Halo | Page 5

the floor, nuzzled into the room's corners, then left the room, its motion tentacles beneath it making a sound like wind through dry grass.
----
The cockpit display flashed as landing codes fed through the flight computer, then the swing-wing locked into the Bangkok landing grid and began its slide down an invisible pipe. They went to touchdown guided by electronic hands.
The pilot turned to Gonzales as they descended and said, "I'll have to file a report on the attack. But you're lucky--if we had landed in Myanmar, government investigators would have been on you like white on rice, and you could forget about leaving for days, maybe weeks. You're okay now: by the time they process the report and ask the Thais to hold you, you'll be gone."
At the moment, the last thing Gonzales wanted to do was spend any time in Myanmar. "I'll get out as quickly as I can," he said.
Now that it was all over, he could feel the Fear climbing in him like the onset of a dangerous drug. Trying to calm himself, he thought, really, nothing happened, except you got the shit scared out of you, that's all.
As the swing-wing settled on the pad, Gonzales stood and went to pick up his luggage from the open baggage hold. The pilot sat watching as the plane went through its shutdown procedures.
Do something, Gonzales said to himself, feeling panic mount. He pulled the memex's case out of the hold and said, "I want a copy of your flight records."
"I can't do that."
"You can. I'm working with Internal Affairs, and I was almost killed while flying in your aircraft."
"So was I, man."
"Indeed. But I need this data. Later, IA will go the full official route and pick everything up, but I need it now. A quick dump into my machine here, that's all it will take. I'll give you authorization and receipt." Gonzales waited, keeping the pressure on by his insistent gaze and posture.
The pilot said, "Okay, that ought to cover my ass."
Gonzales slid the shock-case next to the pilot's seat, kneeled and opened the lid. "Are you recording?" he asked the pilot.
The man nodded and said, "Always."
"That's what I thought. All right, then: for the record, this is Mikhail Mikhailovitch Gonzales, senior employee of Internal Affairs Division, SenTrax. I am acquiring flight records of this aircraft to assist in my investigation of certain events that occurred during its most recent flight." He looked at the pilot. "That should do it," he said.
He pulled out a data lead from the case and snapped it into the access plug on the instrument panel. Lights flashed across the panel as data began to spool into the quiescent memex. The panel gonged softly to signal transfer was complete, and Gonzales unplugged the lead and closed the case. "Thanks," he said to the pilot, who sat staring out the cockpit bubble.
Gonzales stood and patted the case and thought to himself, hey, memex, got a surprise for you when you wake up. He felt much better.
----
A carry-slide hauled Gonzales a mile or so through a brightly-lit tunnel with baby blue plastic and plaster walls marked with signs in half a dozen languages promising swift retribution for vandalism. Red and green virus graffiti smeared everything, signs included, and as Gonzales watched, messages in Thai and Burmese transmuted, and new stick figures emerged with dialogue balloons saying god knows what. A lone phrase in red paint read in English, HEROIN ALPHA DEVIL FLOWER. Shattered boxes of black fibroid or coarse sprays of multi-wire cable marked where surveillance cameras had been.
Grey floor-to-ceiling steel shutters blocked the narrow portal to International Arrivals and Departures. Faceless holoscan robots--dark, wheeled cubes with carbon-fiber armor and tentacles and spiked sensor antennas--worked the crowd, antennas swiveling.
All around were Asian travelers, dark-suited men and women: Japanese, Chinese, Malaysians, Indonesians, Thai. They spread out from Asia's "dragons," world centers of research and manufacturing, taking their low margins and hard sell to Europe and the Americas, where consumption had become a way of life. Everywhere Gonzales traveled, it seemed, he found them: cadres armed with technical and scientific prowess and fueled by persistent ambition.
They formed the steel core of much of the world's prosperity. The United States and the dragons lived in uneasy symbiosis: the Asians had a hundred ways of making sure the American economy didn't just roll over and die and take the prime North American consumer market with it. Whether Japanese, Koreans, Taiwanese, Hong Kong Chinese-Canadians--they bought some corporations and merged with others, and Americans ended up working for General Motors Fanuc, Chrysler Mitsubishi, or Daewoo-DEC, and with their paychecks they bought Japanese memexes, Korean autos, Malaysian robotics.
Shutter blades cranked open with a quick scream of metal, and Gonzales stepped inside. An Egyptian guard in a white headdress, blue-and-white checked headband, and