“How are your interview skills?”

  Now it was his turn to smile. “Let’s find out.”

  * * *

  “Hey, boys.” Bashar approached the table with the four mohawks.

  They all looked up at him with a shared, dead-eyed hostility. Troops, not officers, given that response to a perimeter intrusion. Anyone with real authority who was camped to wait for a contact would be a bit more open about it.

  He tugged over an empty chair, ignoring the silent anger and the odor of spilled liquor. Bashar let his voice slip into Southern white mud mouth. Even now, in the twenty-second century, that was homeboy jive to a lot of North America’s more violent weirdoes. “How about I buy the next round and y’all tell me what brings y’all to town?”

  “Fuck off,” one began, before another interrupted him with an outstretched hand. The corporal of this little half-squad, maybe. At least, the thinker. Genius gave Bashar a long, hard look. “Who’s asking?”

  “A friendly stranger.” He wasn’t ready to drop the Cairo name yet.

  Baldie-with-no-name swept in, gun out of sight, tray stacked with five shot glasses. Bashar’s would-be apple juice, by arrangement. The new booze hit the table with a series of faint plinks, bearing the paint thinner odor of what passed for Scotch whisky in these benighted days. Bashar could remember twenty-five year old Laphroaig. One of globalism’s few benefits had been the widespread availability of high quality booze.

  “Ain’t no friendly strangers here,” said the corporal, but he picked up his shot glass anyway.

  “All them friendlies stranger, dear,” Bashar replied. It was an old jody, a marching chant.

  “Drink to that,” said one of the others. They slammed their glasses. Bashar’s apple juice went down warm and sweet. Something was odd about the way these guys held their liquor. Literally, as in the way they handled their glasses.

  “Waitin’ for someone who like to never gonna drop by,” the corporal added, almost meditative. He gave Bashar a long, slow stare.

  He thinks it might be me, Bashar thought. Run with it. “Anyone I might know? Could help you spot them.”

  “’S a pick up,” confided the corporal’s now-chatty friend. “Got to see a dog about a man.”

  “Four hard boys in an assault chopper? Must be a big dog. Odd sort of pick up for out here in the woods.”

  “Odd sort of world, downside.”

  These guys were fresh from high orbit, Bashar realized. That was an interesting thought. Cairo or no Cairo, he was suddenly a lot more interested in this string than he had been. He would owe Shadows-In-Line-With-the-Moon big when this was all over with. “You didn’t fly in here, did you? You dropped in from on high.”

  “Like mother fucking angels dangling from God’s dick,” the corporal declared proudly.

  “Long way to come to see that dog about a man,” said Bashar.

  “Shit don’t target itself,” observed their fourth with a belch.

  The corporal slapped him on the shorn temple. “Shut up.”

  This conversation had drifted into dangerous territory. “You vacuum breathers don’t need a terrain survey to target orbital kinetics,” Bashar observed. He hoped like hell Baldie-with-no-name was close by. And who in their right mind would send this little crew of moron muscle in to do a pick up? “Earth’s been fully satellite mapped for fifteen decades. Plus you’ve got the God’s eye view from upstairs.”

  “You our man?” asked the corporal.

  “Sure.” Bashar had no idea what their countersigns and recognition codes were, but he knew how to run a bluff. He went on sarcastically, “That’s me, wandering around loose in the Washington woods looking for a skyhook.” Now was the time to try. “I’m a friend of Mr. Cairo’s.”

  “Ah.” With a knowing look, the corporal cleared his throat, and recited in the manner of one who’d been cudgeled to rote memorization. “Of man’s first dis-disobedience, and the fruits of the forbidden tree, who, uh, whose … immortal, I mean, immoral taste brought death into the world. Um, and all our woe.”

  John Milton. Paradise Lost. Sort of, at least. Was some high school student upstairs running these fools?

  Never one to let his own eccentric education go to waste, Bashar answered with the rest of the passage. “With loss of Eden, till one greater Man restore us, and regain the blissful seat, sing heavenly muse.” His delivery was way better. And he knew all the words right.

