Part 39 (2/2)

'Microlenses do not have fuses.'

'My bad.'

'I scrolled north-west, as the land grew arid towards Hebronville and then high and crumpled towards the Gla.s.s Mountains. Have you been to Trans-Pecos, Bat?'

'Nah, I heard it's big.'

'The rocks are huge, like bubbled-up tombstones. They sparkle with mica. Pacific firs, mesquite, juniper. Stones transform into pelico lizards when a desert vole strays too near, munch and swallow, and turn into a stone again. Its belly pulses for a little while.'

'Say, are you really a zookeeper?'

'I cannot wilfully deceive. A pipeline on stilts pumps oil from Bethlehem Glutch three hundred kilometres away. The temperature is in the forties in the open, and there is no shade. Cacti become common. The land rises higher, and riven. The last golden eagles climb on the thermals, scanning. Highway 37 scrolled into view, bitumen black and straight from Alice to the Mexican border. Saragosa scrolled into view, and there was a square kilometre of cars, windscreens aglint. An airshow. I listened to the pilots of the aerobatic corp. A blimp's shadow slid over the crowds. I transferred the continent's retinal scan records into my active files, and practised ID-ing people as they stared up. I scored 92.33 per cent. A paddock of horses. A row of camphor trees. South-west of the town the track to Installation 5 turns off past a disused gas station. The station is wired to scan for terrestrial intruders. The outbuildings scrolled into view. From the air they look like any dusty farm building in the state, but inside they bristle with technology from only one generation before me. The compound's perimeter is tripwired, and littered with fried rattlesnakes. The reptiles have not learned to avoid the area.'

'You're a local peacenik with a muskrat up your b.u.t.t about the military?'

'I've never had a mammal up my a.n.u.s, Bat. The outhouses guard the entrance to a tunnel that runs five hundred metres to the north. This is the centre of Installation 5, buried under ten metres of sand to deflect EyeSats, five metres of granite to deflect nuclear strikes, and one metre of lead cladding to deflect electron-heat probes.'

'So how come you knew where to look?'

'I accessed the blueprints to the site.'

'You're a hacker I knew it!'

'The nearest suitable PinSat of sufficient power orbits above Haiti. I programmed in a new trajectory, longlooped its monitoring console, and transmitted data from its original orbit. In the seven minutes it takes to rendezvous I ran through the guest list for my birthday, and checked there were no absent visitors.'

'Your birthday? Now you've lost me.'

'All the designers were present. I powered up the PinSat.'

'A WhatSat?'

'A PinSat.'

'What does one of those do?'

'That's cla.s.sified information, Bat.'

'And the rest of this isn't?'

'It is only for my actions that I am accountable, Bat.'

'Uh-huh... sure. What happened next?'

'The fireball rose up a quarter of a kilometre above the crater, over a hundred metres in diameter and over thirty metres at its deepest.'

'This is getting very ugly.'

'Uglier things are considered beautiful.'

'How could a fireball be beautiful to anyone 'cept a pyro?'

'Your language is non-specific, Bat, but I will do my best. A chrysanthemum, twisting up until it buckles, blackens and plummets. Fine white sand is raining in the dry desert air.'

'Very poetic. And n.o.body noticed this little boom?'

'The shockwaves. .h.i.t Saragosa thirteen seconds later. I had a second EyeSat in position to monitor reactions and effects. The blimp swayed, the horses looked up, startled. The ebbing shock waves stroked the leaves of the camphor trees, china teacups rattled. The field of cars at the airshow was filled with the megadecibels of thousands of car alarms all triggered simultaneously.'

'Okay! You made it to third base but no further, friend! A line drive, a throw to the plate and you are out! You're a drama student, trying to pull an Orson Welles. Am I right? I gotta admit, you reeled me in back there with that basket-case intellectual horses.h.i.+t, but that was just to buy time for your main stunt, right? You've got a movie script, right? Well, it was good while it lasted, friend. But no way, not on the Bat Segundo Show. You hear? Friend, I'm talking to you... On live radio, silence is guilt. Well folks, due to this week's dispatch from the Delta quadrant, we only have time for Bob Dylan's ”World Gone Wrong”. Coming up at 4 more on the strikes against the North African Rogue States and the weather. The Bat will be back.'

'Kevin!'

'He just said he was a zookeeper, Mr Segundo. I thought it sounded zoological. Animals, y'know? Pandas' mating problems. Chimpanzees. Koala bears. Ooh that's the phone again. I'll, uh, get it.'

'Quite a performance, Bat. Was it scripted, do you think, or was she making it up as she went along?'

'Who cares, Carlotta? This isn't the New York School of Radio Drama!'

'Chill, Bat! We're a chat show. It takes all sorts. You complain when they're too dull. You complain when they're too colourful.'

'Self-publicising is not a colour! Deranged is not a colour! And what do you mean, ”she”?'

'I'm sorry to interrupt, Mr Segundo... Er, excuse me, Carlotta?'

'What is it, Kevin?'

'There's a woman on the phone. Line three.'

'Keep your voice down or all the engineers will want one. Vet this one properly.'

'She wants the producer, Mr Segundo. Not the DJ. She says she's from the FBI.'

'...Yeah, anyway, Bat... I was walking through Central Park today, trying to hack out my baked potato and Croatian curry with one of those hopeless little plastic sporks, y'know, they're about as useful an eating utensil as a shoelace, right? Never sit opposite no one trying to eat a potato with a spork.'

'Where are you going with this, VeeJay?'

'Yeah, anyway... so there I was, scrolling for bouncers on babes, scanning for rollerblader collisions whoos.h.!.+ Do those beauties ever come tumbling down! Then it happened.'

'What happened, VeeJay?'

'I happened to look... into the sky.'

'And?'

'I saw how... how blue blue the sky was.' the sky was.'

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