Thomas Easton - Organic Future 01 - Sparrowhawk

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Chapter One
FIVE-YEAR-OLD ANDY GILMAN, towheaded and gap-toothed, was kneeling on a
chair by the kitchen window. Half a dozen plastic Warbirds were scattered on
the floor beneath him. With the tip of one finger, he was writing his name in
the large smudge his nose had left on the glass. Suddenly he stiffened and
pointed beyond the pane. "Look, Daddy!" he cried. "See the bird! By the
feeder! A big one!"
Nick Gilman grinned and crossed the room in a stride. He looked, and the
kid was right. A Chickadee, the size of an old-fashioned Piper Cub, was on the
lawn beside the back porch. It wasn't wearing its two-seater passenger or
engine pods. As Nick watched, it cocked its head to one side, inserted its
beak between the shelf and the overhanging roof of the feeder, and seized a
mouthful of seeds. Then, shaking its head as if the treat had been more effort
than it was worth, it stepped back a pace.
As it did so, nongengineered birds of more normal size approached to try
to reach the seeds remaining in the feeder. Few succeeded, for as they
fluttered past the Chickadee, they fell prey instead to its darting beak. Nick
shuddered, remembering when all chickadees had been vegetarians. "C'mon, Andy.
We're in a rush. Gotta go get Mommy."
"But, Daddy! I wanna watch!"
Nick had no time for nonsense. Emily's jet would be late, of course, but
it was due in an hour, and he had to be there just in case she was on time
or--God forbid!--early. He should have left ten minutes before, but the
casserole had needed its finishing touches and he had had to adjust the oven
and he had had to run a comb through his hair and he had had to straighten the
throw rug that had slid beneath his feet and...It wasn't easy being a
househusband.
The radio began to mutter that, on this hot and muggy Tuesday in July of
2044, terrorist attacks were becoming more frequent, but he had no time to
listen. Nor did he care to think of what such a thing might mean for Emily, or
him, or their towheaded son. He turned it off and grabbed his jacket. Then he
picked the boy up in his arms, wiped the snot from the boy's nose with a
handkerchief, and rushed from the room.
Emily was a high-bracket gengineer, she would be back soon from her
trip--she had flown to Washington on Sunday to testify before a patent board
on Monday--he loved her dearly, and he didn't want to leave her waiting.
Sometimes he wished their roles were reversed, with him the one wandering the
world on high adventures and she the one at home in their small, old-fashioned
brick house. But his doctorate had been in Romantic Poets, there were fewer
new college students than ever, few colleges were hiring young faculty, and
his attempts at selling his own poems and short stories had earned him the
grand total of $79.85. He could have bought a pair of shoes. Cheap ones.
Nick had opened the garage door that morning and led the Tortoise out for
relief from the heat. Now the family vehicle was waiting in the drive, shaded
by nearby trees. Nick had bought it when he was in college and single. It had
been young then, with the passenger compartment in the shell just big enough,
in a squeeze, for two. And he had squeezed more than one girl in it, he had,
until he had found Emily and grown up a bit. As advertised, the Tortoise had
grown too, maturing from the sports car stage to coupe. Eventually, timed by
gengineers like Emily to match a family's growth, it would gain the capacity
of a station wagon.
The Tortoise didn't look like a tortoise. Its chief ancestor had been a
lean, low terrapin. The gengineers had given it size and speed, and a cavity
beneath the shell. The General Bodies shops had fitted a windshield, side
windows, and doors, installed plush seats, added headlights and taillights,
and wired the controls into the Tortoise's nervous system. At periodic
checkups, they added new fittings and enlarged or refitted the old to keep
pace with the creature's growth.
Roachsters, half cockroach and half lobster; Hoppers, derived from
grasshoppers; and other Buggies could keep pace with a family's needs just as
well. But Nick preferred the more classic lines of the Tortoise. Its shape
reminded him of the gas-burners his parents had driven when he had been a
child, when the Machine Age had still been vigorous. The oil that had made
that Age possible had been on the verge of exhaustion, and most liquid fuels
were being produced--expensively--from coal. But people had not yet recognized
that new forms of technology were essential if civilization were to continue,
nor that the replacement technology was already taking shape. The Biological
Revolution had by then been fermenting in the world's laboratories for
decades, and the gengineers had been on the verge of long-sought success.
