Source: Coming Home In Fire

To the already overloaded orbital defenses, it looks like one more piece of the rain of debris - ragged, cold, tumbling - as it proceeds on a long but rapid trajectory into the upper atmosphere. But it is too far for a reasonable visual, so it passes, an unremarked meteor, wrapped in plasma.

If the instruments had continued to watch, they would have seen the plasma trail dissipate at an unusually high altitude as the vehicle decelerates into a merely supersonic flight regime.

The vehicle, a blunt delta, now shifting in color from black paler sky, maintains a slight plasma sheath until it drops below Mach 3. It extrudes narrow wings as it plummets toward the ocean. A few hundred feet above the surface, the wings widen, and the craft arcs into a horizontal trajectory, heading toward an island that lies far over the horizon, hidden in a night that itself is distant.

Three hours later, the sun has slipped below the horizon behind it in a nest of flaming clouds. The vehicle decelerates and falls to a level just above wrinkled leaden wavetops. Ahead, the clouds thicken with a sudden distant dart of lightning nearly hidden amidst a curtain of rain.

In minutes, the vehicle is enveloped in the turbulence and rain. The pilot sighs and leans into the controls, turning down the lights a little. He smiles at the challenge while the rain hammers soundlessly on the skin and the window sensors.

At the appropriate moment, he reducts the engines and pogos over the treeline of the island to an unsteady hover in the driving rain. "Tell the passenger to get ready."

There is an estate beyond the trees, lights like home in the rain. The pilot nestles his charge onto the lawn, deploying broad landing pads to disperse the weight, and ducting the engines mostly to the side to bear some of the load. The rain sheets and the vehicle rocks slightly, stabilized by the pads.

Light spills down the gangway as the passenger emerges, clad and hooded against the weather. The figure hurries away across the lawn, where it encounteres another. The two old men huddle together against the wind and the rain, trading a handshake and a smile. "Thanks for everything," Tanneau offers. "No error, twin," the other replies, trying to be heard over the weather and the engines, "I wonder what it will be like to see another face in the mirror, for a change... I've left the status and recording - I'll be on transciever if you need me. Keep me posted, OK?" Tanneau smiles. "That's fine." The spray dampens his face with a sudden gust. "Go home, enjoy your wonderful world and your old face. I'll do my part now." The departing impostor squeezes Tanneau's arm "You're not going to like it, Marcel, it's getting bad here. Be careful. Stay out of trouble, OK? Hannah wants you over for dinner - a half decade from now, I suppose - hear me?" Tanneau smiles fondly. "I'll do what I can, my friend."

They separate, and hurry to their destinations. In a moment, the gangway is closed, the light is gone, and the engines roar over the thunder as the vehicle rises and pivots into the face of the storm. Tanneau watches, the rain runneling his face like tears, as it rises into the snarling wind, flying swiftly over the trees and out of sight.

By the time Tanneau leans back from the paperwork on the desk, and the much more secret panel of Promethean manufacture, the storm is rumbling in the distance, and the sun is only an hour from rising above it.

It is much worse than he had thought.

But he knows his job, and after a brief check of the time zone for Goslin, he begins to place some calls.

The Secretary had been puzzled but welcoming, and in his tone of relief, Marcel knew how bad things truly had become.

The house rumbles with the approach of the heavy lift jet. He stands by the entrance, at the top of the red sandstone steps, and it is as if he has gone back in time, to when Cocteau seemed safe, and everything desired was attainable - until the aircraft rises above the ragged line of barrier trees, shattering the illusion with the trembling of the door behind him. Then, for a moment, he is afraid of this shape that lowers itself to the broad lawn, searing the grasses with its exhaust. Perched high above him, pilots he cannot see watch him through the windows at the front of the fuselage. On the side of the aircraft, a door opens into a stair. As he crosses uncertainly toward it, suitcases held tightly, he notices the flaws in the paint and the first stains of corrosion. The symbol of the Leadership Council, however, is bright and newly painted.

He pauses at the door, and an airman leans out to take his bag. The youth is clear faced and innocent, and meets his eyes with something that Marcel interprets as hope. "Welcome aboard, sir! We're glad to have you. Step up carefully, please."

From his window seat, surrounded by the slightly musty luxury of the Council, he watches his island drift slowly away below, until finally it is behind him.

