Fractions_ The First Half of the Fall Revolution - Ken MacLeod [297]
So whatever was going on, whether it was the company or the state that had struck first, there was no way I wanted to get involved. And there was no way, either, that whatever deeper threat we faced from Reid’s technocrats would be countered by political campaigning. The only way out that I could see was to take the whole story to the one state that could act swiftly, and whose intentions I trusted slightly more than those of any other state I could think of: the surrounding Kazakh Republic.
Which was why we were now driving along between metre-high, ploughed-back ridges of snow, on a road covered by a fall already centimetres deep.
Myra tried to speak once or twice, pleaded with me to explain what I was doing, and each time I told her, as harshly as possible, to shut the fuck up. I wanted her scared, off-balance; I wanted her to think me capable of shooting her. Which I certainly was not, but her sincere belief that I was should help to keep her out of trouble, whoever won.
In less than an hour the border was only a minute’s drive away. We topped a scrubby ridge and I could see the lights of the Kazakh border post through the snowfall. And a moment later and three hundred metres ahead, a line of men in bright yellow survival-suits with big black rifles, waving us down.
‘Mutual Protection,’ Myra said, with a bitter laugh. ‘So what now, smart-ass?’
‘Stop the car,’ I said levelly. ‘Slew it so your side is nearest, and get out with your hands up.’
I looked at her startled face and added as she applied the brake, ‘If that’s OK with you.’
‘It’s OK,’ she said.
She was a good driver. She brought the car to a halt just fast enough to skid the rear end around and bury the front in the snowdrift.
I opened the passenger door, rolled out with my jacket and gun, and pushed my way through the top of the oily, gritty snow of the drift, keeping the car’s bulk between me and the company guards. I crawled forward on knees and elbows until the approaching line of men had passed me on their way to the car. I could hear Myra’s raised, officious, protesting voice, and hoped that whatever she thought of me getting away, the last thing she’d want was for me to fall into her opponents’ hands.
I kept crawling forward, as close to the roadside snow-ridge as possible. The grit lacerated my palms, elbows and knees. The warmth was bleeding from my body with every passing second. When I could bear it no longer, I lifted myself to a sprinter’s crouch. The lights of the border post were half a kilometre away. I glanced back. The men were inspecting the car, Myra was kicking up a major political incident.
I started to run. At first I tried to run doubled-up, but I couldn’t do it. I straightened up and began to run flat-out. My sides felt as if they were being skewered on hot swords. I swore I’d never smoke again.
Then I felt a great thump on my back, and saw the blood spurt from my chest, and I followed its red arc forward onto the snow, as if I could catch the drops.
I was on my back, looking up at a white sky. Above me an impossible object floated, a diamond ship: faceted, sparkling, like the delicate white ghost of a stealth bomber, suspended on ridiculously faint jets. A rope-ladder snaked down from it, a white-clad man descended. I raised my head a couple of centimetres as he reached the ground, and faced me. It was David Reid. His face told me nothing.
Yellow suits, goggled faces. Myra, her arms firmly held as she strained towards me.
‘Love never dies,’ I tried to say, and died.
THE FLOODGATES OF ANARCHY
17
Android Spiritual
‘Move and you’re dead!’
The cheerful Cockney voice of Esteemed Senior Eon Talgarth, Judge Resident at the Court of the Fifth Quarter, boomed from loudspeakers all around the hundred-metre square of his stockaded property. Enough of the guns mounted on the stockade were pointing inward to make the court an execution-ground