As Nick and Andy left the house, the Tortoise's barrellike head turned
toward them. The legs on the side facing the house flexed, Nick stepped onto
the offered lip of shell, resembling an old-time running board, and opened the
door. Andy scooted across the bucket seats to let his father take his position
behind the tiller.
Even before the door clicked into its frame, the Tortoise's knees were
rising and falling, pistonlike, in Nick's peripheral vision. He steered it
onto the greenway that had long since replaced paved streets in his suburb,
guided it toward the expressway on-ramp, and accelerated. The Tortoise's knees
became a blur, its breathing an audible gale of wind.
The expressway itself was still paved. The Public Works Department kept
promising to have it grassed, for almost all vehicles were now bioforms, or
genimals. But public money was as short as ever, and the Biological Revolution
was still new. Many residential neighborhoods, unlike Nick's, also still had
paved streets. Only a few neighborhoods had yet gone to modern bioform houses,
gengineered from pumpkins, squash, beanstalks, eggplants, and even more exotic
stock.
Air transportation was somewhat more advanced. As Nick and Andy neared the
airport, they passed a zone of bedraggled hangars and paved runways.
Airplanes--Comanches, Beechcrafts, Boeings--stood about in varying states of
dishabille. A few showed the faded, painted-over logos of major airlines. Most
wore nothing but their serial numbers.
"What's that, Daddy? Jets?" To him, the gengineered birds were the normal
technology. These were strange variants, stiff and featherless, emblems of a
realm set askew from the world he knew, but oddly reminiscent of it.
"Obsolete junkers, Andy." The traffic had been light, they would be there
in plenty of time, and Nick had relaxed. He spared a glance for the display
beside the expressway. "Real airplanes. They used to carry people. Now it's
just cargo." Many, the papers said, carried contraband--guns, illegal
immigrants, fugitives from the law, laundered money--across the border. Many
more carried banned bioforms such as cannibal grass, or cheap bootleg copies
of glow-in-the-dark philodendrons and goldfish bushes.
Their Tortoise sped them past another airport zone. The runways were still
paved, but the hangars were in better shape and the planes wore shiny coats of
paint. "Hobbyists," said Nick. "Weekend flyers." One of the planes was a
bulb-nosed giant, towering above all the others. On its tail was a stylized
rabbit head.
"How do they fly?"
"They have engines, just like the jets. On the wings." He pointed. "And
propeller engines, in the nose. And see the windows up front?" When Andy
nodded, Nick added, "People drive them, like the old-time cars." He paused. "I
took a few lessons once. On a small one."
The terminal loomed ahead, all glass and steel and concrete, with mown
grass beyond. The control tower held a faceted ball above everything. Nick
fantasized some Paul Bunyan of a golfer poised to send that ball down the
green runways. He pointed and said, "Fore!" Andy giggled.
There was a parking barn whose attendants would feed and water vehicles
for weeks at a time, while, the rumors went, breeding strange, illicit
hybrids. Nick avoided it, searching for and finding a space in an open lot
nearer their destination. Once in the air-conditioned terminal, he checked a
board to find that Emily's flight would, as he had expected, be a few minutes
late. Then, at Andy's insistence, they took the escalator to the observation
deck.
He let Andy lead him, running, to the edge of the deck. He braced himself
against the warm wind, wished that they had stayed inside and cool, peered
into the sky looking for his wife, and listened to the airport noises. The boy
chinned himself on the railing, imitated his father's searching gaze, and
pointed into the distance.
A flight was coming in above the ranks of trees that filled in the middle
distance beyond the runways. The trees had been gengineered from a tropical
species to stand more northern climates. Their diesel sap provided the fuel
needed for the engines of jets and the few other powered vehicles civilization
still used.
The approaching jet was still too far away to show any detail, but they
could make out the distinctive curve of the extended wings, the elevated,
horizontal tail without an upright, the rounded bulge of the forepart. It came
closer, and they could see the two engines mounted just in front of the tail,
the fuel tanks, the passenger pod strapped to the back. Still closer, and the
slate-gray upper surfaces separated from the lighter underside.
Andy cried, "That's a Junco 47!" He had a plastic model of the huge
genimal hanging from the ceiling of his room at home. Perhaps inevitably, the
model had a more mechanical appearance than the real thing. So had the models
of bombers and airliners and space shuttles that had decorated Nick's
childhood bedroom.
