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Despair trickles into Cowboy's veins. That's the end, then, all that he and
the Dodger fought for. Abolished with a swipe of the Orbital pen.
"You've got warning now," the voice says. "You can make your preparations."
"I don't see myself as a long-distance trucker. I've been an outlaw too long."
"You're rich. You'll think of something. Look, the U.S. won't be balkanized
anymore. You can take credit for that. Things are going to be a lot easier in
the Northeast."
We weren't running the Line, Cowboy thinks, for the Northeast. Or for the
money. That was what Arkady and the thirdmen never understood, always thinking
we could be bought, that we would respond to economic pressure. And that's
what the Orbitals don't understand, what their crystal world models can't
figure. That we'd have run the Alley for nothing. Because it was a way to be
free.
"Cowboy?" The voice wavers for a moment. "You did good, you know. We all did."
"I know." How long did he expect it to last? Cowboy wonders. Perhaps not even
this long.
He had always thought it would end in some Midwest cornfield, the government
choppers coming in waves, pouring rockets down, breaking through the Chobham,
the panzer coming apart piece by piece.
Or in some moonless supersonic sky where the laws waited to pounce, their
radars reaching out to touch him with radiant fingertips... He hadn't expected
this, to be informed of his obsolescence in a recovery bed on some sweaty
Nevada dude ranch. That all he had done, the legend he had built, was only to
put him out of business.
He laughs. A retired panzerboy, he thinks. An absurdity.
Amusement trickles through him. There is a lightness in his limbs, as if
gravity has eased. He thinks of the world curving away below him, dark behind
him flecked with stars, the limb of twilight below, the land before the canopy
burning green and brown in the light of the sun...the boundaries that
encompassed the Alley gone, gone along with the armored borders of his life,
the zones with their internal customs inspectors, their armed forces and
restricted areas, the ever-narrowing tunnel down which he was hurled at the
speed of light toward whatever violent climax awaited him at the end. The
legend that he had embraced, because he had never been able to embrace life.
He's free, he realizes. And he's got friends in high places.
He figures another chapter in the legend's going to start right about now.
Cowboy feels nerve warmth flaring in his limbs, a warning signal. He thinks he
knows what's going to happen. He reaches across Sarah, unspools a stud from
the phone, plugs it into his temple. "Reno," he says, talking into the
wire-thin mic fixed on the stud. "Stay on the line. I
want you to hear this bastard."
"Whatever you say, Cowboy."
"I've got a few other things I want you to do," he says. Reno listens quietly
as Cowboy tells him. He can feel Sarah shift in surprise as he leans across
her.
"Yeah, Cowboy," Reno says. "I see your point."
"Cowboy?" Sarah says. "What file are you talking about? Do I-"
"I'll tell you later," Cowboy says.
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Roon's voice, when it comes, makes his hackles rise. Sarah grows tense beside
him. He remembers cold alloy corridors, images of children floating in
darkness, hologrammed ceilings glowing with Orbital settlements reflecting
stellar light. A cold smile that smelled of corpses.
"Cowboy. Sarah. You are to be congratulated. The plan was a great success. It
was blessed, and so are you."
"Thanks," Cowboy says. He takes a hearty drink of whiskey, grimaces as the
fire goes down his throat. Feeling his heart pounding in his chest, a cold
sweat rising on his forehead. A deep sickness in his gut, anticipation...
"Sarah," Roon says, "I want you to come into the sky with me." The voice is
like a silken icicle caress. "I want someone to head my security team. I can't
trust Couceiro's people. "
Cowboy watches the scars whiten on Sarah's face, tautening under her cynical
smile. "You
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