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"Hope that little incident doesn't put you off Stationers," she said. "What
say I take you to dinner, to make up for my fellow citizens' bad manners?"
Was this some sort of proposition, a ploy to get him alone and helpless? He
edged farther from her, as she paced softly beside him like a predatory cat.
"I I'm not ungrateful," he stammered, his voice rising in pitch, "but, uh, I
have a stomach ache," quite true, "thank you anyway," there was a lift tube to
the next level, the one his hostel was on, "good-bye!"
He bolted for the tube, leaped in. Reaching upward did nothing to speed his
ascent. His last shreds of dignity kept him from flapping his arms. He offered
her a strained smile through the crystal sides of the tube as her level fell
away in dreamy slowness, distorted, foreshortened, blinked out.
He nipped out of the tube at his exit and darted behind a sort of free-form
sculpture with plants nearby in the mallway. He peered through the leaves. She
did not chase him. He unwound eventually, slumping on a bench for a long, numb
time. Safe at last.
He heaved a sigh and got to his feet, and dragged off up the mall. His little
cubicle seemed newly attractive. Something very bland to eat from the room
service console, a shower, and bed. No more exploratory adventures. Tomorrow
he would get right to business. Gather his data, choose the supplier, and ship
out on the first available transport . . .
A man dressed in some planetary fashion of dull neutrality, plain gray tunic
and trousers, approached Ethan on the esplanade, smiling. "Dr. Urquhart?" He
grasped Ethan's arm.
Ethan smiled back in uncertain courtesy. Then stiffened, his mouth opening to
cry indignant protest as the hypospray prickled his arm. A heartbeat, and his
mouth slackened, the cry unspent. The man guided him gently toward a bubble
car in the tubeway.
Ethan's feet felt vague, like balloons. He hoped the man wouldn't let go, lest
he bob helplessly up to the ceiling and hang upside down with things falling
out of his pockets on the passersby. The mirrored canopy of the bubble car
closed over his unfocused gaze like a nictitating membrane.
Chapter Four
Ethan came to awareness in a hostel room much larger and more luxurious than
his own. His reason flowed with slow clarity, like honey. The rest of him
floated in a sweet, languid euphoria. Distantly, under his heart, or down in
his throat, something whined and cried and scratched frantically like an
animal locked in a cellar, but there was no chance of its getting out. His
viscous logic noted indifferently that he was bound tightly to a hard plastic
chair, and certain muscles in his back and arms and legs burned painfully. So
what.
Far more intriguing was the man emerging from the bathroom, rubbing his damp
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reddened face vigorously with a towel. Gray eyes like granite chips,
hard-bodied, average height, much like the fellow who'd picked Ethan off the
mall and who even now sat on a nearby float chair, watching his prisoner
closely.
Ethan's kidnapper was of so ordinary an appearance Ethan could hardly keep him
before his mind even when he was looking directly at him. But Ethan had the
oddest insight, like X-ray vision, that his bones contained not marrow but ice
stone-hard as that outside the Station. Ethan wondered how he manufactured red
blood cells with this peculiar medical condition. Maybe his veins ran liquid
nitrogen. They were both utterly charming, and Ethan wanted to kiss them.
"Is he under, Captain?" asked the man with the towel.
"Yes, Colonel Millisor," replied the other. "A full dose."
The man with the towel grunted and flung it on the bed, next to the contents
of Ethan's pockets, and all his clothes, arrayed there. Ethan noticed his own
nakedness for the first time. There were a few Kline Station tokens, a comb,
an empty raisin wrapper, his map module, his credit chit for his Betan funds
for purchasing the new cultures the creature under his heart howled, unheard,
at that sight. His captor poked among the spoils. "This stuff scan clean?"
"Ha. Almost," said the cold captain. "Take a look at this." He picked up
Ethan's map module, cracked open its back, and fixed an electron viewer over
its microscopic circuit board. "We shook him down in the loading zone. See
that little black dot? It was caused by a bead of acid in a polarized lipid
membrane. When my scanner beam crossed it, it depolarized and dissolved, and
burned out whatever had been there. Tracer for sure, probably an audio
recorder as well. Very neat, tucked right in the standard map circuitry, which
incidentally masked the bug's electronic noise with its own. He's an agent,
all right."
"Were you able to trace the link back to its home base?"
The captain shook his head. "No, unfortunately. To find it was to destroy it.
But we blinded them. They don't know where he is now."
"And who is 'they'? Terrence Cee?"
"We can hope."
The leader, the one Ethan's kidnapper had named Colonel Millisor, grunted
again, and approached Ethan to stare into his eyes. "What's your name?"
"Ethan," said Ethan sunnily. "What's yours?"
Millisor ignored this open invitation to sociability. "Your full name. And
your rank."
This struck an old chord, and Ethan barked smartly, "Master Sergeant Ethan
CJB-8 Urquhart, Blue Regiment Medical Corps, U-221-767, sir!" He blinked at
his interrogator, who had drawn back in startlement. "Retired," he added after
a moment.
"Aren't you a doctor?"
"Oh, yes," said Ethan proudly. "Where does it hurt?"
"I hate fast-penta," growled Millisor to his colleague.
The captain smiled coldly. "Yes, but at least you can be sure they're not
holding anything back."
Millisor sighed, lips compressed, and turned to Ethan again. "Are you here to
meet Terrence Cee?"
Ethan stared back, confused. See Terrence? The only Terrence he knew was one
of the Rep Center techs. "They didn't send him," he explained.
"Who didn't send him?" Millisor asked sharply, all attention.
"The Council." [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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