The Junco extended its feet and cupped its wings. Now Nick could make out
the China Airlines logo on the side of one fuel tank. The gengineers had
triumphed with the airliners, he thought. Birds, ordinary birds, had been
redesigned to such extremes of size that they could no longer fly on their
own. The biggest, like the Junco, even needed metal-composite implants to
strengthen their skeletons. Only the smallest, like that Chickadee at home,
could get into the air without their jet engines and fuel tanks, and even they
needed help when they were carrying passengers or freight. Still, Nick knew,
larger creatures had once flown entirely under their own power. Periodically,
the press reminded the public that millions of years ago, in the age of
dinosaurs, there had been a pteranodon the size of an Air Force fighter.
Emily had told him why the gengineers had bothered. Jets like the Junco
needed much less in the way of the metals that cost so much to mine and
process. They were more efficient and safer as well. Though they could not
normally fly on their own, in emergencies they could manage a few flaps of
their wings. They could control their machine-powered flight, and they needed
very short runways. They were also self-building, once the gengineers were
done with the design work, and self-repairing.
The landing was smooth. Nick followed Andy's pointing finger to the side,
where an Alitalia Cardinal, free for the moment of its passenger pod and
engines, preened its plumage. Bright red feathers littered the grass around
it, most of them too big to blow in the wind.
Nearby were an American Bald Eagle, a Canadian Pacific Snow Goose, and a
British Caledonian Chimney Swift, its morning-coat tails recalling the
formalities of another age. A fat-bodied Wild Turkey bore the Delta logo, and
Nick remembered that that was the complimentary bourbon they served on board.
He and Emily had flown Delta on their honeymoon. United, with its Lovebirds,
had seemed too cute to appeal to them.
"What's that, Daddy?"
"That" was a metal box much like the trailer of an eighteen-wheel semi. As
the Junco 47 approached the terminal, it converged on the same destination,
drawn by a squat, heavy-muscled, squash-faced creature whose rootstock had
clearly been a bulldog. Its top was covered by pleats of heavy fabric, and
liquid dripped from its base onto the ground.
"Watch," said Nick. The Junco was in position. As the passenger tunnel
snugged its mouth, lampreylike, against the jet's pod, the trailer drew under
its nose. The ground crew turned cranks mounted on the trailer's ends, and the
fabric rose on an internal frame to surround the Junco's head. The motions
that promptly began to shake the fabric could not be misinterpreted. The
jet's--the bird's--refueling was under way.
"What kind of seeds is it eating?" asked Andy. He had seen ordinary juncos
on the ground beneath the bird feeder at home. He had even thrown out
sunflower seeds for them.
Nick shook his head. "Uh-uh," he said. "It's like the Chickadee. When
they're this big, they have to eat meat." It was cheaper than any alternative,
for it was obtained from worms and slugs gengineered to thrive on human wastes
and garbage. They had been among the first of the large-scale bioforms to be
developed when the gengineers had stepped beyond single-gene changes in
bacteria, viruses, and plants.
"See the litterbugs?" he added. The rattle of cloven hooves reached them
even on the observation deck as a trio of strange-looking creatures raced
toward the liner's other end from the service bay that had disgorged the feed
trailer. They vaguely resembled pigs, but their limbs were longer and their
snouts were distorted into broad scoops. Smaller versions patrolled city
streets, seeking out and devouring the leavings of other genimals. They did
not neglect banana peels, paper scraps, and beverage containers.
They did not interest Andy. The boy glanced at them briefly, dismissed
them as common, and looked skyward again. Nick chuckled quietly, thinking that
someday the boy might see some small, wild bird release its wastes in flight.
Perhaps he would wonder, then, about the airliners. They had, Nick knew, been
gengineered to discharge their wastes while feeding. Many mammals--even
humans--did it without the gengineering. It was, Emily had told him once, a
simple "make-room" reflex.
Andy shouted. He was pointing toward the horizon once more. In a moment,
they could identify a Northwest Albatross. Once the jet was on the ground,
Nick took Andy by the hand and they headed for the gate.
