COUNT ZERO

Turner ignored him. “Go on. Webber.”

“After our landline was in place, the rest of the crew filtered in, one or two at a time. The last one in primed us for the tankful of Japs.”

“That was raw,” Sutcliffe said, “bit too far up front.”

“You think it might have blown us?” Turner asked.

Sutcliffe shrugged. “Could be, could be no. We hopped it pretty quick. Damned lucky we’d the roof to tuck it under.”

“What about the passengers?”

“They only come out at night,” Webber said. “And they know we’ll kill them if they try to get more than five meters away from the thing.”

Turner glanced at Sutcliffe.

“Conroy’s orders,” the man said.

“Conroy’s orders don’t count now,” Turner said. “But that one holds. What are these people like?”

“Medicals,” Lynch said, “bent medicals.”

“You got it,” Turner said. “What about the rest of the crew?”

“We rigged some shade with mimetic tarps. They sleep in shifts. There’s not enough water and we can’t risk much in the way of cooking.” Sutcliffe reached for the coffeepot. “We have sentries in place and we run periodic checks on the integrity of the landline.” He splashed black coffee into a plastic mug that looked as though it had been chewed by a dog. “So when do we do our dance, Mr. Turner?”

“I want to see your tank of pet medics. I want to see a command post. You haven’t said anything about a command post.”

“All set,” Lynch said.

“Fine. Here.” Turner passed Webber the revolver. “See if you can find me some sort of rig for this. Now I want Lynch to show me these medics.”

“He thought it would be you,” Lynch said, scrambling effortlessly up a low incline of rubble. Turner followed ‘You’ve got quite a rep.” The younger man glanced back at him from beneath a fringe of dirty, sun-streaked hair.

“Too much of one,” Turner said. “Any is too much. You worked with him before? Marrakech?” Lynch ducked side-ways through a gap in the cinderblock, and Turner was close behind. The desert plants smelled of tar; they stung and grabbed if you brushed them. Through a vacant, rectangular opening intended for a window, Turner glimpsed pink mountaintops; then Lynch was loping down a slope of gravel.

“Sure, I worked for him before,” Lynch said, pausing at the base of the slide. An ancient-looking leather belt rode low on his hips, its heavy buckle a tarnished silver death’s-head with a dorsal crest of blunt, pyramidal spikes. “Marrakech – that was before my time.”

“Co

“How’s that?”

“Conroy. You work for him before? More to the point are you working for him now?” Turner came slowly, deliberately down the gravel as he spoke; it crunched and slid beneath his deck shoes, uneasy footing. He could see the delicate little fletcher holstered beneath Lynch’s denim vest.

Lynch licked dry lips, held his ground. “That’s Sut’s contact. I haven’t met him.”

“Conroy has this problem, Lynch. Can’t delegate responsibility. He likes to have his own man from the start, someone to watch the watchers. Always. You the one, Lynch?”

Lynch shook his head, the absolute minimum of movement required to convey the negative. Turner was close enough to smell his sweat above the tarry odor of the desert plants.

“I’ve seen Conroy blow two extractions that way,” Turner said. “Lizards and broken glass, Lynch? You feel like dying here?” Turner raised his fist in front of Lynch’s face and slowly extended the index finger, pointing straight up “We’re in their footprint. If a plant of Conroy’s bleeps the least fucking pulse out of here, they’ll be on to us.”

“If they aren’t already.”

“That’s right.”

“Sut’s your man,” Lynch said. “Not me, and I can’t see it being Webber.” Black-rimmed, broken nails came up to scratch abstractedly at his beard. “Now, did you get me back here exclusively for this little talk, or do you still wa

“Let’s see it.”

Lynch. Lynch was the one.

* * *

Once, in Mexico, years before, Turner had chartered a portable vacation module, solar-powered and French-built, its seven-meter body like a wingless housefly sculpted in polished alloy, its eyes twin hemispheres of tinted, photosensitive plastic; he sat behind them as an aged twin-prop Russian cargo lifter lumbered down the coast with the module in its jaws, barely clearing the crowns of the tallest palms. Deposited on a remote beach of black sand, Turner spent three days of pampered solitude in the narrow, teak-lined cabin, micro-waving food from the freezer and showering, frugally but regularly, in cool fresh water. The module’s rectangular banks of cells would swivel, tracking the sun, and he’d learned to tell time by their position.

Hosaka’s portable neurosurgery resembled an eyeless ver-sion of that French module, perhaps two meters longer and painted a dull brown. Sections of perforated angle iron had been freshly braised at intervals along the lower half of the hull, and supported simple spring suspensions for ten fat, heavily nubbed red rubber bicycle tires.

“They’re asleep,” Lynch said. “It bobs around when they move, so you can tell. We’ll have the wheels off when the time comes, but for now we like being able to keep track of them.”

Turner walked slowly around the brown pod, noting the glossy black sewage tube that ran to a small rectangular tank nearby.

“Had to dump that, last night. Jesus.” Lynch shook his head. “They got food and some water.”

Turner put his ear to the hull.

“It’s proofed,” Lynch said.

Turner glanced up at the steel roof above them. The surgery was screened from above by a good ten meters of rusting roof. Sheet steel, and hot enough now to fry an egg. He nodded. That hot rectangle would be a permanent factor in the Maas infrared scan.

“Bats,” Webber said, handing him the Smith & Wesson in a black nylon shoulder rig. The dusk was full of sounds that seemed to come from i

“Where are you from?”

“New Mexico,” the woman said, her face like carved wood in the remaining light. She turned and walked away, heading for the angle of walls that sheltered the tarps. He could make out Sutcliffe and a young black man there. They were eating from dull foil envelopes Ramirez, the on-site console jockey, Jaylene Slide’s partner. Out of Los Angeles.

Turner looked up at the bowl of sky, limitless, the map of stars. Strange how it’s bigger this way, he thought, and from orbit it’s just a gulf, formless, and scale lost all meaning. And tonight he wouldn’t sleep, he knew, and the Big Dipper would whirl round for him and dive for the horizon, pulling its tail with it.

A wave of nausea and dislocation hit him as images from the biosoft dossier swam unbidden through his mind.