united states

New York City, May, 2038

Chapter One

Quayle heard the horsemen of the Brigades before he saw them, the iron shoes of their mounts clattering behind him as the riders slowed to cross the cobblestones of the same Central Park bridge he had just traversed. The lead horseman launched his mount into a gallop off the bridge, and Quayle leapt aside to allow the squad of a half-dozen uniformed men to gallop past. The riders' apparent quarry, a balding middle-aged man in a running suit, forged on with arms pumping, headed toward the safety of the traffic of the West Side. The lead horseman overtook him and, wheeling his horse into the man's path, shouted a command across the grassy plain that separated him from the runner: "Stay where you are, Kidman! We've got you now!"

The man swerved down a steep embankment, then reappeared on the far slope of the next grassy rise. Scrambling up to its crest, he let out a groan. He had blundered into the center of a second tightening noose of riders. He was surrounded.

Quayle moved ahead, then stepped under the cover of a towering oak's low branches.

It was always dangerous to be conspicuous at interventions, the security cameras everywhere. Even innocent observers were vulnerable to roundup, their own backgrounds subject to checks, their faces broadcast if the Brigades found their behavior even slightly suspicious. As chief publicist for the Enterprise, one of the most powerful corporations in the world, Quayle could ill afford negative notoriety.

Along nearby walkways, strollers slunk off. A foreign-looking woman in flowing black skirts and a white caftan suddenly passed him. She halted, took in the scene, and drifted back beside him, glancing at Quayle, her face uncovered for a moment.

"That poor fool," she whispered under her breath. She tightened her scarf below her eyes. "He's actually thinking of standing up to them."

"He'll be lost if he does," Quayle said. "They'll make quick work of him."

"You are police?" Her dark eyes fixed on him.

Quayle shook his head.

The woman's face was smooth, cheekbones angular, sharply defined. She appeared Arab, her accent possibly French, her age around thirty-five, although appearance-enhancers now made anyone's true age hard to gauge. She seemed an unlikely ally of the police, although ever since passage of the Emergency Decrees, foreign-looking strangers could not be ruled out as preying on their own kind; there was money to be made in such complicity.

"News reports this morning called him some sort of dangerous agitator," Quayle said.

"Sometimes the harmless-looking ones turn out to be most difficult," she said.

"So it is you who are with the police then?"

She smiled -- ironically, he guessed -- such tests of allegiances common in this climate of suspicion. " I have nothing to do with them. I offer healing services to people who are in distress--deep meditation and massage, holistic medicines, natural lotions." She nodded. "Perhaps a prosperous-looking man such as yourself would require such services? You seem familiar to me. I have seen you someplace before?"

Before he could respond, the lead horseman, a helmeted, fair-skinned youth with wire-rimmed spectacles, smiled an unnatural smile and spurred his roan forward. Jaw thrust out, he leaned forward. "Speak up, Kidman. Save yourself! You know it's useless to resist."

The fugitives lips quivered. He shook his head. "I demand to know the charge."

Onlookers ahead and behind surged forward, bypassing the ravine and moving to the grassy plain where the circle of horsemen now stood; Quayle and the woman felt themselves drawn forward with the crowd.