Emily was the third person to come striding up the ramp from the plane,
grinning, eyes scanning the small crowd for her family. A slender, dark-haired
woman whose wide mouth often showed its teeth in a smile that would have done
justice to a veedo evangelist, she exuded alertness and energy. One hand held
in place on a shoulder a garment bag and a purse. The other clutched a
briefcase and a plastic bag from whose top protruded a few green leaves.
Nick, grinning as broadly as she, took the garment bag. She knelt then, to
wrap her free arm around their son. "Ah, Andy," she said. "You need to blow.
And look what I've got right here."
She opened the bag she carried to reveal a plant whose dark green leaves
alternated with white oblongs. One of the latter she picked and held to Andy's
nose. "Blow!" The boy obliged, laughed, and cried, "A hanky bush!"
"Right!" She looked at her husband. "Something new. They're working on
more productive models for the bathroom and kitchen."
"That should save a few trees," he said.
Her mouth twisted into a rueful grin, and she shook her head. "It won't
help the paper industry. But..."
She didn't need to tell him more. The technology was changing. The
gengineers had already changed the sewage treatment, aircraft, highway,
housing, and automobile industries beyond recognition. Now it was the turn of
the pulp and paper industry. Yet, in the nature of things, as old jobs
vanished, new ones appeared. He did not believe what some claimed, that the
Biological Revolution would in time free people entirely of the need to labor.
He did believe that, eventually, the labor market would stabilize and the
unemployment rate would fall. Then their taxes need not be so high, and more
of Emily's income could be theirs.
"Let's go," said Emily. "I want to put my feet up."
"How'd it go?" The patent hearing had concerned what she hoped would be
her company's latest product, a jellyfish modified to inflate itself with
hydrogen. It was the size of a blimp, and its tentacles gave it a built-in
cargo-handling system.
She shook her head as she stood. Andy seized her hand. "I got some heavy
interest from a van company. But no patent."
They were nearing a souvenir kiosk, and Andy was pointing at the jet
feathers on display. "I wanta red one!"
Emily shrugged. "The Pentagon said they'd already grown some. Very few
details."
Nick snorted and reached for his wallet. A moment later, Andy had his
feather--longer than his father was tall--and their Tortoise was in sight.
The expressway never seemed so crowded as when they were on their way
home. While Emily cuddled Andy and listened to him chatter about his two days
alone with Daddy, Nick swore at the Roachsters and other Buggies that dawdled
in front of their Tortoise, the Mack trucks that strained to keep their heavy
trailers up to speed, the Hoppers that plunged past them into whatever gaps
opened up in the flow of traffic, the occasional old-style automobile whose
noise made the Tortoise lurch aside. It occurred to him that if he were just a
little paranoid, it would be very easy to believe in some vast conspiracy of
other drivers: They knew he was in a rush to get home, and every slowcoach,
every lane jumper, every flare of brake lights was one more deliberate,
intended effort to drive him nuts!
"Can I have a soda? Please?"
A small cooler was built into the dashboard, beside the map compartment.
Emily unlatched its door and peered inside. "Ginger ale or root beer, honey.
Take your pick."
"Root beer."
She passed the can into the back seat, and there was silence except for
the small noises that went with opening and draining a can of soda. The odor
of root beer drifted toward the front seat, and in a moment there was a loud
burp and a giggle. "That was a good one," she said.
Fortunately, for all the apparent crowd, the expressway journey never
seemed so short either. Even as Nick swore and Andy drank, while the tip of
his feather fluttered in the wind outside his window, Emily talked of what had
gone on in Washington--the general who had wanted to classify both the patent
application and the Bioblimp it described, the vice president of Mayflower Van
Lines who had asked whether Emily's lab could give the Bioblimp built-in cargo
pockets, the official from the Bioform Regulatory Administration who had
wanted a more detailed Environmental Impact Statement, the...it seemed
impossible that their journey from the airport could give her the time she
needed to tell it all.
She was talking about the sort of environmental impacts a giant jellyfish
could have when a gust of wind sent the Hopper before them staggering and a
shadow fell across the road. She craned her neck to look out her window and
up. "It's a Sparrow!"
The sound of the Sparrow's jet engine swelled until it dominated the air.
