“Enough,” Alik said. His finger lined up on Javid-Lee. “You were hunting Alphonse?”

“ ’Course we fucking were. Perigine’s good. He tracked the kid and Delphine to the Lorenzo place, and that’s when it all went to shit.” Javid-Lee glared at Rayner. “Which is your fault because you’re a fucking coward. Now look where you’ve put us.”

“You?” Rayner smirked back. “Put you, pal! Me, I’m cooperating with the feds. I’m outta here.”

“Fuck you!”

“Okay, then,” Alik said. “I believe I got everything I need.” Shango opened the back door for him.

“Hey,” Rayner said. “Hey, wait! What about me?”

Alik paused. “You have my personal thanks for your cooperation.”

“No! No, that’s not the deal. You get your ass back in here and you unlock this motherfucking cage! You hear me?”

The door closed, and Alik stepped down onto the muddy ground of the Lewis County environmental processing site in upstate New York—a patch of rural ground covering six square kilometers, dominated by an impressive atmospheric cleansing plant. Five massive concrete hyperboloid air tunnels stood together in a line, each one sporting a necklace of molecular extractor filters. Three pulled carbon monoxide out of the air, while the remaining pair collected carbon dioxide. Both gases were stored in big high-pressure tanks, ready for disposal.

As reduction efforts went, the Lewis County site alone wouldn’t have much effect on the global greenhouse gas legacy that was still uncomfortably high even after a hundred years of scrubbing the excess out of Earth’s atmosphere. But there were more than five hundred similar plants dotted all over the planet, and between them they did make a difference. So much that in another hundred years the experts claimed the world would be down to pre-twentieth-century levels.

Alik could hear Javid-Lee and Rayner yelling obscenities at each other inside the Black Mariah. It was parked in line with six other equally ancient, identical vehicles.

Marley Gardner and his team were waiting in a four-by-four to one side. Alik climbed in.

“Nice job, thanks,” he told them. Alik liked working with Marley on the occasions he needed to go off book. Marley ran an efficient team and knew never to ask questions. “Your money will be in the designated accounts by morning.”

“Always a pleasure,” Marley said. His altme instructed the four-by-four, and it started driving toward the hub portal.

Behind them, the line of Black Mariahs was facing a huge metal cylinder, fifty meters long, fifteen high. Alik watched in the mirror as the big circular door at the end slowly swung open. The first Black Mariah’s autodrive carefully maneuvered it inside, followed by the second.

Direct disposal was a part of the Lewis County environmental processing site made possible by modern economics. With energy as the Sol system’s currency, everything was costed in wattdollars; and with abundant super-cheap energy delivered from the solarwells, the value of most services and material was inexpensive.