Tanneau stops beneath the huge colonnade of the Protectorate Central Office in Goslin. Drifts of snow nestle away from the sun behind the pillars, but it is a crisp, clear day. A day, he grumbles silently, when secrets should be exposed, but won't be. He strides angrily to the door, his face rigid and emotionless as always.

The hall echoes with his footsteps, empty. The columns rise into dimness and he notes the faint suggestions of dirtiness on the floor between the columns, where occasional scraps of paper have collected like the snow, without any attention from the janitors. On Prometheus, he muses, the ubiquitous cleaning bugs would have long since dealt with the hints of squalor. Things are different here. Like the monumental statues that look down on the hall from itsend - statues to commemorate bureaucrats and regulators.

He remembers a walk through a garden by the sculptor Reginnis. Statues of humans and non-humans, each portrayed at their natural size, standing and sitting, all shownwith a characteristic that among their species suggests strength, courage, and pride. Reginnis had walked with him, sipping from a thin glass tube. "Who are they?" Tanneau had asked. Reginnis, a whiplash thin humanoid with patterned skin and side slung eyes had made an expansive gesture. "They are businesspeople. Inventors. Scientists. Philosophers. I make them like this so that we can sit with them, and see that they are like us, and that we can live up to them. Sometimes I sit with them, and I imagine I am having a conversation with them. Sometimes I call up one of their texts, even when I don't understand it. It makes me feel as if I am talking with them on a quiet afternoon. Then I get up and go back to the studio, refreshed."

He realizes that he has stopped in the hall. He lowers his head and pushes onward, as if against a strong wind.

Past the bland giants, he pushes through tall heavy glass doors into a vast room filled with desks, workers, and the sounds of a busy office. Even after all these years, those sounds - the sounds of voices, the soft tones of comm connects, the tapping of fingers on keyboards - has the power to bring him back to those days when they were the sounds he heard on arrival at his business. It makes him stand a little taller, braced by the sensations of efficiency.

Then he remembers how many years have passed, and that this is the heart of what had destroyed his pride for him for so long. And that nothing here had changed in all the years since that time.

His face tightens again, and the feelings are gone. He brushes at a slightly dulled area on the cuff of his suit, and then finally reacts to the functionary seated beside the door.

"Hey, can you hear me, or what?" she asks.

He smiles, a faraway look in his eyes. His contacts begin to come alive at the margins with tiny displays from the now deployed nanospies.

"Yes," he replies. "I can."

She seems puzzled. "What do you want? This is a restricted area."

He holds out his identification. "I'm here to see Laren Correta."

"High Citizen Correta is in a planning meeting."

Tanneau smiles sourly. "So what else is new?" He points across the room at a walled corner with frosted glass. "Over there?" He starts forward without permission, hardly listening as her protests receed behind him.

He peers through the door at the well-dressed men and women sitting around the glossy stone table. He opens the door and steps through. Every head looks up in shock.

"So, Laren, still here planning the aftermath of the capitalist order?" His voice is faintly mocking, but with a friendly undercurrent.

"Tanneau? Marcel Tanneau - after all these years," the thin white haired man at the head of the table half stands and finally completes the motion. He is not tall. He takes in the table with a motion of his head, and the others relax. Correta steps around the desk and they clasp forearms in greeting. Then Correta looks over Tanneau's shoulder at the functionary who had followed. "It's all right, Briannon." He looks back at Tanneau. "I knew you'd be here, but not so soon. The military wasn't quite sure how long it would take to get you here. Come and meet the others... they're not old timers like us. This is Jarkos Mileusan, who runs Logistics and Transportation; Larisa Emanuelle has been handling Steel and Metals for the last few years..." Tanneau nods to Emanuelle's stony look. Correta continues, "Chisar Michalek of Agriculture, and Dann Sperry of Fuels. Listen folks, why don't we continue this later? I need to put Marcel in the picture."

The park is nearly deserted, despite the high sun and the warmth. A gaggle of tricycles swings around the circle as they walk the path between the bare stalks.

"No cars, Christophe?"

"Hmm? Oh, no. Not any more. We had to cut back on those a couple of years ago, except for high-level personnel. But we made the buses run better. More often. Bit of a surprise,eh? But it's really more efficient."

Tanneau keeps a neutral expression. "I'm sure it is."

Correta looks unobtrusively around. "You know, Marcel, I imagine this is a place where it's safer to discuss some issues than my office. But I can't be sure of that. Everyone is under scrutiny. Always. It's part of the responsibility, you know?"

Tanneau sighs."I understand."