The shadow swept past the Tortoise, and the airliner was plainly visible. Long
and sleek, the size of an old Boeing 707, its extended feet as large and stark
as elm trees, stripped by death of all but major branches and turned upside
down, it did not much resemble its rootstock. But its eye had the perky
ancestral gleam and the feathers that showed on the wings and below the
passenger pod were the proper streaky brown. Written along the side of the
passenger pod, in both English and Arabic, was the Palestine Airways motto:
"No Sparrow Falls."
The Sparrow sideslipped, swung broadside to their view, and landed in the
road ahead. Its body spread across all six traffic lanes, its feet squashing a
Roachster and a Hopper.
"What the...?" The brake pedal was in the traditional place, and Nick
stepped on it, hard. As the Tortoise stiffened its legs and skidded toward a
halt, the man's voice rose to a shout: "What are those idiots doing?"
Emily's broad mouth hung open. She shook her head, both in disbelief and
in admission that she too knew nothing about the motivations of idiots. The
Tortoise slowed and stopped, as did the traffic around it. A cacophony of
Buggy voices rose as traffic began to pile up and drivers leaned on their
horns.
The Sparrow cocked its head, first one way, then the other, casting its
eyes by turns upon the chaos it had created. Its beak thrust, and a Hopper
went down its throat, in pieces, one by one. A Roachster quickly followed.
Nick swore more genuinely as he reached for the panel hiding a control he
had never dreamed he would have to use. Drops of sweat appeared on his
forehead. "Where...? Ah."
The panel stuck, gave way to the bang of Nick's fist, and opened. He
pushed the switch behind it, and the Tortoise lowered its belly-plate, or
plastron, to the pavement. Then it drew its head and legs as far into its
shell as possible. Unfortunately, it was not a box turtle and it could not
protect itself entirely. Its nose and feet remained exposed.
The doors locked, and the windows slid smoothly all the way up, sealing
the Tortoise's passengers into as safe a redoubt as foresighted engineers
could manage to provide. As a side effect, the severed tip of Andy's jet
feather fell to the pavement outside.
"Wow!" said Andy. He ignored what on any other day would have been a major
disaster. His nose was plastered to the window, just as it had been at home
when Nick had collared him for this trip.
The day's heat wasted no time in making itself felt. The Tortoise had no
air-conditioning, and its interior quickly became intolerable despite the best
efforts of the ventilation system. But they dared not leave their shelter or
open its windows. Nor did they want to. Nick thought that the ventilator
admitted quite enough of the metallic scent of fresh blood.
Fortunately, the carnage and the chaos outside the Tortoise were more than
enough to keep their minds off their suffering inside it. Buggies struggled to
reverse in the middle of the road. But the traffic jam was now too thick. A
few, luckily near the shoulder, tried to use the embankment to make the turn
or as a route to off-road freedom. But soon that lane too was blocked. Drivers
and passengers fled their gridlocked vehicles. But nothing helped.
As soon as anyone left their Buggy, the Sparrow's eye turned their way.
Split seconds later, the beak thrust, clamped down on wildly struggling limbs,
and choked off screams. Few who were within the Sparrow's reach escaped
successfully.
Even those who cowered within their buggies were not safe. When the
Sparrow saw no prey fleeing, it accepted the vehicles with every appearance of
relish. Its ancestors had been opportunists, dining on seeds, crumbs, and
insects as they found them. Now it faced a wealth of insectile creatures, all
of a size proportionate to itself. Its satisfaction was obvious.
Only the few Tortoises on the road, each one pulled as much as possible
into its shell; the old-style automobiles, even more hard-shelled; and the
trucks, too huge, seemed immune to the terrifying attack.
"Jesus!" Nick knew they were as safe as possible, given the circumstances,
but that did not comfort him. When a limb--it might have been a
Buggy's--bounced off the Tortoise's shell below the windshield, he clutched
the tiller with a grip that death alone would slacken.
"They probably still want the Israelis out of Tehran."
"The Palestinians?"
"Whoever." Emily shrugged and pointed at the logo on the airliner's flank.
"We should never have let Palestine Airways into the country. Once a
terrorist, always a..."
"Look!" cried Andy. "Here come the cops!"
As the sound of sirens split the air, Nick peered upward through the
windshield. Three Sparrowhawks were just coming out of their dives and
sweeping into tight turns above the expressway.
