Jack Vance Dying Earth 01 The Dying Earth
Jack Challem The food mood solution John Wiley & Sons 2007
Jack London On the Makaloa Mat and Island Tales
Higgins Jack Gra dla bohaterĂłw
Long Julie Anne Nieuchwytny ksiaze
James Blish Surface Tension
Anton Szandor LaVey Biblia Szatana
Balzac, Honore de Der Landarzt
Morey Trish SpeśÂnione marzenie
Christie Agatha Tajemnica Sittaford
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"Who is he?"
The security man shrugged. "We have no idea. Perhaps we will be able to run
him through our files, but he is unfamiliar to us."
"He wasn't some spy knocked off by one of your boys? You're sure?"
"Impossible. We would never do that here, and not like that. Besides, anyone
who could get this far is not one we would wish to kill before he was
thoroughly interrogated."
I nodded. "You mind if I take a look? I'm experienced-I won't disturb anyone."
"Take care," warned the man, and I intended to, but I walked forward and noted
that Maria was right behind me, more fascinated than anything else by the
gruesome sight. I reached down, carefully pulling back the cowl, and grabbing
some of the long hair I raised the head to get a look at him. If his back was
ugly, his face was even less pleasant, but I heard Maria give a short gasp of
recognition and my respect for her went up a notch because she'd recognized
him.
I mean, he had a beard now, and that face was really gross, but still,
clearly, it was the face of Lothar Pandross.
7.
The Phantom of the Labyrinth
"You have some explaining to do," Quin Tarn told me a bit sternly.
"Oh? And what do I need to explain?" I asked innocently. "I was locked up
tight and sound asleep when it happened. As if either Maria or I could have
driven those two swords into him at all, let alone with that much force, even
assuming we'd mastered the trick of walking through walls."
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He looked at me intently. "You know just what I mean. Quisquot-my chief of
security, the one who knows some English and brought you down -is very good
and very experienced. He noted that while the woman, here, gasped at the
recognition, you smiled."
"Well, at first I was afraid it was you," I admitted, "but as soon as it was
clear that it wasn't, I wanted to see if I knew the guy. I do admit I was
expecting somebody else-a Company spy, perhaps-but when I saw that it was
another Pandross, well, I got the message and I think you did, too."
"Indeed? And what message is that?"
"I knew from the start that Pandross had faked his own death, and that he knew
I
knew it," I told him, hearing Maria gasp again and then give me dagger-like
looks. "How is not worth going into right now. Pandross killed Pandross-or,
rather, a double of Pandross. He probably has lots of them around. Most top
security men do-the ones who have a sufficient number, anyway. He probably had
the medical scan of that victim stuck in from the start, years ago, and just
updated it if anything happened to him, so that the computer autopsy would
verify that he himself had died. That gave him an unprecedented freedom in
which he held the keys to security and the knowledge of the entire underground
network but was accountable to none, all of whom thought him dead. I was the
only one who could have exposed him, but until I understood his motives it
seemed more prudent to keep it to myself. Since he'd gone out of his way to
make sure I knew he was still alive even before I knew he was supposedly dead,
I figured he'd
file:///F|/rah/Jack%20L.%20Chalker/Chalker,%2...%203%20-%20The%20Maze%20in%20t
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file:///F|/rah/Jack%20L.%20Chalker/Chalker,%20Jack%20L%20-%20G.O.D.%20Inc%203%
20-%20The%20Maze%20in%20the%20Mirror.txt contact me at some point and I'd
learn what it was all about. In a way, he just did."
"I take it, then, that you do not believe that our body there is Pandross,
either," the rebel leader commented.
"Probably not, but we'll never prove it one way or the other, will we? Not
unless Pandross shows up again. If it is, then we have another player in the
game, somebody Pandross trusted. Somebody capable of getting in and out of
here past your best security system. I doubt it, though. This is a cynical
security man's way of sending us both a message -that your operation leaks
like a sieve, which I can believe, and you are, therefore, incredibly
vulnerable, and that
Pandross or whoever is behind this is fully capable of taking you out. The
fact that it was also done while I was here shows that our player or players
is using me for their own purposes somehow."
Quin Tarn seemed a bit nervous at that. "Then I must leave this place, burrow
deeper."
"I wouldn't. If he'd wanted to take you out he could have. The fact that he
walked right past your security, with his victim, and killed the victim in
cold blood and in such a theatrical and public manner illustrates this. He's
telling you to really tighten up your security, that's all. And when word of
this gets out to the others, they'll become paranoid as all hell. He'll have
shut me down because the others will cut and run. Shut down your grand
project, too, most likely."
"Is that such a bad thing, I wonder?" Tarn mused. "Could that be the object of
his playing around? Might Pandross think as I do?"
"Maybe. But we can't completely discount the idea that that's the real
Pandross there. That he was here in secret monitoring me, maybe checking on me
or maybe to contact me or maybe to contact you. That somebody else, somebody
who's a traitor in your own organization, recognized him and did this to keep
him quiet-in which case we have, as I mentioned, an unseen player with motives
of his or her own. I mean, how many duplicates of himself can he have that he
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can waste them this way? And it's sure a lot riskier to do it this way than
to, say, send a note or tap into your communications line. No, whoever did
this did it partly because they wanted me to be no longer certain that
Pandross was still alive and kicking. Hell, considering our discussion, I
wouldn't put it past you to do it like this to get just the results we're
talking about."
Quin Tarn sighed. "Perhaps. I will send the body to my own labs to be analyzed
and autopsied anyway to see if there's some way of determining if he was or
wasn't the real one, and even now we have sealed the place off and are working
to install much more sophisticated security. Clearly geography and routine
measures are not enough. But what would you have me do about this, sir?"
"Me? I'd sit on him. If you seal up this place tight and if you run checks on
your security staff and guards to make sure you have no traitors or
infiltrators, then the others won't know it happened. One might-if the killer
can get out of here or get a message away. That might just give me an edge and
keep them above ground."
"I might do that-but if I did so, then the project would continue, even at its
reduced pace with us all away from it."
"Uh huh. But releasing this might accelerate that project instead of stopping
it, too. That's the other lesson here-you all aren't as safe in your holes as
you think you are. Pandross knows you all better than you know each other. It [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
