LITMIR.BIZ

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“Silim,” he whispered, an Ahannu word currently in vogue with the xenophilic set, meaning “good” or “with it.”

      “Just before dawn this morning,” the narrator said, “elements of the 3rd Marine Division were suborbited into Giza, neutralizing local forces and setting up a defensive perimeter, establishing what President LaSalle called ‘a safe zone to protect both American and Confederation interests in the region.’”

      For minutes more, he took in the scenes relayed from the battlefield, views of American Marines crouched under cover, of robotic fliers patrolling sandy wastes, of a team of Confederation archeologists debarking from a transatmospheric lander and being escorted by Marines to the base of the Great Pyramid.

      The scene blurred and shifted, and John found himself sitting in a folding chair in the White House Rose Garden. President LaSalle stood behind a podium a few meters away, her face drawn and tired, as though she’d been up all night. “One of my predecessors,” she said, “called the U.S. Marines the Navy’s police force. In fact, for the past 150 years they have been the President’s police force, the first of this nation’s military forces to be deployed to any spot on the globe where our vital interests are being threatened. I did not make the decision to deploy our young men and women to this region lightly. Ongoing excavations at Giza are in the process of uncovering remarkable discoveries of inestimable value in understanding our past and the nature of repeated extraterrestrial interventions upon this world of ours thousands of years ago. It is vital to all of us that these discoveries remain intact, that they not fall into the hands of radical religious extremists. …”

      For John, it was as though he were sitting right there with the reporters, listening to the President’s speech. The clarity and realism of the noumen’s sensory input were nearly as sharp as real life. His implant was an expensive, high-end set, with almost two thousand protein processor nodes grown from microscopic nanoseeds scattered throughout his cerebral cortex and clustered within the nerve bundles of the corpus callosum. His father had insisted on a top-of-the-line Sony-TI 12000 Series Two Cerebralink, complete with social interactive icon selection, high-speed interfaces, emotional input, and multiple net search demons, and for once John was happy that his father was who and what he was, able to pull that much thrust. The 12000 was an executive model, the sort of cranialink nanohardware favored by high-powered CEOs and techers, light-years beyond what the other kids had had for schoolinks.

      John was eighteen and well into his first year of online university work. Carlos Jesus Esteban was determined that his son would get his degree in business management. John knew that his father might differ with him about his future career, but at least—

      A yellow light winked against the upper right corner of the news window in John’s mind. Shit!

      He mindclicked the link, closing the window, but the warning program he’d written for his Sony-TI simply wasn’t fast enough to beat the parental insertion. The window froze before it collapsed completely, then expanded again to show President LaSalle caught in foolish-looking mid-word.

      His father’s noumetic icon exploded into his consciousness, a mustached giant, vast and stern, in violet business smartsuit, with lightning flickering about his brow. “What the hell are you doing?” The elder Esteban’s voice was like thunder, and John, out of long-polished habit, cringed, then flared back.

      “This is my feed!”

      “You think so, smart kid? I bought you that fancy nanoware, and I won’t have you nouming that damned political pornography. Not as long as you’re in my house!”

      The image of President LaSalle winked out, and John floated alone in cyberspace with his father. He tried to adjust his own icon presentation so he felt less like a tiny satellite orbiting a planetary giant, but he found the mental input controls beyond his reach. His father was running his noumenal feed now.

      Pretty soon I’ll be able to noum what I want to. The thought came to mind unbidden.

      Somehow—could his father do that?—Esteban caught the thought or its echo. “What do you mean by that crack?” his father said. “Where do you think you’re going?”

      John felt the shifting cybercurrents of moving data packets. Damn! His father was sifting through his files. If he found out—

      “What are you hiding, muchacho? Huh? What do you have in here?”

      Abruptly, desperately, John mindclicked and severed the link. He sat once again in his sensory couch, the familiar surroundings of his home E-room around him. He lay there for a moment, breathing hard. Damn, damn, damn his father! These encounters always left him shaking, weak, and feeling violated. Just because his father felt that he had the right to monitor everything that he did on the net …

      Sometimes that translated as the right to monitor everything that he thought, and to John, that blatant invasion of privacy, self, and boundaries was as personal and as direct as a slap across the face.

      If his father was angry at him for following Triple N’s coverage of the Egyptian crisis, he would have been absolutely furious to learn that in a few days’ time his son would be leaving home for good.

      Tough, he thought. John Garroway Esteban had been a free agent since turning eighteen three months ago. For much of his life he’d dreamed about being a Marine, ever since his mother had told him about her ancestors, the Garroways, and the roles they’d played in wars from Korea to Mexico.

      Soon he would be a Marine himself, and he could kick off the mud of this damned planet and begin to see the worlds.

       Silim! …

       Marine Planetary Base

       Mars Prime, Mars

       1914 hours Zulu

      Some 210 million kilometers from John Esteban’s E-center musings, Colonel Thomas Jackson Ramsey—“TJ” to his friends—touched the announce pad at the doorway to the office of his commanding officer. The door slid open in response. “General Cassidy? Reporting as ordered, sir.”

      “Enter,” William Cassidy said without looking up from his work station.

      Ramsey entered, centering himself on the hatch, hands clasped stiffly at his back. He didn’t know why he’d been summoned here. He didn’t think he was in trouble, but with Brigadier General Cassidy—a tough, no-nonsense character with dark mahogany skin, silver hair, and a hard-ass attitude reputed to curdle milk at fifty meters—you never knew.

      “At ease, at ease,” Cassidy said after a moment. He pulled the link circlet from his head and tossed it aside on the desk, then rubbed his eyes. “Drag up a chair.”

      Ramsey floated a glider chair across the deck and anchored it with a thought. “You wanted to see me, sir?”

      “Yes, damn it. You’ve got new orders.”

      Ramsey’s eyebrows lifted themselves toward his hair line. “Sir? I’ve only been here eight months.” The usual length of off-world deployments was two years.

      “I know. And I’m going to hate like hell to lose you.” Cassidy gave him a sidelong look. “What’s your famsit?”

      Curiouser and curiouser. A Marine’s family situation was only raised for offworld deployments. “No current contract, sir. I had one before I shipped out for Mars.” Cheryl hadn’t been willing to wait for him, and he couldn’t say he blamed her. It still hurt, though. …

      “Any kids?”

      “No, sir. Do I take it that I’m being reassigned out-Solar, General?”

      “I guess you could say that. It’s volunteers only, and it’s long term. Very long term. But it’s carrying a Career Three.”

      “Goddess! Where are they sending me?”

      “That,” Cassidy said, “is classified. They won’t even tell me. But they want you

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