[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
informing the incorpo-rated sensors that something drastic is
happening. Among themselves our friends at Sunflower call it a
disruptor, though that is an entirely inappropriate name. Inappropri-ate
or not, disruptor we shall call it. He coughed and tilted his head to get
the tassel out of his eyes. Your sup-position was quite correct,
Shadow. Sunflower bought themselves some tempting loot of dubious ownership.
And you will be interested in the source. Omphalos
Insti-tute.
Tsah!
Having paused for the expected reaction, Digby went on, Yes,
indeed. Our old friends, the
Omphalites. Which brings up a point. I think none of us are happy with. the
thought of an Omphalos op walking through walls wher-ever he feels an urge to
roam. We are contracted to return the disruptor to
Sunflower, but I wouldn t be too dis-turbed if it were ... mmrn ... damaged in
the process. My source tells me the being who led the team that devel-oped the
gadget poisoned his aides, wiped the test data and specs from the lab
kephalos, and went off with the only prototype. Before he sold it to
Sunflower, he was careful to let nothing out of his head. Which is the major
source of their agitation since he was killed very shortly after turning over
the prototype and before he could dic-tate the specs. Probably Omphalos, but
not necessarily. Which is why we were hired to get their toy back to them. Me,
I m seriously pissed because they didn t bother tell ing me Omphalos was
involved. Maybe they didn t know, but I wouldn t bet on it. He tapped his
nose, nodded, and paused to let them comment if they had a mind to.
Shadith chuckled, met Autumn Rose s eyes, and said, You re a gambler, Rose.
How much would you wager that even if we do retrieve the gadget intact, it has
an ac-cident on the way to Sunflower?
There s little pleasure betting on sure things.
Digby s image cleared its throat, the small sound meant to reclaim their
attention. The inclusion of the disruptor in the theft gives strong support
to your first choice of thieves, Shadow. Which I will explain in a moment,
after I ve dealt with the other two possibilities.
The Matriarch s crew person is most unlikely. They re too paranoid to buy
stolen drugs and would be most upset by the presence of the disruptor on their
world. Some-thing that could bore silent holes in the shielding of all those
little interlocking enclaves? No way, children. And no one they took off
planet will have anything like free will.
As for the mouse who calls himself a jeweler, he has more blotches on his
record than freckles on a lass from Vallon and no evidence of any unusual
abilities beyond a fast mouth and faster fingers. He steals things
immedi-ately salable, mostly gems, and wouldn t go within light-years
of anything touching on
Omphalos.
Shadow, I knew about Sabato, of course, and have a list of his Face Companies
Page 27
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
which I thought was complete, but Mavet-Shi wasn t on it. When you get back,
I d like to know your source for this.
Hm. And a long chat about other bits of your life.
I talked to Xuyalix about the Caan Cerex. He was somewhat reluctant to chat
on the topic. Turns out Cerex is some sort of relative who had a patch of bad
luck. Got caught with smuggled goods on a
world with a low opin-ion of smugglers. Pulled a term in contract labor and
was sold offworld. His kin put together a fund and tried to re-deem him, but
the Labor Service wouldn t cooperate. I d say the ananiles are meant to buy
his contract with enough left over to get him home to Acaanal.
Woensdag is on the way to Acaanal to check with Cerex about how close you got
to the way the theft was worked, but I don t see any reason to make more
trouble for the poor schlup. He s not important enough to bother with.
I ll send a drone your way with a report on the in-terview. It should reach
you before you make Ambela.
The little one is the convincer. She s got impressive reasons for needing
that disruptor.
In the screen a planet swam against a star ground while Digby s image sank to
Thumbelina size. The turning world was mostly water with polar icecaps, two
largish continents, one with a tapering tail of islands that came close to
joining it with the third continent which was about half the size of the other
two.
A single moon drifted past in the stately gravity dance of satellites.
Icon Digby set fingertip to fingertip, tilted his head so the fez tassel
brushed along his jaw. What the original state of Ambela was no one
knows, but sometime after it developed rudimentary flora and maybe
fauna, the folk generically called Impix arrived even they don t know where
they came from.
They settled in and mauled the world in the usual way, had some wars, lost
hold on the tech that brought them there, began slowly building it back.
They d reached steam power and rudimentary electrical services,
rediscovered radio, when the Ptak arrived as part of the outpouring when the
Ptakkan Empire broke up. Ptaks are not a bloody lot, but they have their
peculiar ways. They don t like being overlooked by strangers or having
outsiders controlling any of their space. As an aside, that s one of the
reasons their neat little empire broke up too many non-Ptakkan species kept
resolutely away from any touch of power.
With that in mind, they uprooted every Impix they could catch, hauled them to
the continent they called Impixol, and set up a satellite-controlled force
field around the continent to make sure none of the
Impix got loose to bother them. The Digby icon tapped finger against finger.