Chapter Two
THE LAND SPREAD out below, wheeling, turning, pivoting now on some
skyscraper near the city's core, now on the crossing of two major roadways,
now on the airport control tower. Small white clouds swung above. Broad,
steel-gray wings swept through the peripheries of the pilot's vision, immense
feathers twitching from time to time in response to the flow of air or the
muscles that controlled his path through the sky.
The pilot's name was Bernie, Bernie Fischer, and he was letting his Hawk
soar at will while he bathed morosely in the whirling views. His hands rested
lightly on the control yoke as he stared out over the sheet-metal cabinets,
round-cornered, gray-enameled, of the vehicle's console. Behind one of the
panels, he knew, was the computer that translated his bendings of the yoke,
his treadings of the pedals, and his twistings of knobs into landings,
liftoffs, and smoothly sweeping turns to left and right.
His seat was enclosed by a broad bubble or pod of clear plastic, marked
only by an oval door frame, and, within that, a small porthole. The porthole
seemed superfluous, unnecessary for vision when the door itself was
transparent. It was there, he guessed, because the door's manufacturer used
the pattern for all its doors, clear or not.
Bernie's field of view was interrupted only beneath his feet, for only
there did his vehicle turn opaque. There was the bird itself and, behind him,
the engines and fuel tanks strapped near the base of its tail. There were the
metal fittings that bore the Hawk's serial number and to which attached the
heavy straps that held the pod to the bird's back. There was no need for metal
structural members in the pod itself, or for rotor-mountings, as in the
helicopters that still were used at times.
Bernie was seeking comfort in the clean peace of the sky, reluctant to
return to Earth, even though his shift was nearly over, even though he could
soon go home to his small apartment and pour a drink or two and try to forget
what he had seen this day. He wished he had someone waiting for him, someone
he could talk to, someone whose touch could ease him when things went so badly
awry in the world with which he must deal each day.
He had had chances, yes, he had. He had loved and been loved. He had come
close to proposing. He had been proposed to. But he had held back, said no,
temporized. He didn't dare, he told them all, to impose his life on anyone.
They had tried to talk him out of his refusal to run the risk of hurting, but
he had insisted. It wouldn't be fair, he had told them, for one day he might
not come home.
Bernie Fischer was a cop. At times, he wished he wasn't, for only as a
cop, or a physician or a paramedic, could he possibly encounter horrors such
as the one that preoccupied his mind at the moment. Unless he or his should
become a victim. He shuddered at the thought. Today's horror was too much for
sanity.
His father had been a professional soldier. He had been a peacetime
soldier until the Venezuelan Crisis, when he and ten thousand others had
parachuted in to help a presidente and his cronies escape their thoroughly
justified slaughter. He hadn't come back, and Bernie had seen the effects of
the pain of his loss on his mother. She had lived only five years more.
There had been Bernie's own pain too. He had learned to handle it, yes. He
had survived. But every time he encountered atrocities like today's, he felt
it anew.
Someone had enticed a young black girl into a newly grown house in the
suburb of Greenacres. There he had taped her mouth shut and put tourniquets on
both her arms. He had removed the arms, just below the elbows, with an axe. He
had raped her, fore and aft, with the amputated limbs. And finally, he had
removed the tourniquets and left her to bleed to death. She had.
Bernie had heard of such things. There were people who were turned on by
amputees. There were even people who were turned on by being amputees--to the
extent that they would try to persuade surgeons to remove a leg, a foot, "At
least a finger, please!" But this?
Her name had been Jasmine. Jasmine Willison. An old family name, her
mother had said, again and again in those moments when she could talk half
sensibly. Her grandmother's name, as Bernie's had been his grandfather's. She
had been pretty, a good student, going steady, thinking of college. And some
monster...Bernie couldn't help it. It was unprofessional, he knew. But the
bastard was a monster. He was even worse a monster because he had left no
clues. No fingerprints. Not even any semen.
What other horrors were happening below him even now? He watched the
concrete cityscape as it wheeled across his gaze. He stared at the greener
suburbs, and the green, crisscross strips of the airport, with the big birds,
big enough to dwarf his Hawk, landing and taking off in the distance.
His mouth began to water, his throat to tighten. He sniffed, suddenly
aware of the rankness of his sweat. He needed, he thought, a shower. Then he
opened the small port in the door beside him, knowing for the first time what
it was there for, glad that it was there, leaned, and vomited into space.
