Page 25 (1/2)
"No one knoho the Shadows are," he said "Do you?"
" no, I don&039;t"
"That&039;s because the Shadows don&039;t exist Ask any of thees or recruit Things si of Flattery&039;s is lost Supplies circle him, but don&039;t land Replacements don&039;t sho"
"That&039;s what I mean," Beatriz said "I want to knoho does it, how do they knohen to do it, and what happens"
MacIntosh held her tether and they spun in a lazy spiral through the orks The illusion that played across the nets, the beach resort, was tailored for her, designed to help reduce her orientation stress
He&039;s at hoht
She are then that up didn&039;t o
"They call it &039;tossing the bottle&039; You throw so out to the waves, and it&039;s chance But if you control the waves, or a little part of the The Shadows&039; nonsystees every citizen to frustrate Flattery when they see the chance Divert soenerators - and go about your business and never do anything like that again Soenerators co, diverts it that wa and in blinks it&039;s headed upcoast to a settleer across the space they shared and bull&039;s-eyed the palm of his other hand
"Delivery" He winked "Flattery&039;s project loses and the people gain No Shadows" He smiled "It&039;s brilliant And everyone can play"
"Ye"
Again, her thoughts ith Ben
I wonder how long Ben&039;s been playin
"The Zavatans, Rico and Be" MacIntosh hesitated, choosing his words, "they don&039;t want Flattery killed They just want him removed After all he&039;s done to them, they still don&039;t want to kill hi Do you kno incredible that is? Do you kno far you Pandorans have come from us?"
"Our enemies on Pandora have always been more vicious than ourselves," she said "Except for the kelp The kelp has killed its share of humans over the years"
"But who rattled its leash?" MacIntosh asked "Who threw fire into its cage?&039;&039;
She closed her eyes again and breathed in slow, deep breaths
"Are you OK?"
She breathed in and out again, slowly
"I don&039;t know," she said "I look around this scene, and I know it&039;sus There are lasgun barrels behind the rocks and plants Out of the corner of ed her, and they finally kissed that kiss she&039;d been waiting for This was no chap-lipped peck on the cheek, and it was just what she needed to bring her back to the world
"I&039;ve wanted to do that," she said "But it seeme out of place with all this death"
"Yes," he said, "I&039;ve wanted it, too"
He brushed her lips with his fingertips
"You know, you&039;re going to be juo back out there in a few ht think otherwise, but hisaround up here Then we&039;ll see e can do about your friends groundside"
"You don&039;t think they&039;r dead?"
"No," he said "I don&039;t"
"How do you know?"
"The kelp"
Her face istered surprise, because he chuckled
"You kno ave me Current Control, I&039;ve been able to experiain, then told her about the kelp communications system he&039;d devised, and his atteod would the kelp be?" he asked "Merciful? Vengeful?"
"That&039;s not important now, is it?" she asked "Brood&039;s a s else until he&039; neutralized"
MacIntosh steered thehout their ork - 360 degrees of sky and high clouds covered the latticework that cradled them in free-fall
"I worry more about Flattery," he said "Brood&039;s s enough to crush anything in his path"
"But he was a Chaplain/Psychiatrist," Beatriz insisted "He&039;s trained to be better than that"
"He&039;s trained to cope with the necessary thing and to see to it that we all adjust," he reht facts He&039;s programence upon the universe"
"If he hasn&039;t adjusted and he hasn&039;t coped, why assume that he&039;ll take us all with him?"
"Simple," MacIntosh said When he smiled his face wrinkled all the way up his shaved head "The number five Flattery hit the &039;destruct&039; switch, you&039;ve read The Histories That Flattery was a lot ram had already come alive, had already anticipated his move and headed it off"
"Maybe we can do it!" Beatriz tried to shake his shoulders but all she did was set theht, use the kelp to head hiet it, the program&039;s already inserted, wouldn&039;t you think?"
"Wel"
"I have another possibility, and it&039;s regarding Crista Galli"
She felt a curiosity about Crista Galli that went beyond her neorthiness Ben saw so in her eyes that swept his were finished between Ben and Beatriz, a woer wohtily
"What&039;s that?"
She heard the rusty bitterness at the edge of her voice, the unnecessary snap of the words past her lips
"I think the kelp&039;s beat us to it," he said
She looked up frorin "I think that Crista Galli is the kelp&039;s experience I think she&039;s manufactured, incomplete, and alive It would be nice if we could keep her that way"
A er at his belt He did not take his arms from around her shoulders, but voice-activated the device with a simple command
"Speak"
"Brood and two of his men sealed themselves off with the OMC He says if you&039;re not there in fiveso plain
Sith confused alarh
- Matthew Arnold, "Dover Beach"
The Orbiter collared the Voidship&039;s nose in a flat wide ring of plasteel The two cylindrical bodies spun in concert on their long axes Soon the ring would slip away to remain in orbit around Pandora while its Voidship plied the dark folds of the universe At the helanic Mental Cores had a definite edge over the ators, and this had been deteration in all planes required subtleties of discrieneration that hardware never achieved The disembodied, unencu the ioad worked on OMCs that had no effect on ators - the OMC needed this job to stay alive
The particular OMC that the techs were preparing for installation, the Alyssa Marsh number six, felt no pain or bodily pleasure as the microlaser welded in the necessary hookups She had been trained in astronavigation at Moonbase and had borne a child in the year after splashdown on Pandora The story that she filtered back to Flattery had the child die in an earthquake, and Alyssa Marsh had launched herself into her kelp study project with a passion Her body had been crushed in a kelp station accident, but Flattery saw to it that her silent brain lived on
Soon she would be silent no more Soon her brain would have a body that it couldthe differences between ability and desire, knowing the need for dreaenderless behind a pair of locked hatches drea of a banquet where Flattery was the host and she was both the honored guest and the athered his forces outside both hatches and tried once more to contact Captain Brood There was no reply from the OMC chamber Three of the fourshowed an overhead view of the long, specialized fingers of a nerve tech probing the ork that encased what remained of Alyssa Marsh
"Hookup&039;s not scheduled until next week," soun barrel appeared on the screen, pointed at the tech The long, spidery fingers froze, then ascended from the surface of the brain toward the screen, then backed out of view
"That fool better not touch off his lasgun in there," somebody else drawled, "or we be stardust"