  “You got the maps?” the corporal asked.

  Maps, thought Bashar. What maps? What the hell was he talking about? Time to bluff some more, on an empty hand. “In my head.” Bashar tapped his temple and grinned. “And none of this iSys or cloud server crap. Good old fashioned meat memory.” In other words, they needed him. Assuming they believed him in the first place.

  “You want to ride the ride with your meatware data?” asked the corporal mildly. A sharp focus burned in his eyes. This one might be playing a part, but he wasn’t as stupid as he looked. Or as his squadmates were.

  This was where the string led, but Bashar was getting an awfully long way from Seattle if he went with them.

  The corporal spoke again: “Drop’s in about thirty hours. A lift with us is your fastest way out of the kill zone.”

  A cold fear passed hard down Bashar’s spine, shivering from neck to hips. Seattle. “Lot of geography around here,” he said.

  The corporal answered with a shrug. “You’re the man with the maps. I don’t know from Elliott Bay. We’ve got the big rocks. You’ve got the big maps. That’s why we’re here.”

  “Your operational security sucks, son,” Bashar told him. Cairo must have been the dead man the androgynous kid on the bike had talked about. And this was a set-up that stunk higher than last week’s fish and chips.

  But … Seattle. This was about J. Appleseed and the darwin file. It had to be. He had no choice but to follow the string through.

  “Let’s go for a ride,” the corporal said.

  Lightbull had killed Cascadiopolis from orbit. He was heading for orbit. There were no coincidences in this life.

  From greenwiki:

  Orbital Evolution, or OrbEv. The name given to forward planning for genetic drift and founder effect shifts to be expected in a permanent non-terrestrial human population.

  By the eighth decade of the twenty-first century, most observers were agreed that there was a sufficiently large human population in space to be self-perpetuating in the event of a collapse of surface-to-orbit travel. Even though at that time approximately eighty percent of permanent space residents were male, this was considered valid. Consensus has firmed in the intervening decades, especially given the growth rate in space-based births at the usual roughly even gender ratios prevailing in human populations.

  Even with this widening genetic base, there is still a pronounced island ecology aspect to human expansion off Earth. Crewed surface-to-orbit capabilities have dwindled, and are almost non-existent among surface-based populations, nation-states and non-state actors. Virtually all upward lift traffic is now a return trip, managed and sponsored by any of over a dozen orbital agencies and polities, Green Space Mining being the largest of those. This means Earth-to-space migration has slowed to almost a standstill, which in turns means the current non-terrestrial genetic reservoir is close to fixed.

  Geneticists and anthropologists both on Earth and in orbit (GSM Institute, University of Lagrange and Luna University) have seized on this natural experiment, with its attendant extensive medical records and close monitoring of the vast majority of subjects, to both study human microevolution in realtime and to develop increasingly higher degrees-of-confidence in longer scale projections. This study with its presumed eventual real world outcomes is known as orbital evolution.

  V: THE USUAL MISDIRECTIONS AND INNUENDOES AND PLAUSIBLE DENIABILITY

  Bashar had not packed for a trip to orbit. Wouldn’t be his first time to go commando. “Let’s hit it,” he told the corporal. “Time to fly.”

  They all stood up. Two chairs fell backward to slam loudly into the sawdust-strewn floor. Baldie-with-no-name finally caught Bashar’s eye from a distance in the shadows. Bashar nodded and began herding his newfound friends toward the front door. Baldie approached with his tray.

  “Your change, sir.” A thousand loonies, in the waiter’s hand.

  Bashar slacked his pace to exchange a quick word as he slipped the cash into his own pocket. “I’m taking the problem off your hands. Anyone else comes looking for Mr. Cairo’s friends, I’d appreciate it if they waited as long as possible for directions where to look next.”

  That earned him a surprised look from Baldie. “Better you than me.”

  “So it goes.”

  He caught up with the orbital troopies at the exit. All Bashar had time for now was a quick, coded message to Charity to let her know he would be even more off the grid than usual, and that he didn’t expect to be safe or check in for a while.

  People who went up to orbit didn’t tend to come back down.