Unlike the Impix, they kept contact with the outside, and with a low
birthrate and the resources of a basically untapped world behind them,
particularly the drajjul opals, they were a comfortable if not a wealthy
so-ciety for their first millennium on-planet. When the drajjul mines began to [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
zanotowane.pl doc.pisz.pl pdf.pisz.pl aikidobyd.xlx.pl
informing the incorpo-rated sensors that something drastic is
happening. Among themselves our friends at Sunflower call it a
disruptor, though that is an entirely inappropriate name. Inappropri-ate
or not, disruptor we shall call it. He coughed and tilted his head to get
the tassel out of his eyes. Your sup-position was quite correct,
Shadow. Sunflower bought themselves some tempting loot of dubious ownership.
And you will be interested in the source. Omphalos
Insti-tute.
Tsah!
Having paused for the expected reaction, Digby went on, Yes,
indeed. Our old friends, the
Omphalites. Which brings up a point. I think none of us are happy with. the
thought of an Omphalos op walking through walls wher-ever he feels an urge to
roam. We are contracted to return the disruptor to
Sunflower, but I wouldn t be too dis-turbed if it were ... mmrn ... damaged in
the process. My source tells me the being who led the team that devel-oped the
gadget poisoned his aides, wiped the test data and specs from the lab
kephalos, and went off with the only prototype. Before he sold it to
Sunflower, he was careful to let nothing out of his head. Which is the major
source of their agitation since he was killed very shortly after turning over
the prototype and before he could dic-tate the specs. Probably Omphalos, but
not necessarily. Which is why we were hired to get their toy back to them. Me,
I m seriously pissed because they didn t bother tell ing me Omphalos was
involved. Maybe they didn t know, but I wouldn t bet on it. He tapped his
nose, nodded, and paused to let them comment if they had a mind to.
Shadith chuckled, met Autumn Rose s eyes, and said, You re a gambler, Rose.
How much would you wager that even if we do retrieve the gadget intact, it has
an ac-cident on the way to Sunflower?
There s little pleasure betting on sure things.
Digby s image cleared its throat, the small sound meant to reclaim their
attention. The inclusion of the disruptor in the theft gives strong support
to your first choice of thieves, Shadow. Which I will explain in a moment,
after I ve dealt with the other two possibilities.
The Matriarch s crew person is most unlikely. They re too paranoid to buy
stolen drugs and would be most upset by the presence of the disruptor on their
world. Some-thing that could bore silent holes in the shielding of all those
little interlocking enclaves? No way, children. And no one they took off
planet will have anything like free will.
As for the mouse who calls himself a jeweler, he has more blotches on his
record than freckles on a lass from Vallon and no evidence of any unusual
abilities beyond a fast mouth and faster fingers. He steals things
immedi-ately salable, mostly gems, and wouldn t go within light-years
of anything touching on
Omphalos.
Shadow, I knew about Sabato, of course, and have a list of his Face Companies
Page 27
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
which I thought was complete, but Mavet-Shi wasn t on it. When you get back,
I d like to know your source for this.
Hm. And a long chat about other bits of your life.
I talked to Xuyalix about the Caan Cerex. He was somewhat reluctant to chat
on the topic. Turns out Cerex is some sort of relative who had a patch of bad
luck. Got caught with smuggled goods on a
world with a low opin-ion of smugglers. Pulled a term in contract labor and
was sold offworld. His kin put together a fund and tried to re-deem him, but
the Labor Service wouldn t cooperate. I d say the ananiles are meant to buy
his contract with enough left over to get him home to Acaanal.
Woensdag is on the way to Acaanal to check with Cerex about how close you got
to the way the theft was worked, but I don t see any reason to make more
trouble for the poor schlup. He s not important enough to bother with.
I ll send a drone your way with a report on the in-terview. It should reach
you before you make Ambela.
The little one is the convincer. She s got impressive reasons for needing
that disruptor.
In the screen a planet swam against a star ground while Digby s image sank to
Thumbelina size. The turning world was mostly water with polar icecaps, two
largish continents, one with a tapering tail of islands that came close to
joining it with the third continent which was about half the size of the other
two.
A single moon drifted past in the stately gravity dance of satellites.
Icon Digby set fingertip to fingertip, tilted his head so the fez tassel
brushed along his jaw. What the original state of Ambela was no one
knows, but sometime after it developed rudimentary flora and maybe
fauna, the folk generically called Impix arrived even they don t know where
they came from.
They settled in and mauled the world in the usual way, had some wars, lost
hold on the tech that brought them there, began slowly building it back.
They d reached steam power and rudimentary electrical services,
rediscovered radio, when the Ptak arrived as part of the outpouring when the
Ptakkan Empire broke up. Ptaks are not a bloody lot, but they have their
peculiar ways. They don t like being overlooked by strangers or having
outsiders controlling any of their space. As an aside, that s one of the
reasons their neat little empire broke up too many non-Ptakkan species kept
resolutely away from any touch of power.
With that in mind, they uprooted every Impix they could catch, hauled them to
the continent they called Impixol, and set up a satellite-controlled force
field around the continent to make sure none of the
Impix got loose to bother them. The Digby icon tapped finger against finger.
Unlike the Impix, they kept contact with the outside, and with a low
birthrate and the resources of a basically untapped world behind them,
particularly the drajjul opals, they were a comfortable if not a wealthy
so-ciety for their first millennium on-planet. When the drajjul mines began to [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]