Crossover (50 page)

"I think," she murmured, "that you should do that. He wouldn't want me to give those bastards the satisfaction." Neiland nodded solemnly.

"I'll give the instruction." Pause. "A number of CSA agents have requested to be present at the ceremony." Sandy turned and stared in astonishment.

"Ceremony?"

"They took the FIA's actions very personally," Neiland continued. "Some of them nearly dropped through lack of sleep trying to track them down. The effort was enormous. A Chief Investigator Khurana in particular, Shan tells me. He and his people consider Mahud a hero. He has demanded to be present at the ceremony. I think he'll have a lot of company."

Sandy blinked, swallowing hard against the growing ache in her throat.

"I don't know if a ceremony..."

"Of course there'll be a bloody ceremony," Neiland cut her off with gentle firmness. "You need it, they want it, and he bloody well deserves it. Don't you think?"

Sandy nodded, unable to argue with that. Not trusting herself to speak.

"Good." Looking at her with a tired, lopsided smile. "I'm sorry to dump it all on you so soon. It just needed to be done." Sandy nodded, wordlessly. Her head was spinning.

"And after that," Neiland said, "when you've recovered, there's something that Shan wants you to do for him. For everyone."

"What?" she murmured hoarsely.

"Take a vacation." Sandy blinked. And looked at the President, questioningly. A vacation. She couldn't recall ever having been on a vacation. Unless you counted going AWOL. What did one do on a vacation? Was there a procedure?

"Where would I go?" she asked.

The sunlight through the canopy was bright at four thousand meters. Hands rested on sun-warmed controls, a gentle manual, feeling the rise and fall of air currents against the flyer's control surfaces. A buzz of vibration through the molded grips, through the comfortable leather of her seat, a muffled whine of thrusters, broad fan jets, carving the air.

As her eyes filtered the glaring light, Sandy gazed out the enclosing width of canopy at the broad, open country of Callay that lay stretched below. Here the forests had given way to broad, open valleys, patches of bare granite amid the flowing grass and scrub. Rivers flowed, many tongued and linking, a myriad of sun-glistening causeways. The flyer rocked slightly, air rising in thermals from the rock below. A pressure on the controls and she corrected, a shifting movement as the flyer responded, riding the air that she caressed with her hands.

She was one hundred and forty kilometres south-west of Tanusha and it was a lovely day. Further into the distance was broken and scattered cloud, snow white in the sunlight. There was a song on the radio — a Tanushan station via satellite relay, a rock band, guitars and vocals, something both sad and happy at the same time, pleasant harmony and rising emotion. It had been running around in her head for the last few days, and it was good to be hearing it now. She hummed a soft accompaniment and breathed the deep, long breaths of open space and long distances yet to travel.

She wore casual shorts and a T-shirt scrawled with Urdu script — Vanessa's alma mater, she had gathered, and a common enough sight on the streets of Tanusha. Her bare legs were warm in the mid-morning sun. A gentle breeze of airconditioning kept the temperature cool. She had a backpack with clothes and necessities on the back seat, a decent quantity of credit on her CSA card and a surfboard that Singh had lent to her at Vanessa's insistence, with a promise that she'd learn to use it. Vanessa had been pleased at the idea, had said that with her coordination she'd be an expert grommet in no time at all. Vanessa, Sandy knew, was trying to find her a hobby. She appreciated the thought.

Well Ricey, she thought to herself past the rising chorus from the radio, the tourist brochures say there's a hundred thousand kilometres of untouched coastline on Callay, not even counting the islands. Maybe some of those waves have my name on them.

The flyer rocked again, displays describing a thermal, upward flowing air in curious, rotating pillars. Another shift of hands, enjoying the sensation, the aircraft loose and free upon the shifting currents of air, responding to her touch. It had been a while since she had last used her pilot's qualifications. One of many military skills, it had been, tape-taught long ago but rarely used, faded with time and lack of practice. But the hands remembered. They held a steady course, while the eyes scanned the displays and her interface made occasional brief, scanning contact with the flyer CPU, acquiring a feel, a broad sensation of data. Of flying. It felt good, as the sun on her bare limbs felt good, as the vista of rumpled, rocky, folded terrain was good, amid a sea of grass and scrub, and a running gleam of sunlight across the many forks of rivers.

It was good. And it was surreal.

Herself, in a civilian flyer, packed bags like some adventuring Tanushan backpacker escaping from work, or family, or school, to the adventure of the ninety-five percent of the planet where humans were rare and civilisation rarer. It was, she had gathered in recent days, a significant part of Tanushan folklore. Among SWAT and CSA personnel of her acquaintance, stories abounded of 'going bush' or 'walkabout'.

For some, it meant luxury resorts, sunsets by the swimming pool and karaoke barbecues. For others, it was cruises and boats. Vanessa, of course, was a mad-keen scuba diver, who swore that a week among reef fish, coral shelves and five-metre, curiously intelligent dragonrays was the ultimate solution for urban tension. Hiraki was a keen mountaineer, for whom happiness could be found amid the soaring heights of the Great Tarikashi Shelf, or the equatorial Wilmott Ranges. And the big, burly Bjornssen, she had been surprised to learn, was a dedicated nature enthusiast, who had once spent a month's accumulated leave in the southern Argasuto tundra with his girlfriend, following the hundred thousand-fold migration of the
twelik
, a kind of native deer. Which must have been quite a sight.

And she herself ... she would go wherever the winds and thermals would take her. It was a vague thought, partly formed amid the abstracts of sun and landscape and the soaring sensation of flight. And it was most unlike herself. Vague thoughts. Unfocused. Wandering, wherever the winds should blow. She only knew that it was good. And necessary.

The flyer was Ibrahim's idea. A rental. Expensive, she knew, but Ibrahim had dismissed it with an absent wave of a hand. "And remember," he had told her, "the destination is nothing without the journey."

"Islamic?" she had asked.

"Shanish," he had replied. And was gone before she recognised the humour.

The song came to an end. Another began, mellow acoustic. She adjusted the volume, hand gently levering the throttle, searching for a steadier airflow in the mild turbulence. Civilian flyer. Recreational. Cruising at a little over five hundred kilometres per hour, she wasn't about to set any speed records. But it was reliable and easy to fly. And fun, that too. She had the coastal town of Ito fixed firmly in the navcomp, and the user-friendly pilot displays showed her the way. Ito, she had been told, had nice beaches, good diving, some forested mountains nearby and a population of barely twenty thousand, most of whom did little more than service the tourist trade. She was certain that Ito would be nice. She was certain that the places beyond Ito would be nice also. She had the flyer on twelve-day rental. She could come and go as she pleased, and the planet did not seem like such a large place after all.

And she felt ... curious. Soaring in flight, her consciousness somehow free, beyond the moment, the shift of control grips upon yielding air, the crystal sunlight, the vast horizon. Perhaps it was significant, she pondered, this detachment. Perhaps some curious quirk of bio-artificial psychology. Perhaps post-traumatic. Perhaps a rejection of sensory data, a reflex response to recent overload. Most probably it was. All of those things, and more besides.

And maybe ... maybe she was just tired. Tired of the ponderings. Tired of the questions. Tired of the endless contradictions that made up her existence. And just sick and tired to death that it had to mean
anything
. She felt, perhaps, the most overwhelming and complete urge just to let it be.

She was. She would always be.

I am.

The civilian flyer cruised on, a small, significant speck in a vast expanse of sunlit sky. It faded toward a new horizon, bright and clear in the gleaming sun. Time flowed. Life continued.

The city of Tanusha bided its time, and awaited her return.