  “What’s it like out there?” Bashar asked the corporal.

  “No dirt.” The young man scuffed his boot in the gravel of the parking apron. “Not much to hide behind. You see everyone coming, good and bad, from thousands of klicks away.”

  “Makes securing your perimeter a whole different proposition, I guess,” Bashar replied.

  “You people have plants.” The corporal sounded disgusted.

  In front of them, the helicopter unfolded with a faint whine. It swelled, left and right, puffing out like one of those Japanese fish, while the rotors extended and stiffened.

  “I’d been wondering,” Bashar said. “It looked a little small for five.”

  “Rated to six butts and seven hundred kilos of passenger,” said one of the other troopies.

  “Which one of you is an atmosphere-rated rotary wing pilot?”

  All four orbital troops laughed as they climbed in through a strangely soft and rounded access hatch. Oddly tiny for such an aircraft. Bashar wondered exactly who they worked for, whose hands he was putting himself in.

  This had to be one of the stupidest stunts he’d ever pulled.

  * * *

  No one flew.

  It couldn’t be remotely operated, not with the transmission lag from orbit. No, the helicopter had an onboard AI smart enough to cope with a combat-grade take off that scrambled Bashar’s internal organs, but was also probably pretty good at outrunning anything shoulder-launched.

  Not that anybody was shooting at them just now. Mirable dictu.

  The blades whirred in a buzzsaw whine like Bashar had never heard from a helicopter. Not stealthed. Something else. Hypersonic, maybe? Schaadt’s Shack dropped away fast below them, tilted hard as they banked through their steep, juking climb.

  He was stuck in the back between the belching drunk and the silent one. Booze and boys, a familiar set of smells. The corporal sat right seat, up front, but didn’t touch anything. His other troopie stared out the windscreen as they hit turbulence.

  “Atmosphere sucks,” shouted the corporal over the racket of their rough ascent. “How do you people live down here?”

  “At least I can step outside for a walk,” Bashar shouted back. Half-wit banter with morons wasn’t his thing, but he was trying to work at their level.

  A drop on Elliott Bay. Seattle. Somebody was going to make a big, hard splash, and kill about a million people doing it.

  The orbital troops laughed. “Who’d want to?” asked the drunk to his left, before, improbably, he fell asleep.

  To Bashar’s surprise, they were still climbing hard. The little helicopter clawed for altitude. No one but him seemed worried—the interior smelled of plastic and that strange, musty scent of nanotech, but not the reek of fear. No flop sweat here.

  “Where’s our pick up?” he asked. Truth be told, he wasn’t sure how people in orbit got down to the surface any more. Well, fall bags. Everybody knew about those low-tech nightmares. But how they got down when they also planned to climb back out of the gravity well again.

  Not in helicopters, he was fairly certain of that at least.

  “High dive,” said the corporal, as if that actually explained anything.

  Bashar decided that ignorance was the better part of valor. He didn’t think he’d like the answer anyway.

  They still climbed. Time passed with a frantic unspooling only he could hear. The drunk snored. The silent one stared out the window. Up front, the corporal hummed. Mount Rainier loomed below them off to the starboard. To the north he could see Glacier Peak and Mount Baker. How high were they?

  The buzz saw whine trailed off, to be followed by a whipping noise as the helicopter tossed once, twice, then settled into a silent, slinging arc.

  “Blades folding,” shouted the corporal helpfully.

  So far as Bashar could tell, they were in ballistic flight now. An aerodynamic rock, fifteen or twenty thousand meters up.

  Something aft kicked in, and they weren’t ballistic any more. The horizon swiftly acquired a distinctly multitoned look, not to mention a pronounced curvature. He was seeing the top of the sky. For the first time in his life, Bashar found himself at the edge of motion sickness.

  Higher still they went. He thought he could spot the Great Plains.

  Another bulletin from the front seat: “Hang on, it’s gonna get weird.”

  The drunk stirred, the silent troopie turned to Bashar with a sickly, tense grin.

  “Have you ever done this before?” Bashar asked him.

