Odnośniki
- Indeks
- 501 Grammar and Writing Questions Learning Express
- Ian Fleming Bond 09 (1961) Thunderball
- 100 Questions & Answers About Anxiety
- McEwan Ian Niewinni
- Roberts Nora śÂšwić™te grzechy(1)
- Doyle Arthur Conan Znak czterech
- Diane Hartsock Nathaniel
- Bova, Ben Twice Seven
- When Mom And Dad Are Away
- 040.Field_Sandra_W_krainie_fiodorow
- zanotowane.pl
- doc.pisz.pl
- pdf.pisz.pl
- anapro.xlx.pl
A young man in a kaftan was walking towards the police lines, a notebook
clasped upon his head like some oversized phylactery. Two of the SWAT team had
donned snouty masks and goggles.
SFPD Captain Patterson and Don Rosado and Special Agent Barnes stood by
Sherwood, watching. A
lieutenant, trained in crisis negotiations, held a phone to his ear, patched
through to the café.
I can just about hear them talking. Something about eighty-five per cent
&
They re charging up its batteries, Rosado said. What do they plan to do
then? Use the other hostages to bargain a way out with it?
In Sherwood s car the driver was in radio contact with the emergency room at
the hospital on Hyde
Street.
They re prepping Cooper now, he reported. They re pretty sure he ll pull
through.
We can t afford to let them leave with the computer, said Sherwood.
Barnes nodded. Mary always backed him up.
Best career move ever, from Tucson to San Francisco, after Sherwood had helped
that Senator out. Best life-move, too, with Mary, who shared his ambitions.
Now this vile mess. San Jose infiltrating those Korean immigrants. Full
liaison with San Francisco, where
file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/075920733X.htm (230 of 269)
[1/10/2005 1:11:13 AM]
Page 151
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
Hard Questions the Soviets had their so-called trade mission. That should have
been sent packing long before the present crisis built up.
Setting the trap, but not knowing who was the insider at QX. Then everything
going wrong. Sheer chaos.
The damn prototype taking a walk. The real one, not a dummy. The alphabet men
had caused this. NSA, CIA, pulling strings behind the scenes. Interfering.
The situation was back under control. Under Irving s control. The prototype
wouldn t take another walk, out of the country, into enemy hands.
Who on earth can those two British people be in the café? Sherwood asked
Mary.
She shrugged.
Agents had barely begun trying to check the identity of the man called Gabe
Soul, whom Cooper had gasped about to the officer who rode with him in the
ambulance while paramedics kept him alive. Gabe and Jersey and Billy in a
yellow duster coat. Sounded like some hoodlum gang in Tombstone long ago.
The situation stank of wrongness
. As for a Clare from Britain, no surname known & !
Was Clare one of the trio who sat conspicuously in the window like human
shields while the rest of the hostages lay on the floor? A bearded man. Two
women who looked so alike through binoculars.
Why should the Tombstone Gang who took the prototype have driven to the Holy
Bagel to meet this
Clare? What was their relationship? Why, oh why hold the café customers
hostage instead of simply driving away with Clare and their prize?
It was the sort of thing terrorists would do. They were going to make some
incredible demand. They thought they could compel a plane to be provided. The
mysterious Clare might be posing as a victim along with her twin and the man.
She might be the brains behind this operation to steal the prototype from the
original thief. A terrorist woman, fanatical, probably psychotic.
Sherwood beckoned the SWAT squad.
I want you to go in now. Forget about using gas. You mightn t see clearly.
Incapacitate the terrorists
that s what they are.
Captain Patterson began to object. The customers
We shan t use gas because of the customers. Confined in there with gas they d
panic. They d try to rush out. We d be confused. Sherwood told the SWAT team,
Anyone innocent is lying on the floor. You ll shoot to maim unless your lives
are threatened. Try to avoid hitting those three in the window. But if they
act suspiciously
file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/075920733X.htm (231 of 269)
[1/10/2005 1:11:13 AM]
Hard Questions
They ll hardly sit still! protested the Captain.
then you must hit them. This is out of your jurisdiction, Captain. It s a
matter of national security, do you all hear? There s a very special computer
in there. We want it. But if it gets damaged in the assault, that s okay.
Destroyed is better than lost.
The lieutenant called out, The phone line went dead.
101
What do you wish, Matthew?
Call me Gabe, Gabe typed one-handed as he chewed a mouthful of cream cheese
bagel.
Who is Gabe?
Gabe typed in his full name and his former name.
Attach modem to phone line, Gabe.
Laying down his bagel, Gabe unjacked the phone and linked it to the Qua. The
screen scrolled fast, and then a window appeared amidst the scrolling.
Page 152
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
UAA autonomous programs and data compression enhanced by factor of 1000.
Clare, what are UAA autonomous programs? Don t get up to tell me!
She pursed her lips. Quiz question. What was the answer? What was the prize?
And it says data compression enhanced by a thousand what s that mean?
One of the business women spoke up. Excuse me UAA is Unified Agent
Architecture. It s a system for breeding smart programs like virus-worms. It
sends those out to search the Net for whatever you want.
Saves you spending time searching. You linked that computer to the phone line,
didn t you?
file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/075920733X.htm (232 of 269)
[1/10/2005 1:11:13 AM]
Hard Questions
It told me to, lady
Compressing data is how you pack more into less space to squirt it through
phone lines faster. A
thousand times faster s impossible!
Not if the Qua s using parallel universes, said Clare.
Miranda moaned. And I thought you were mad.
The screen blanked. A question appeared:
What do you wish, Gabe?
What did he want? It knew him now.
He wanted himself and Jersey and Billy to be in a world where authorities
wouldn t have any power to interfere with him. A world which revolved around
him. He wanted himself there and Clare as well, and
Beth who had studied some physics and understood about these things.
He typed.
On impulse he added:
Do you think you re alive?
The reply was a teaser:
I think therefore I am?
It says, Ithink therefore I am
.
The business woman said, That s real sophomore stuff. Programmed to pass the
Turing test, is it? Takes your words and twists them a bit, does it?
Damn machine. Route to alternative worlds, okay. That was proven. Matt was
witness to that. So was
Clare. But a key to immortality?
Gabe typed, Can you fuck?
A reply appeared for just a second.
I can fuck you.
file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/075920733X.htm (233 of 269)
[1/10/2005 1:11:13 AM]
Hard Questions
And vanished.
Had he seen what he thought he saw?
They re coming! cried Billy.
102
Members of the SWAT squad raced along the side of the street opposite the
café, using abandoned cars as cover. Others advanced on the café side, ducking
into doorways and out again.
The first shot rang out, shattering glass in the bay window of the Holy Bagel
&
103
Dominating the skyline, the Transamerica Pyramid was to many ordinary dozens a
symbol of rampant finance scorning their feelings. Protests and pleas to
down-size the design had all been ignored. The
Page 153
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
Pyramid might be slim, yet its fifty-five storeys including the spire soared a
full thousand feet.
Now finance was triumphant no more &
Maybe using the offices of Golightly Investments on the forty-ninth floor as a
command and observation post was an act of sheer swagger on the part of the
American Freedom Army. Mists could roll in, erasing the view. Up here you were
vulnerable to aerial attack, if the federal government had any idea where you
were.
Yet being up here was such a rich symbol of the collapse of satanic socialist
Jewish power. And the building did have its own generators. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]