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talent for efficiency. Cut out the deadwood! Fire the in-
competent, the lazy, and those who've merely foiled to get results! And know
everything! Those were DarnelTs new mottoes. Those who'dbeen fired talked
about the Reign ofTerror. Those who hadn't been fired yet didn't dare to talk.
And OG Shipping prospered ... leaving Darnell free to amuse himself again.
There was Julitta, of course. There were an infinite number of JuHttas. But
Darnell had discovered that no number of willing girls could give him quite
the thrill of victory that his business manipulations brought
He regarded Hopkirk thoughtfully. The man seemed to intend no offense; perhaps
he honestly wanted to understand the workings of Darnell Over-
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109
ton-Glaxel/s brilliant mind. A laudable impulse; he deserved an honest answer.
"Sure, I could have done it straight," he said at last
"Would have taken a little longer. No prob. But," he winked at Hopkirk, "it
wouldn't have been as much ftm... and that way I wouldn't have had you working
for me, would I? Get on with the job, Hopkirk. I've got another assignment for
you when you get back."
Now that he'd as good as admitted his illegal use of the Net to Hopkirk,
Darnell thought, the man had to go. It had been fun to keep him around for a
little while, using him as a clerk and gofer, but one couldn't risk disgrunded
victims getting together to compare notes. Once OG Glimware was taken care of,
Darnell would "reward" Hopkirk with a free vacation at Sum-
merlands Clinic. The Net revealed, among other things, that Alpha bint
Hezra-Fong's patients on the charity side of Summerlands had an unusually high
death rate. He'd "suggest" to Alpha that it would be convenient for both of
them if Hopkirk never came back from Summerlands. That way nobody would talk
about Darnell's use of the Net; and in return, he'd get
Polyon to fix the Net records so that nobody would raise inconvenient
questions about the number of charity patients Alpha had lost
Achernar Subspace, Central Date 2752:
Caleb and Nancia
"I wonder if he'll really be able to resolve anything,"
Nancia said thoughtfully as she and Caleb watched their latest delivery being
greeted at Achernar Base on
Charon. The short, spare man whom they'd brought halfway across the galaxy
wasn't doing much to take control of his first meeting with the Charonese
offi-
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cials. He was just standing there on the landing field, listening to the
speeches of welcome and accepting bouquets of flowers.
110
Anne McCaffrey fc? Margaret Ball
"None of our business," Caleb reminded her.
"Central said, take Unattached Diplomatic Agent
Forister to Charon, and do it fast. They didn't say to evaluate his job
performance. And we've got another assignment waiting."
"Don't we always?" But the little group of pompous
Charonese officials that surrounded Forister was moving off now, leaving the
spacefield clear for
Nancia's liftoff
"It's just that I like to feel we've accomplished some-
thing," she lamented as Caleb strapped down for liftoff, "and I do feel this
Charonese situation calls for
somebody a bit more ... more forceful." Somebody like Daddy, for instance.
With his brisk, no-nonsense manner and willingness to enforce his decisions,
Javier
Perez y de Gras would have made short work of
Charon's seven feuding factions, the continual war be-
tween the Tran Phon guerrillas and all seven provisional governments, and the
consequent destruction of Charon's vital quinobark forests. He'd have been
using Nancia's comm facilities and working the Net every minute they weren't
in Singularity, preparing for his descent on the Charonese, arming himself
with every last detail of the conflict, softening up the principal offenders
with stern warning messages.
This Forister had spent the three days of the voyage reading ancient books #
not even disks, but some ac-
count of an Old Earth war too minor to have been transcribed to
computer-readable format. And when he wasn't reading about this place called
Viet Nam, he wasted his time in relaxed, casual conversation with her and
Caleb, chatting about their families and upbringing, their hopes and dreams.
Too soft to stop a war, Nancia thought contemptuously. Oh, well, Caleb was
right # the results were none of their business.
They were Courier Service; they went where they
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111
were sent, quickly and efficiently. Sticking around to report on the failure
of the resulting mission was not in the CS job description.
Bahati, Central Date 2753:
Fassa
"You can't just leave me like this!"
Fassa del Parma y Polo paused at the door and blew a mocking kiss at the
gray-faced, potbellied man who was looking at her with such pain in his eyes.
"Watch me, darling. Just watch me." She touched her left index finger to the
charm bracelet on her wrist.
There'd been an empty prismawood heart there, just the right size to hold the
minihedron recording this stupid bureaucrat's sign-off on the Nyota ya Jaha
Space Station contract. "Our business is done." All their business, including
those boring maneuvers on the man's synthofur rug. At least it hadn't taken
too long. These old guys had dreams of grandeur, but they really couldn't do
much when they did get the chance.
You're past it, sweetheart, and the future belongs to me. Some-
thing uncomfortable writhed under the triumphant thought, some question as to
why she exulted so much in the moral destruction of a small-time civil servant
old enough to be her father; but Fassa pushed the question away with the ease
of long practice. She had got what she wanted. It was as simple as that
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"But we were going to live together. You were going to quit this messy,
unfeminine job, now that you've got enough money to pay for your sister's
metachip pros-
thesis, and we were going to retire to Summerlands..."
Fassa laughed out loud. "What, me? Spend my last hundred years tending to some
old man in a Summer-
lands retirement cottage? You've been popping too much Blissto, my friend."
She paused to let the rejec-
tion sink in before delivering her final warning. "And don't even think about
blowing the whistle on me.
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Arms McCaffrey fcf Margaret Ball
Remember, you've got more to lose than I have." She always set it up that way.
There was an unwelcome surprise waiting for her when she reached her offices.
Two, in feet. One was minor; some kid was slumped in the corner sackback chair
in the outer office, fiddling with forms. Employment applications were
supposed to be handled in a different office; the kid should have been sent
there to begin with.
Before she had time to point this out, her secretary lowered his head and
apologetically informed her that
Bahati CreditLin insisted on one more palmprint before they would release the
final payment for the space station construction into her Net account. Just a
formality, the secretary quoted the CreditLin officials.
Fassa's brows snapped together as the man assured her there was nothing to
worry about. "Inspection?
What inspection? Everything's been passed and signed by Vega Base." Or rather,
by the befuddled old fool she'd just left, who hadn't even bothered to take a
transport up to the station and walk its corridors in person, much less assign
a qualified engineer to the task of a detailed structural inspection. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]