James P Hogan. Giant’s Star. Giant Series #3

“She also happens to be my assistant.”

“But. . . what’s she supposed to do when she sees him-read poetry? Gregg, you can’t do that. You’ve got to get her out of it.”

“You’re sounding like a maiden aunt,” Caldwell said. “I didn’t do anything. She set it up herself, and I didn’t see any reason not to use the chance. It might turn up something useful.”

“Her job description never said anything about playing Mata Han. It’s a blatant and inexcusable exploitation of personnel beyond the limits of their contractual obligations to the Division.”

“Nonsense. It’s a career-development opportunity. Her job description stresses initiative and creativity, and that’s what it is.”

“What kind of career? That guy’s only got one track in his head. Look, it may come as kind of a surprise, but I don’t go for the idea of her being another boy-scout badge for him to stitch on his shirt. Maybe I’m being old-fashioned, but I didn’t think that that was what working for UNSA was all about.”

“Stop overreacting. Nobody said a word about anything like that. It could be a chance to fill in some of the details we’re missing. The opportunity came out of the blue, and she grabbed it.”

“I’ve heard enough details already from Karen. Okay, we know the rules, and Lyn knows the rules, but he doesn’t know the

rules. What do you think he’s going to do-sit down and fill out a questionnaire?”

“Lyn can handle it.”

“You can’t let her do it.”

“I can’t stop her. She’s on vacation, seeing her mother.”

“Then I want to take some special leave, starting right now. I’ve got personal emergency matters to attend to in New York.”

“Denied. You’ve got too much to do here that’s more important.”

They fell silent as they passed through the outer office and into Caidwell’s inner sanctum. Caidwell’s secretary looked up from dictating a memo to an audiotranscriber and nodded a greeting.

“Gregg, this is going too far,” Hunt began again when they got inside. “There’s-”

“There’s more to it than you think,” Caldwell told him. “I’ve heard enough from Norman Pacey and the CIA to know that the opportunity was worth seizing when it presented itself. Lyn knew it too.” He draped his jacket on a hanger by the door, walked around the other side of his desk, and dumped the briefcase that he had been carrying down on top of it. “There’s a hell of a lot about Sverenssen that we never deamed of1 and a lot more we don’t know that we’d like to. So stop being neurotic, sit down and listen for five minutes, and I’ll give you a summary.”

Hunt emitted a long sigh of capitulation, threw out his hands in resignation, and slumped down into one of the chairs. “We’re going to need a lot more than five minutes, Gregg,” he said as Caldwell sat down facing him. “You wait till you hear about the things we found out yesterday from the Thuriens.”

Four and a half thousand miles from Houston, Norman Pacey was sitting on a bench by the side of the Serpentine lake in London’s Hyde Park. Strollers in open-necked shirts and summery dresses making the best of the first warm days of the year added a dash of color to the surrounding greenery topped by distant frontages of dignified and imposing buildings that had not changed appreciably in fifty years. That was all they had ever wanted, he thought to himself as he took in the sights and sounds around him. All that people the world over had ever wanted was to live their lives, pay their way, and be left alone. So how had the few with different aspirations always been able to command the power to

impose themselves and their systems? Which was the greater evil- one fanatic with a cause, or a hundred men free enough not to care about causes? But caring about freedom enough to defend it made it a cause and its defenders fanatics. For ten thousand years mankind had wrestled with the problem and not found an answer.

A shadow fell across the ground, and Mikolai Sobroskin sat down on the bench next to him. He was wearing a heavy suit and necktie despite the fine weather, and his head was glistening with beads of perspiration in the sunlight. “A refreshing contrast to Giordano Bruno,” he commented. “What an improvement it would be if the maria were really seas.”

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151

Leave a Reply 0

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *