Fall Revolution 4: The Sky Road by MacLeod Ken

Author:MacLeod, Ken [Ken, MacLeod,]
Format: epub
Published: 2010-09-27T12:53:17.296000+00:00

The airport of the capital of the International Scientific and Technical Workers’ Republic had only one terminal building. It was a big, open-plan space, dotted with franchises. They’d never bothered with Customs, or Immigration Control. Between the floor-to-ceiling windows – with their charming views of steppe, runway, apartment-blocks, gantries and more steppe – hung equally gigantic posters of Trotsky, Korolev, Kapitsa, Gagarin and Guevara. The idea, many years ago, had been to make the concourse look Communist: a bit of macho swagger. Right now it had the look of a place about to fall tothe commies, rather to Myra’s disgust. Crowded with people sitting on too much luggage, their expressions flickering between impatience and resignation with every change on the departure screens. For heaven’s sake, thought Myra – Semipalatinsk was a hundred miles away, they were over-reacting.

Her own flight’s departure-time was not for another hour. She confirmed her booking at the check-in, made sure her luggage was on board, and declined the offer of waiting in the first-class lounge. Instead she made her way to the old Nkafe franchise, and sat down with a coffee and a cigarette, to rest her feet and indulge in a little nostalgia.

In the good old days before the Third World War she’d sipped many a coffee here, with many a man on the other side of the table. Always a different man, and almost never one that she’d liked: ugly, jowly military men for the most part, jet-lagged and stubbled, in creased dress uniforms heavily medal-lioned; or diplomats or biznesmen, sleek and shaven and cologned in silk suits. And always, hanging around a few metres away, outside the glowering ring of bodyguards, would be the photographers and reporters, there to record the closing of the deal. The ISTWR had never gone for secret diplomacy – openness was the whole point of tradable nuclear deterrence.

It had worked fine, until the nuclear war.

The Germans had launched the War of European Integration without a nuke to call their own. This hadn’t been an oversight – it had been essential to the element of surprise. Once their first wave of tanks was safely over the Polish border they’d made Myra a very generous offer for some of her tradable nuclear deterrence. Myra’s frantic ringing around her clients had found no one willing to deal: notfor any amount of money, on the entirely rational basis that the Third World War was not a good time to sell. Myra had considered cutting them out and selling the Germans the option anyway, but her business loyalty had got the better of her. It had also got the better of the German occupiers of Kiev, and the German civilians of Frankfurt and Berlin. She still felt guilty about that.

For want of company, she flipped down her eye-band and summoned Parvus. For a laugh, she sat his virtual image in the seat across the table from her. The construct triangulated his apparent position, saw the joke and smiled.

‘What can I do for you, Myra?’

Tell me what you think of the General.

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