The Martians(45)

“Well, shit,” Mike said, waving at the view. “We'll just have to terraform Earth instead.”





Coyote Makes Trouble

The city was beautiful at night. Tent invisible—it seemed they lived under the stars. And stars seemed to have fallen into the city as well, lining the sides of the nine mesas, so that walking the streets it appeared one sailed in a fleet of immense luxury liners, as during one well-remembered evening in his childhood, when suddenly four great white ships had appeared in Port of Spain's outer harbor, each an entire sparkling world. Like galaxies come down to anchor in their harbor.

Down by the canal the sidewalk cafés were open late; and rare was the night when the stars in the canal were not set awash by the plunge of some drunken reveler, or victimized passerby. Coyote spent many of his evenings on the grass fronting the Greek restaurant, at the end of the double row of Bareiss columns. When people were not splashing in the canal Coyote flicked pebbles into it, to make the stars dance under his boots. People came down and sat on the grass near him; made their reports; discussed plans; went on their way. Things were getting tighter these days. It was no longer such a simple thing to run a spy ring in the capital of the United Nations Transitional Authority. But there were still thousands of construction workers, rudimentarily documented, who were excavating the nine mesas and turning them into gargantuan buildings. As long as you had a work identity for the checkpoints, no one was bothering you yet. So Coyote worked by day (some days; he was not reliable) and caroused by night, like thousands of others; and gathered information for the underground, from a loose group of old friends and a few new ones. The ring included Maya and Michel, who were holed up in an apartment above a dance studio, sharing information with Coyote and putting it to use, but staying out of sight and away from checkpoints, as they were on UNTA's growing wanted list. And after what had happened to Sax, and to Sabishii, it was clear that you didn't want to be found by them.

The current situation both frightened Coyote and made him very angry. Hiroko and her crowd, disappeared—killed, in other words (though he was not sure yet); Sax brain-damaged; Maya and Michel gone to ground; UNTA security police everywhere you looked. And checkpoints. And even his ring of spies; it was hard to be sure none of them had turned. One young woman, for instance—a clerk in the UNTA Burroughs headquarters, a very attractive Dravidian. She sat down on the grass beside him, telling him that Hastings was going to arrive by train from Sheffield the day after tomorrow. Hastings, Coyote's nemesis. But was it true? He thought that the good-looking young woman was brittle in a way she hadn't been before, friendly but glittery-eyed. His electronics said she was not wired. But turned and telling tales, or setting him up; who knew?

She was supposed to have been working on finding out what UNTA security had on the radical reds. Irritated, he asked her about it, but she nodded, and had a report there too. Apparently they knew quite a bit. He asked her question after question, getting more and more interested; she was telling him things about the reds he didn't know himself.

Finally he sent her on her way with a cheerful smile. He was always the same with everybody, all the time, and very much doubted that she would have seen any of his suspicions. He knocked back his glass of metaxa, left it on the grass, wandered down the Street of the Cypresses to the little dance studio. People behind plate glass were pirouetting. He slipped upstairs and scratched-tapped his knock. Maya let him in.

They discussed the latest news, went through their lists for each other. One of Maya's biggest current worries was that the radical reds would strike before the rest of the resistance was ready, and Coyote agreed it was a bad possibility, even though he liked the reds' attitude. But now he had news for her.

“Apparently they think they can bring the terraforming down,” he told her. “Crash the system. UNTA has gotten a mole in somewhere, and this is what they're finding. There's a wing of the reds think they can do it biologically. Another faction wants to make something go wrong with the deep thermal bombs. Sabotage one of those nukes in such a way that the radiation reaches the surface, get the whole operation shut down.”

Maya shook her head, disgusted. “Radiation on the surface. It's insane.”

Coyote had to agree, though he liked their attitude anyhow. “I suppose we should hope that UNTA knocks out those groups before they act.”

Maya grimaced. Misguided or not, the reds were their allies, UNTA their shared enemy. “No. We should warn them they are penetrated. Then get them to stop their crazies. Follow the general strategy.”

“We might have to stop the crazies ourselves.”