched him walk away, as she so often had. His grep
followed at a safe distance. Denis raised his eyebrows, rolled
his eyes, came over.
    ‘What was all that about?’
    ‘Oh, just some old stuff between us,’ Myra said.
‘We don’t see eye to eye, is all.’ She took his
arm. ‘Let’s see how Andrei is getting on with that
lady from the Western United States, shall we?’
     
    Not well, as it turned out. This was not the place for secret
diplomacy, even if they’d been using the privacy shields,
which they weren’t. Juniper Bear, the West American
unofficial consul, was making her diplomatic position no secret
at all. Her broad-brimmed black hat with black wax fruit around
its crown seemed chosen to amplify her voice, even though her
pose indicated urgent, confidential communication.
    ‘…Just in the last month we hit a Green guerilla
incursion from SoCal, and at the same time a White Aryan Nations
push across the Rockies, and would you believe the First Nations
Federation, the goddamn Indians, lobbing significant
conventional hardware on our northern settlements on the Cannuck
side of the old border? Let me tell you, Comrade Mukhartov, we
could do with some orbital backup, this time on our side for a
change.’ She laughed, grinning at Myra and Valentina as
they joined the conversation. ‘Would you believe? she repeated, ‘the goddamn Greens are actually lobbying the
old guard to keep the battlesats as asteroid defence? Like we
ever really needed that, and now we got everything bigger’n
a pea out there mapped and tracked, we might as well worry about
a new ice age!’
    ‘Well, that’s coming,’ said Valentina.
    Juniper Bear’s hatbrim tilted. ‘Sure, the
Milankovitch cycle, yeah, but it isn’t a worry, now is
it?’ She laughed. ‘Hey, I remember global
warming!’
    ‘And thafs happening,’ Myra said.
‘But, like you say, it isn’t a worry, not any
more. And the ozone holes, and the background radiation levels,
and the synthetic polymers in every organic, and the jumping
genes and all that, yeah, we’re not worrying.’ She felt surprised at the sound of her own voice, at how angry
she felt about all that, now she was articulating it; it was as
though she had a deep Green deep inside her, just waiting to get
out. ‘But to be honest, Ms Bear, we are worried about
something else. About the plan to revitalise the ReUnited
Nations. Even if they will be the enemies of our enemies,
in the first instance. We don’t want that kind of power
turned against anyone on Earth, ever again.’ She took off
her hat, fingering the smooth hairs and running her thumb over
the red star and gold sigil; realised she was standing there,
literally cap in hand, begging for help.
    Juniper Bear shook her head. She was an old woman, not as old
as Myra; she looked about thirty, by pre-rejuvenation reckoning,
when her face was in repose, but the weight of her years showed
in herevery facial expression, if you were old enough to notice
these things. You learned to transmit and to