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a kind of virus as opportunistic a one as possible.
"At the very least Hierophant could be producing a new starship per year for
us, and the same holds true for Zion and Shabash." Doll made the words sound
like a serenade. "The Hierarchate hasn't the time or wherewithal to waste on
Aquamarine."
Dextra nodded as if considering those words, though secretly she was certain
there was more to it than that. The Scepter team had not been sequestered
simply because LAW was fretting about the allocation of assets. Everything
pointed to the conclusion that Aquamarine's Oceanic was a rather powerful
intelligent being. If the single inhabitant of the planet's only sea was
intelligent, it would be only the second sophant life-form on record, after
the Roke or the third, if one counted the pre-Cyberplague AIs.
The Preservationists were running scared, Dextra surmised, from the danger of
the existence of an organism that might be more evolved than Homo sapiens.
Revelations about the Oceanic could well alter the public's attitude about the
Roke or quite possibly erode support for LAW hegemony.
Dextra didn't want to be sidetracked, either. "Wouldn't we do better by
considering all the facts? If Aquamarine has nothing to offer us, then the
survey team is being quarantined for no good reason. I propose that LAW trot
them in from the outback to attest to Aquamarine's worthlessness."
Cal Lightner stirred at last. "I'm given to understand that the Scepter team
will have all it can do answering charges of dereliction of duty. It's likely
that the acting commander this Claude Mason person stands to be
court-martialed."
"For bringing back news that doesn't square with this year's fifty-year plan?"
Lightner said, "No. For possible complicity in the deaths of the Scepter's
original commander and the other personnel."
Dextra simpered instead of grimacing. "From what I heard, Captain Marlon died
in a misadventure of his own planning.
Claude Mason and his people at least carried out a cursory reconnaissance and
amassed data on the Oceanic."
Doll flicked beringed fingers. "Those smatterings of data are disjointed and
inconclusive."
Dextra gazed back disingenuously. "Except as they prove your assertions?"
It went on like that for another hour, with Dextra pressing hard but making no
headway. She brought to bear what leverage she could, threatening to tie up or
help defeat legislation and appointments they wanted, but they were adamant.
The missions to Zion, Shabash, and Hierophant would enrich the dynastic groups
to which Doll, Lightner, and even P'ing belonged. The building of those
stupendous fortunes and the political careers that protected them were what
LAW and the Roke Conflict were really about.
When she holoed up proof that monies for an Aquamarine AlphaLAW mission could
be shifted from other, overfattened budget lines, Lightner unbent enough to
show some anger. "Kindly keep your hand out of my pocket, Madame Haven," he
advised.
She tried hard to resist but couldn't. "Why, Cal? Since the operation, what's
down there to loot or damage?"
In no time she was seeing them to their airlimo and watching them lift off
into the traffic over Abraxas. She had never even gotten to broach the subject
of the Sword of Damocles, now in orbit around Periapt, and the Concordance
forces onboard it.
Page 34
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* * * *
Claude Mason, recently returned from Aquamarine, looked out on the Blades, the
most forlorn of Periapt's high deserts.
I never wished for this, he told himself. No, not for this.
That wasn't to say that he had not looked forward to the glory and reward that
he expected would greet his return. But uncertainty over the fate of his Aquam
wife and child had plunged him into wretched sorrow earlier on. Then had come
LAW's shocking condemnation of his survey team's conduct and results.
It had become clear when LAW reassumed control of the starship that the
higher-ups were not pleased with what Mason and the rest had to say about
Aquamarine, the Oceanic, or the planet's regressed populations the only legacy
of Old Earth's techno-elite Optimants. No one cared that Aquamarine seemed to
be anathema to the Roke or that the Oceanic was a being of unprecedented
capabilities and importance.
So here he was in the Blades, a stone-finned sweep of mauve wasteland, wild
and raw and intimidatingly beautiful. Blades Station was his prison, and its
sole saving grace was that it was far from ocean water.
To finish off his will to endure, Mason had received news of death and
financial ruin in his blood family and abandonment by his espoused several his
marital group. Verushka, Chen, and Monty had annulled Mason from the
relationship in absentia and had signed on with the AlphaLAW mission to
Tintaginel. The cosmic joke had a double punch line: The three embryos that
had been his share of the settlement were among the tens of thousands
destroyed in the ghastly Cybervirus slaughter of the Providence Clinic in
Abraxas.
Nowadays when Claude Mason wished, he did so in a vague and fatalistic way for
divine intervention. He knew that wishing couldn't make it so, yet he was [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] - zanotowane.pl
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