Read The Corporation Wars: Dissidence for Free Online Page A

stopping here and there to let passengers off, in singles and couple and clumps, at hillside farms and huddled settlements. The passengers strolled or skipped away, lugging or swinging their bales. Carlos wondered what the locals brought in from the spaceport, and what they delivered to it in exchange. He presumed the trade made sense. Ignoring the arrivals, robots more agile and autonomous than any he’d seen before toiled amid shacks and scrubby trees.
    Slowly the crush eased. A shoreline settlement that looked like a resort came into view far below, in a cliff-cupped cove, all black beaches and white roofs and colour-striped umbrellas. Carlos flinched at the sudden vivid memory of a childhood holiday in Lanzarote. The slow, steady boom of breakers became louder and more noticeable until it became background.
    The bus rolled along a raised beach or terminal moraine on a flat road with the occasional slant-roofed chalet a little way off it. It stopped at the unpaved access paths of two of these, letting people off. Then it took a sharp turn and gradient down to the main drag. By the time the vehicle halted beside a garish arcade overlooking the beach, all the other passengers had left.
    “Terminus,” said the vehicle.
    Carlos stood up and heaved his bag to his shoulder and stepped out on to hot tarmac. The colours were still wrong.
    “Thank you,” said the vehicle. “Have a good day.”
    So at least it spoke English, even if the passengers didn’t.
    “Thank you,” replied Carlos, unthinking, then shook his head as the vehicle rolled away towards a distant shabby low building that needed no signage to have “depot” written all over it.
    The arcade smelled of ocean and ice cream and candyfloss and grilling meat. The signs were in English, and generic: Amusements, Café, Bar, Refreshments, Meat and Fish, Swimwear. Nobody was nearby, though figures moved in the distance, where the seafront arcade gave way to spread-out, low-built housing on the slope. Carlos cocked an ear to the ding of games and the roar of screens, and the occasional raised voice or loud laugh. No kids in evidence, which puzzled him. Maybe the place was off season, or in decline. A ghost resort.
    Black sand drifted on the street, silting up where the roadway met the pavement. Overhead, large feathered avians coloured like gulls, grey above and white beneath, cried and wheeled. Their wings had a disturbing suggestion of elongated finger bones, like those of bats or pterosaurs. The sun burned hot and hard on Carlos’s buzz-cut scalp. He stepped into the shade of a shopfront’s faded awning and put down the kitbag. In the shade everything was dark for a moment.
    A woman’s warm voice came from behind his shoulder: “Hello, Carlos.”
    He turned. The woman who stood there giving him a welcoming smile was his type to the millimetre, which struck him as both delightful and suspect. Young and tall and slim, hips and breasts shown off by tight jeans and close-fitted fancy blouse, pink with white collar and cuffs. Dark reddish hair cut short, framing her face. Black eyebrows, high cheekbones, quizzical smile. Mediterranean complexion, but not weather-worn like the people on the bus. Pretty in a gamine kind of way. White-trash-touristy designer handbag on a thin strap from her shoulder.
    She held out her hand. “Nicole Pascal.”
    Her accent seemed to go with the name.
    “Carlos, that’s me,” he said, returning her firm handshake.
    She looked him up and down.
    “Do you have any other name?”
    “Yes, it’s—” He had that tip of the tongue feeling. Shook his head. “Sorry. Maybe it’ll come back. ‘Carlos’ was a
nom de guerre
, but—”
    “The
guerre
went on longer than expected?”
    He had to laugh. “Something like that.”
    Her face was as if a shadow had fallen on it. “Yes. Well. That, indeed.”
    “Are you going to tell me what’s going on?”
    “Of course.” Her smile returned. “Let’s do lunch. Somewhere quiet. Lots to