[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
yet!
What a bold stroke! I forgive you missing them. Did you know that the sister,
Sedowa, does not even exist? Her records are all very complete and very
thorough I can tell you her whole life's story but when the family is asked,
they acknowledge no such daughter?"
"I have heard. They are clever."
"I suspect, then, that the two females are probably Chow Mai and Chow Dai, on
the original list. We will update our data on them to reflect that they are
now
Janipurians. Certainly the best choice ignorant peasants, not even with very
high IQs, but they have one of those inexplicable inborn talents for locks.
Very well. The male could have been any one of them. It doesn't matter. For
all that, they have succeeded! And in the one way you did not anticipate,
Colonel. A
leak, a mole, right here in security!"
"Yes, but Deputy Chief Boil! The second in command of security here for the
past five years! How did they do it? How did they even get to such a man, let
alone corrupt him like this? The others might be switched, duplicates, but
none of it would have been possible without the aid of a known and established
official of the highest rank. They did not switch him, I will stake my life on
it! As is the case of many high officials including myself, Boil could not be
mindprinted without an elaborate code known only to the chief administrator
and Master
System. It would have killed him instantly otherwise. Also, he is a lifelong
friend of the chief of security and many others of the highest levels here and
continued to socialize with them. That was Boil!"
"Impossible. Boil was always in and out of here, often for long periods and
often alone. Who knows how long he has been setting this all up? They could
have pulled the switch at any point. How they got around the codes and the
nuances is disturbing, but it is the only possible explanation. Men like Boil
do not simply go over any more man SPF officers could! Why, to even harbor
such a thought would be to undermine the very basis by which our system of
civilization operates! No, there had to be a switch, and early on. His duties
often took him out alone before they could possibly have targeted him. They
just took a man with a flyer assuming he was high echelon and got lucky,
that's all."
"As you say," the colonel responded in a tone that indicated that he did
indeed continue to harbor such draughts. "However, I wish it on the official
record that I recommended that we substitute a duplicate for the ring, and I
Page 47
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
was overruled."
The Val sighed a very human-sounding sigh. "Colonel, what is on the record is
beside the point. You feel yourself blameless and your advice untaken and you
wish to defend your reputation and that of your men. I accept that. The fact
is, we could not substitute a false ring for the real one. It is impossible.
Please don't ask me why, but it is. Otherwise I'd have all the other rings
rounded up and locked inside Master System itself. We did think the tracker
would do the job."
"We weren't even fully set up to monitor it. Damn it, we only just put it in!
Boil stuck it on his pet falcon. We shot it down more than two hundred
kilometers east of there thinking it might be trained to transport the ring,
but
it was only the lining. That sort of trick wouldn't fool someone for ten
seconds if he could pull off a crime of this enormity in the first place.
Impostor or not, this Boil is highly competent and dangerous."
"I agree, and it is good that we must face him only here; I would not like
such a one planning future operations. From the start we have vastly
underestimated these people. Ten people with little combined space experience
break out of a maximum security prison on an asteroid and somehow get around
all the automatic defenses, commandeer, then steal a universe ship. The head
of security of the prison gives chase and vanishes with them. Months later he
appears leading the escapees. They are cornered in space by one of my
brethren, and manage to outmaneuver and vanquish him. They escape a second by
a cleverness approaching the diabolical. They manage to find and then seize a
hundred tons of murylium and the ship carrying it, and now this. It leads to
startling conclusions."
"It certainly means that these are the most extraordinary people we have come
across in centuries," the colonel agreed. "And the most dangerous."
"True, but it is more than that. It appeared at first to be a petty plot by
Earth's chief administrator. We suspect it but can not prove it, and we prefer
to keep him in place as he has a ring himself."
"Ah!"
"It is now clearly more than that. Somewhere out here, and it cannot be by
accident, all of them met a higher power, someone who saw their tremendous
genius and elaborated on Chen's plot to make it very possible and very real.
The system has met its first worthy opponent. The first one that can give us a
real challenge. We must assume that they are now fully in league with the
enemy no matter whether they did it voluntarily or not."
"I have been aware of an enemy and a war, but the SPF was never committed to
it, so I know nothing else about it."
"Nor I. It is being fought on a plane and in places where such as you and I
are useless. Clearly up to now it has been a stalemate, and the enemy is
trying to get around the stalemate using humanity. Whether this whole business
was instigated by the enemy from the start or merely co-opted as a target of
opportunity is beside the point. We are now in the war, and the enemy has
discovered a weak link in our armor. Colonel, we must have these people. Any
and all resources are at the disposal of the SPF, and all Vals have been
redirected to this task."
The colonel threw his hands in the air. "Take a look at the maps. It's been
three days now. Even assuming no ground transportation and considering the
skill of these people, I would not be shocked to mid a continental railway
system buried deep underground just for their use they could be anywhere in a
ten-thousand-square-kilometer grid from here. That begins to include some
relatively dense population areas, and they will most certainly be in disguise
and following a prescribed route."
"You forget that the two women are pregnant. Increasingly so. There is good
reason to deduce that they acted when they did because in a few weeks neither
of the Chows would have been in any condition to help."
Page 48
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
"A Janipurian woman can move quite well even when extremely pregnant. And it's
no special thing here. The average colonial world has a population of a half
to three quarters of a billion people, many much less. This one has a higher
death rate than average and the inhabitants a shorter life span and
nonetheless it has almost two billion people. About one in six Janipurian
women of child-bearing years seems to be pregnant at any given time."
The Val had not been briefed to this degree, and it startled the great hunting
machine. "Well, they are Brahmans, a very small percentage in the field. That
narrows it somewhat."
The colonel sighed again. "Sir, may we assume that none of these people were
born and raised in the Hindu faith, and none have accepted it?"
"A reasonable assumption. If the Chows are anything they're Buddhists, and we
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]