  “Hell no,” whispered the troopie. Kid, in fact. Bashar had whipped hundreds like him into line over the decades.

  The kid went on: “We train, a lot. High gravity gym, drop-and-lift simulations. Got to build up bone density and muscle tone for one-gee operations. But even high rez VR ain’t the same.” He sounded ready to panic.

  “Just nerves,” Bashar said with the tough unsympathy of a drill sergeant. “Keep your mission in mind and close your eyes if you think you need to. Too late to walk home now.”

  That cracked the kid up with the edged laughter of hysteria. It also kept him focused on Bashar instead of the increasingly curved horizon outside.

  No wonder the drunk was sleeping. And now he understood the tiny hatch. Air pressure differential was a real issue for this craft.

  Then the boost cut out, and they were ballistic once more. High up. Very high up. Bashar felt lightweight and ill in his seat. He strained against the straps and wondered quite seriously if this were a rather baroque assassination plot.

  Something big and dark moved above them, barely visible at first from his seat. He saw a pointed nose ahead of theirs.

  “Mommy’s come to gather us up, boys,” said the corporal with a tone of relieved and nervous satisfaction.

  They slammed upward, hard. Everything went dark outside and in except the control panel lights, which painted the corporal’s face with a sickly orange underglow just shy of demonic.

  * * *

  About ninety uncomfortable minutes later the lights came back on outside. Two figures in pressure suits crowded into a tiny bay that was barely larger than the helicopter itself. Or whatever this machine was—“helicopter” was a grossly insufficient description. One pointed an instrument at them while the other rather incongruously waved, as if saying hello to friends in a boat.

  Bashar had no particular urge to wave back, but the corporal was apparently happy to do so.

  After a minute or two of whatever sweep was being performed, their little round hatch opened. Unstrapping, Bashar found himself on the loose in microgravity for the first time in his life. His gut flopped twice, then settled. That was a small mercy, as he didn’t want to barf cheese tempura and elk salami all over the interior. He was third through, after the corporal and his front seat passenger, being boosted from the back by the scared kid. Bashar tried to avoid windmilling his arms or otherwise making a touristic hazard of himself.

  One of the pressure suited types propelled him out of the tiny bay and through another hatch. That opened onto a corridor with all four surfaces padded and grab rails running along them. The air here smelled weirdly clean, like glass would if it had an odor.

  “No gravity ever?” Bashar asked.

  “Not here.” The woman in front of him was dark-skinned, grey-eyed, shaven-headed and deeply suspicious. “Who the hell are you?”

  “The map man,” he said pointedly.

  “Ah, Mr. Biòu. The other one, whom we were not expecting.”

  Biòu? Who the hell was Biòu? “I, well, took over the franchise. Decided it was better to come in person.”

  “Mr. Franchise, I hope you like it here in orbit. You’re going to be a permanent resident. However long it is you wind up staying.”

  A woman after his own heart. Time to act like he belonged in this place. “I need a briefing.”

  “Everybody needs something,” she said unsympathetically. “A lucky few even get it.”

  She turned and swarmed along the corridor, which curved upward. Bashar started after the woman, trying to mimic her hand-over-hand grip on the rails. He got himself moving in the right direction but slipped loose to bounce twice off the padding before he could get a firm grasp. Someone behind him laughed.

  We’re all new once, son, he thought. You try this for the first time at my age.

  At least he was inside the perimeter. Bashar followed the woman, attempting to figure out why anyone had thought those four clowns were good security at the entry point. Life in orbit had to be the ultimate in know-your-neighbor security. Maybe these people just didn’t have procedures for infiltrators.

  Was that degree of laxness even possible?

  * * *

  He wound up seated—with a strap to keep him there against microgravity—on one of a semicircle of chairs facing a large virteo monitor in a small and otherwise featureless room. The woman who’d met him was present, along with a hard-bitten, whipcord thin Asian man who could almost have been Bashar’s age, and a much younger and doughier man—another kid, in truth—with pink eyes and brittle hair who seemed to be suffering from a metabolic disorder. He smelled like it, too.