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need to go into crude, tedious threats, do I?"
"No," whispered Pel in agreement. That Kety would slit the haut Nadina's
throat now, and arrange the body later, was unquestionable. He'd gone
beyond the point of no return some time ago.
"Dammit," grated Miles in anguish. "Now he's got it all. Us, the Great Key ..."
The Great Key. Chock full it was of ... coded information. Information the
value of which lay entirely in its secrecy and uniqueness. Everywhere else
people waded through floods of information, information to their eyebrows, a
clogging mass of data, signal and noise ... all information was transmittable
and reproducible. Left to itself, it multiplied like bacteria as long as there was
money or power to be had in it, till it choked on its own reduplication and the
boredom of its human receivers.
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"The float-chair, your comm link-it's all Star Creche equipment. Can you
download the Great Key from it?"
"Do what? Why ..." said Pel, struggling with astonishment, "I suppose so, but
the chair's comm link is not powerful enough to transmit all the way back to
the Celestial Garden."
"Don't worry about that. Patch it through to the commercial navigation's
emergency communication net. There'll be a booster right outside this ship
on the orbital transfer station. I have the standard codes for it in my head,
they're made simple on purpose. Maximum emergency overrides-the
booster'll split the signal and dump it into the on-board computers of every
ship, commercial or military, navigating right now through the Eta Ceta star
system, and every station. Supposed to be a cry-for-help system for ships in
deep trouble, you see. So Kety'll have the Great Key. So will a couple thousand
other people, and where is his sly little plot then? We may not be able to win,
but we can take his victory from him!"
The look on Pel's face, as she digested this outrageous suggestion,
transformed from horror to a fey delight, but then to dismay. "That will take-
many minutes. Kety will never let-no! I have the solution for that." Pels eyes
lit with understanding and rage. "What are those codes?"
Miles rattled them off; Pel's fingers flashed over her control panel. A dicey
moment followed while Pel arranged the opened Great Key in the light-beam
reader. Kety cried from outside the bubble, "Now, Pel!" His hand tightened on
the knife. Nadina closed her eyes and stood in dignified stillness.
Pel tapped the comm link start code, dropped the bubble's force-screen, and
sprang out of her seat, dragging Miles with her. "All right!" she cried,
stepping away from the bubble. "We're out."
Kety's hand relaxed. The bubble's screen snapped back up. The force of it
almost pushed Miles off his feet; he stumbled into the unwelcoming arms of
the haut-governor's guards.
"That," said Kety coldly, eyeing the bubble with the Great Key inside, "is
annoying. But a temporary inconvenience. Take them." He jerked his head at
his guards, and stepped away from Nadina. "You!" he said in surprise, finding
Miles in their grip.
"Me." Miles's lips peeled back on a white flash of teeth that had nothing to do
with a smile. "Me all along, in fact. From start to finish." And you are
finished. Of course, I may be too dead to enjoy the spectacle. . . . Kety dared
not let any of the three interlopers live. But it would take a little time yet to
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arrange their deaths with civilized artistry. How much time, how many
chances to-
Kety caught himself just before his fist delivered a jaw-cracking blow to
Miles's face. "No. You're the breakable one, isn't that right," he muttered half
to himself. He stepped back, nodded to a guard. "A little shock-stick on him.
On them all."
The guard unshipped his standard military issue shock-stick, glanced at the
white-robed haut consorts, and hesitated. He shot a covertly beseeching look
at Kety.
Miles could almost see Kety grind his teeth. "All right, just the Barrayaran!"
Looking very relieved, the guard swung his stick with a will and belted Miles
three times, starting with his face and skittering down his body to belly and
groin. The first touch made him yell, the second took his breath away, and the
third dropped him to the floor, blazing agony radiating outward and drawing
his arms and legs in. Calculation stopped, temporarily. Ghem-General Naru,
just being helped to his feet, chuckled in a tone of one happy to see justice
done.
"General," Kety nodded to Naru, then to the bubble, "how long to get that
open?"
"Let me see." Naru knelt to the unconscious whey-faced tech, and relieved
him of a small device, which he pointed at the bubble. "They've changed the
codes. Half an hour, once you get my men waked up."
Kety grimaced. His wrist comm chimed. Kety's brows rose, and he spoke into
it. "Yes, Captain?"
"Haut-governor," came the formal, uneasy voice of some subordinate. "We
are experiencing a peculiar communication over emergency channels. An
enormous data dump is being speed-loaded into our systems. Some kind of
coded gibberish, but it has exceeded the memory capacity of the receiver and [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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