Correta peers up at him from beneath bushy white eyebrows, and his teeth are bared in a feral smile. "That's good, Marcel. Because there are things you need to know."

"No doubt. It's been years, after all." He casts his eyes around the walkways, but no one disturbs the emptiness. His personal detection shell is also quiescent, though tiny glitters of activity from the nanospies in the office still occur at the edges of his vision.

"Marcel, I was surprised you asked to come back, but then I never understood why you retired. You had such a talent for getting the better ones to work for us. Nowadays... somehow the stipend is more desirable."

"So I hear," he replies. "That's what made me think you might need me."

"Well, you were right. Couldn't be more right. Listen, the production numbers in steel alone are down twenty percent since last year. They're only fifty percent of what they were in your day." His breath is harsh. "There are yards and fields of scrap - or what might as well be scrap - out there. The quotas being what they are, we probably don't even have to be mining. But we can't get the people to turn any of this into what we need. And I've got the Patrol Commission on my neck. They need weapons and vehicles to deal with the unrest."

"Shall I assume that's what you want me working on?"

Correta pauses and looks around. "Larisa's a novice. A pol - relative of one of the Comissariat members. I have to keep her on, but she doesn't know anything about metals. Not like you, Marcel. Not like you. I can't get rid of her, but I can get her working for you on the basis of your seniority. Does that do it for you?"

Tanneau shrugs, eyes narrow. "What have I got to work with?"

Correta sighs. "Not as much as you might need. I'm trying to get the Legal Bureau to get me a regulation that makes failure to produce a prison camp offense, but they're still a little skittish what with the unrest and all. Of course, with the Patrol Commission being as eager as they are, you probably could get some unofficial assistance from their people."

Tanneau looks away. It is only this which allows him to continue to walk evenly. What have I done? he wonders.

"I see. How good are the statistics?"

"Not good." Correta licks his thin lips. "I'm afraid we don't have a very good idea of the real state of the economy. Somehow, no matter what we do, the factory heads are falsifying the statistics and are cheating to make the quotas. Last week, a tungsten mine in Petit-Chanal had a collapse of every section below the fifth because of a forging error in the supports. Well, no, not an error. As far as I can tell, the manager of the forge conspired with the fabricator to meet quota by diluting the mix with... well, something that didn't work well in steel, but was at hand. Logistics are terrible, and I don't even know who to blame. We're regulating more and more, and somehow things are getting worse. I can't understand it."

"I know." Tanneau pauses under the broken branches of a hydrogen tree whose seed package had months ago joined the wind. "I have some ideas, but I'm going to need access to the confidential files."

Correta's mouth splits into a wide pale smile. "Whatever you need, old friend, whatever you need. Just watch out, all right?"

Tanneau nods, eyes hooded.

The car is long, silver, and its windows are darkened. Its internal combustion engine is quiet compared to the soft roar and hissing of the steam buses that are thronging the street with the end of the shift. To Tanneau this car is like an antique, but he knows it is the best of Cocteau. A driver in military uniform waits by its opened door, eyes shaded by a visored cap.

Tanneau hands his luggage to the driver, but he is barely able to keep his self-disgust from his mouth. "Where are we going?" he asks.

"I've been told to take you to your allotment lodgings." the driver replies.

"What's your name?"

"Transport Officer Vinton Pamelon, sir!" He is a wiry young man with a dark face made even darker by a beard shadow and a thin mustache.

"Are you my permanent driver, Vinton?"

"I'm assigned to you, sir."

"Good. Well, let's toss that thing in the trunk. I'll ride up front with you."

Pamelon drives carefully and observantly, but Tanneau senses he is ill at ease with Tanneau in the front. What Tanneau realizes that Pamelon doesn't is that the rear compartment is almost always infested with Internal Security recorders and transmitters. His monitors confirm what was once a general knowledge, lighting up his contacts at a gesture sequence to indicate every item of electronics in the shell. He smiles.

"How long have you been a Transport Officer?" he asks.

"Two years now. Since I graduated."

"You live in the city?"

"Just outside. Near the base."

"Ahh. And you have a family?"

"My parents live in the city. A residential barracks."

"They're military, then?"

"No, but they are not well off. I do what I can, but it is getting harder to find permissions for single living. Not that I'm complaining, sir. It's no more than social justice, and it does help create the communal spirit."

"No doubt," Tanneau mutters, staring out the window at the passing ranks of identical buildings.