“Push!” yelled the entire Whiplash team, even General Elliott.

“Argggh!” screamed the woman, falling back.

“Oh, God,” said Powder.

“Next one, everybody,” said Liu.

The woman bolted upright and screamed again.

“Push!”

“Argh!”

“Push!”

“Wahhhhhh!” cried a new voice, never before heard in the world.

“Kick ass!” shouted Danny.

“About fuckin’ time,” said Powder, who made sure no one was looking as he wiped the tear from his cheek.

AS WORD SPREAD ABOUT WHAT WAS HAPPENING ON THE

slope, most of the others went down to try and help out.

Zen and one of the CCTs ended up manning the surveillance post. Zen sat in his chair, bundled against the cold in a blanket as well as a parka. Cold and fatigue curled around his head, stinging his eyes, twisting the noises of 156

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the night. His mind felt as if it had found steps inside his skull and climbed to the top of a rickety stairway, wedging itself into an attic cubbyhole and peering down a long hallway at his eyes. At times he felt the hollowness he associated with leaving Theta during the ANTARES mind experiments; he wanted to avoid that sensation, that memory, at all costs, and when he felt it slipping over him, he grabbed the wheels of his chair, welcoming the shock of cold on his bare fingers.

ANTARES had teased him with the idea that he might walk again, that he might become “normal” once more. It was a false hope, a lie induced by the drugs that made ANTARES work. But it was impossible to completely banish the hope.

The figures on the screen began to jump up and down and cheer—obviously the baby had been born. The CCT

turned from the screens and gave Zen a thumbs up. Zen nodded back, trying to smile as well, but he could tell from the airman’s reaction that he hadn’t quite pulled it off.

“A boy!” said Jennifer Gleason when she returned from the slope a few minutes later. She was the vanguard of the slow-moving caravan bringing mother and child to a heated tent where they would be sheltered for what remained of the night. “A boy!”

Zen tried to sound enthusiastic. “It looked wild.”

“It was. She just pushed him right out. Peshew.”

The scientist made a sound something like a hockey puck whipping into a net.

“Pretty cool,” said Zen.

He wheeled himself around to the cement area to watch the group surrounding the mother’s stretcher. Breanna, flanked by Danny Freah and one of the Whiplash soldiers, carried the baby. She smiled at Zen as she passed but kept walking, part of an unstoppable flow.

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“Quite a show, Jeff, quite a show,” said Brad Elliott, stopping. The general looked about as proud as a grand-father. “A hell of a thing—this is why we’re here, you know. To save lives,” added the general. “This is it—this is what I wish we could communicate to people. This is what it’s all about. People don’t understand. You know, American SF forces stopped a massacre of Kurds in northern Iraq after the Gulf War, not far from here.”

At Dreamland, Brad Elliott had given several pep talks on some of the projects they were working on; never had Zen seen him quite so enthusiastic.

“Things like this happened all the time,” continued the general. “Our planes dropped tons of food, our medics saved hundred of lives a week. We saved people from Saddam—why doesn’t the media report that? We should have had a film crew here. This is the sort of story people should see.”

“I agree,” said Zen, not sure what else to say.

Elliott put his hands on his hips. “We’ll get a helicopter in here in the morning, help this kid. Maybe we can get him a college fund going. Sergeant Habib says these people are Turkish Kurds. Hard life. This is what we’re about. We have to get the story out.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Make the place safe for that kid. That’s what we have to do.”

Zen watched Elliott practically bound away.

“A boy!” said Breanna, slipping her arms around him from behind. She snuggled next to his neck and kissed him. “God, you’re cold,” she said.

“Hey,” he said.

They kissed again.

“You should have seen it, Jeff. Sergeant Liu—God, he is awesome.”

“I couldn’t get down.”

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She described the birth, the woman pushing, everyone shouting, the tip of the baby’s behind appearing, once, twice, and then a rush of baby and fluid.

“You ought to sleep,” said Zen when she finally finished.

“I’ll sleep,” she said.

“You haven’t, and you have a mission in just a few hours now.”

“I slept on the way over,” she told him. “Chris and I traded off. Don’t worry about me, Jeff.” She bent down and gave him a quick peck on the cheek, then started back toward the tent where they had installed mother and child. “Warm up the bed. I’ll be along.”

“Yeah,” was all he could think to say.

Dreamland

1700

“LET ME JUST BLUE-SKY THIS FOR A MOMENT, BECAUSE THE

implications truly are outrageous.”

Dog watched as Jack Firenzi danced at the front of the small conference room off the hall from Dreamland Propulsion Research Suite B, one of the subbasement research facilities in what was informally called the Red Building. The frenetic scientist had come to Dreamland as an expert on propulsion but now headed research into the hydrogen-activated wing platform, or “Hydro” as he referred to it. His audience consisted of two NASA officials, a senior member of the House Armed Services Committee, and an undersec-retary of Defense, all of whom had started out somewhat bewildered by the sartorially challenged scientist, yet now were focusing not on his Yankee hat, sneakers, or three-piece suit, but his rapid-fire praise of inflatable wings.

“Imagine an aircraft that can travel at Mach 6, yet with RAZOR’S EDGE

159

the turning radius of an F/A-18,” continued Firenzi. Dog had heard the presentation before, so he knew that Firenzi would now talk about the XB-5 Unmanned Bomber Project, where the Hydro technology could increase the aerodynamics of the large airframe. Today the scientist’s optimism knew no bounds—he took off his hat and began using it to describe additional applications, including microsensor craft scheduled to begin testing in the next phase of the project and an improved U/MF on the drawing board. Under other circumstances, Dog might have watched the VIPs to make sure their reactions remained bemused awe at the eccentric scientist who backed up his enthusiasm with a blackboard’s worth of equations. But Dog was preoccupied with the Whiplash mission. The news from Iraq was relatively good—twelve hours of air strike sorties that hit about eighty-five percent of their targets, with no new American losses.

Brad Elliott’s Razor theory seemed to be gaining adherents—and yet, the very fact that no planes had been shot down in the past few hours weighed against it. The Iraqis were clearly using new tactics, and also seemed to have many more missiles, or at least launchers, than anyone thought. One of the F-15s had been photographed by a U-2, and the damage appeared consistent with missile fire. But that didn’t rule out a laser acting on the others.

Everyone was scrambling for intelligence.

“You had mentioned commercial applications?” asked one of the congressmen, Garrett Tyler.

“Oh, yes,” said Firenzi. “One possibility is to replace or augment variable geometry. The trapezoid wings used on the Dreamland MC-17 demonstrator—see, that’s actually a perfect example of the benefits here. Because (a), that technology—basically a folding slat, let’s face it—is very expensive and prone to wear and tear, and (b), it’s always there, on the wing, in some manner, and 160

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