Halo | Page 2

nominal functional relationships
against reality. Wherever there were movements of information, money,
equipment or personnel, there were records, and the two followed.
They searched cash trails, matched purchase orders to services and
materiel, verified voucher signatures with personnel records,
cross-checked the personnel records themselves against government
databases, and traced the backgrounds and movements of the people
they represented; they read contracts and back-chased to their bid and
acquisition; they verified daily transaction logs.
Hard, slogging work, all patience and detail, and so far it had shown
nothing but the usual inefficiencies--Grossback didn't run a particularly
taut operation, but, as of the moment, he didn't seem to have a corrupt
one. However, neither he nor SenTrax Myanmar was cleared yet;
Gonzales's final report would come later, after he and the memex had
analyzed the records at their leisure.
Gonzales stretched and rubbed his eyes. As usual at the end of
short-term, intensive gigs like this, he felt tired, washed-out, eager to
go. He said to Grossback, "I've got a company plane out of here late
this afternoon to Bangkok. I'll connect with whatever commercial
flight's available there."
Grossback smiled, obviously glad Gonzales was leaving. Grossback
was a slight man, of mixed German and Thai descent; he had a light

brown complexion, black hair, and delicate features. He wore
politically correct clothing in the old-fashioned Burmese style: a dark
skirt called a longyi, a white cotton shirt.
During Gonzales's time there, Grossback had dealt with him coldly and
correctly from behind a mask of corporate protocol and clenched teeth.
Fair enough, Gonzales had thought: the man's operation was suspect,
and him along with it. Anyway, people resented these outside
intrusions almost every time; representing Internal Affairs, Gonzales
answered only to his division head, F.L. Traynor, and SenTrax Board,
and that made almost everyone nervous.
"You leaving out of Myaung U Airport?" Grossback asked.
"No, I've asked for a pick-up south of town." Like anyone else who
could arrange it, he was not going to fly out of Pagan's official airport,
where partisan groups had several times brought down aircraft. Surely
Grossback knew that.
Grossback asked, "What will your report say?"
Surprised, Gonzales said, "You know I can't tell you anything about
that." Even mentioning the matter constituted an embarrassment, not to
mention a reportable violation of corporate protocol. The man was
either stupid or desperate.
"You haven't found anything," Grossback said.
What was his problem? Gonzales said, "I have a year's data to examine
before I can make an assessment."
"You won't tell me what the preliminary report will look like,"
Grossback said. His face had gone cold.
"No," said Gonzales. He stood and said, "I have to finish packing." For
the moment, he just wanted to get out before Grossback did something
irretrievable, like threatening him or offering a bribe. "Goodbye,"
Gonzales said. The other man said nothing as Gonzales left the room.

----
Gonzales returned to the Thiripyitsaya Hotel, a collection of low
bungalows fabricated from bamboo and ferro-concrete that stood above
the Irrawady River. The rooms were afflicted by Myanmar's tattered
version of Asian tourist decor: lacquered bamboo on the walls, along
with leaping dragon holos, black teak dresser, tables, chairs, and bed
frame, ceiling fans that had wandered in from the twentieth
century--just to give your average citizen that rush of the Exotic East,
Gonzales figured. However, the hotel had been rebuilt less than a
decade before, so, by local standards, Gonzales had luxury: working
climatizer, microwave, and refrigerator.
Of course, many nights the air conditioner didn't work, and Gonzales
lay sweaty and semi-conscious through hot, humid nights then was
greeted just after dawn by lizards fanning their ruby neck flaps and
doing push ups.
He had gotten up several of those mornings and walked the cart paths
that threaded the plains around Pagan, passing among the temples and
pagodas as the sun rose and turned the morning mist into a huge veil of
luminous pink, with the towers sticking up like fairy castles.
Everywhere around Pagan were the temples, thousands of them, young
and flourishing when William the Conqueror was king. Now, quick-fab
structures housing government agencies nested among thousand year
old pagodas, some in near perfect condition, like Thatbyinnu Temple,
myriad others no more than ruins and forgotten names. You gained
merit by building pagodas, not by keeping up those built by someone
long dead.
Like some other Southeast Asian countries, Myanmar still was trying to
recover from late-twentieth century politics; in Myanmar's case, its
decades-long bout with round-robin military dictatorships and the
chaos that came in their wake. And as was so often the case in
politically wobbly countries, it still restricted access to the worldnet;
through various kinds of governments, its leaders had found the
prospect of free information flow unacceptable. Ka-band antennas were
expensive, their