He always did that. Whenever the world turned especially nasty, whenever
he could stomach it no longer, he puked his guts out. But he had never done it
before while in the air.
The call came while he was rinsing his mouth from the thermos he always
carried with him:
"CODE NINER NINER. ALL OFFICERS TO REAGAN EXPRESSWAY, MILE THREE EIGHT.
REPEAT: CODE NINER NINER. ALL OFFICERS TO REAGAN EXPRESSWAY, MILE THREE EIGHT,
MILE THREE EIGHT."
Pausing only long enough to spit and close the port, he turned off the
autopilot, seized the control yoke, and kicked the Hawk into a power dive
toward Mile 38 on the old Reagan Expressway. Code 99 was a rare one. It meant
a military or paramilitary attack. In this country, this age of the world, it
had to be terrorists.
His destination was not far away. As his Hawk cupped its wings to slow its
dive, he saw two other Hawks arriving from nearer the city, diving like his
own, converging on a scene of chaos. Traffic was backed up in both directions,
six lanes of pavement covered with automobiles, Tortoises, Roachsters,
Hoppers, and other Buggies. Only the zone immediately surrounding the Sparrow
airliner was clear of vehicles, and the reason was obvious: The bare pavement
was coated with blood and other body fluids and littered with the scraps of
the Sparrow's meal.
Bernie was not surprised to see the logo on the Sparrow's side. The
Palestinians--along with the Iranian Shi'ites, Lebanese Christians and
Moslems, Irish Nationalists, Afrikaaners, and a hundred other factions--had
long since broadened their battles to encompass all the world.
The three arriving Hawks began their siren calls together. The ululating
rising-falling screams were as unlike a natural hawk's screech as they could
be, for the gengineers had labored hard to mimic the sound of traditional
police cars. They had succeeded, and now, as the three Hawks swept, screaming,
into a tight circle above the carnage, the Sparrow stopped its feeding and
lowered itself on its legs. Then it cocked its head, half spread its wings,
and, beak agape, lunged at its threateners.
But the Hawks were still too high aloft. Bernie eyed his fellows. One--he
recognized Connie Skoglund--held a microphone and was gesturing. When Bernie
waved his acquiescence, the other's voice boomed out of the police radio:
"YOU ARE UNDER ARREST! TAKE OFF IMMEDIATELY AND FOLLOW US. YOU ARE UNDER
ARREST! COME QUIETLY, OR WE WILL BE FORCED TO STOOP!"
Bernie wished the rapist he had sought earlier were beneath him now. Hawks
had replaced helicopters for most police purposes because their built-in
weaponry, by its nature--beaks and talons as sharp as scythe blades, and
larger--had more deterrent effect on evildoers than machine guns or rockets.
The Hawks were also quite effective at catching those who fled the scenes of
their crimes.
The Sparrow--or its crew--ignored the threat. It sidled a few steps down
the road, and its beak dipped once more into the gridlocked traffic. Years
ago, Bernie reflected, that Sparrow and its crew and passengers would have
been safe. Once terrorists had routinely taken hostages as guarantees of their
own safety. But those days were gone. The world could not afford them.
Governments had accepted that the only way to handle terrorists was to destroy
them promptly--hostages, if necessary, and all--in hope of convincing other
terrorists, and would-be terrorists, that they had nothing to gain by their
actions. Sadly, some terrorists continued to believe that publicity was enough
of a reward. It had been proposed that government bar the press from covering
terrorist attacks, but such proposals had never been implemented. If they had,
they would not have worked. No government could ever muzzle the press for
long.
The Hawks folded their wings and dived. The Sparrow sidestepped and its
engines roared, their exhaust sweeping a number of Buggies across the pavement
behind it, tumbling into one another and the ditch. To Bernie, one tiny detail
stood out: A Roachster's antennae crumpling in the gust of hot exhaust; he
could almost smell the scorching chitin.
摘要：

          ChapterOne         FIVE-YEAR-OLDANDYGILMAN,towheadedandgap-toothed,waskneelingonachairbythekitchenwindow.HalfadozenplasticWarbirdswerescatteredonthefloorbeneathhim.Withthetipofonefinger,hewaswritinghisnameinthelargesmudgehisnosehadleftontheglass.Suddenlyhestiffenedandpointedbeyondthepane."...

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