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bow. "It is always a pleasure, when I can find the time. I
wish my own work were always as interesting as yours must be.
Well. You know of course that our esteemed Potentate is now in the
Fortress& "
The discussion, on the necessity of being prepared for a VIP
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Saberhagen, Fred - The Ultimate Enemy inspection, went just about as Sabel had
expected. Gunavarman walked about as he spoke, eyes taking in the lab, their
intelligence operating on yet a different level than either Sabel's or Greta
Thamar's. The smiling lips asked Sabel just what, exactly, was he currently
working on? What could he demonstrate, as dramatically as possible but safely
of course, for the distinguished visitor?
Fortunately for Sabel he had been given a little advance time in which to
think about these matters. He suggested now one or two things that might
provide an impressive demonstration. "When must
I have them ready?"
"Probably not sooner than two days from now, or more than five.
You will be given advance notice of the exact time." But the
Guardian, when Sabel pressed him, refused to commit himself on just how much
advance notice would be given.
The real danger of this Potential visit, thought Sabel as he saw his caller
out, was that it was going to limit his mobility. A hurried field trip to the
outer surface was going to be essential, to get incriminating materials out of
his lab. Because he was sure that a security force of Guardians was going to
descend on the place just before the Potentate appeared. More or less
politely, but thoroughly, they would turn it inside out. There were those on
every world of his dominion who for one reason or another wished the Potentate
no good.
After a little thought, Sabel went to his computer terminal and punched in an
order directed to the metallic fabrication machines in the Fortress's main
workshops, an order for the disabling slug as specified by his computer. He
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knew well how the automated systems worked, and took care to place the order
in such a way that no other human being would ever be presented with a record
of it. The machines reported at once that delivery should take several hours.
The more he thought about it, the more essential it seemed for him to get the
necessary field excursion out of the way as quickly as he could. Therefore
while waiting for the slug to be delivered, he loaded up his flyer, with
berserker parts hidden among tools in various containers. The vehicle was
another thing that had been built to his special order. It was unusually small
in all three dimensions, so he could drive it deeply into the caves and
passages and cracks of ancient battle-damage that honeycombed the outer
stonework of the
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Saberhagen, Fred - The Ultimate Enemy
Fortress.
A packet containing the slug he had ordered came with a clack into his
laboratory through the old-fashioned pneumatic system still used for small
deliveries, direct from the workshops. Sabel's first look at the cesium alloy
startled him. A hard solid at room temperature, the slug was red as blood
inside a statglass film evidently meant to protect it against contamination
and act as a radiation shield for human handlers as well. He slid it into a
pocket of his light spacesuit, and was ready.
The lab locked up behind him, he sat in his flyer's small open cab and exited
the rooftop airlock in a modest puff of fog. The air and moisture were mostly
driven back into recycling vents by the steady gravitic pressure of the
Radiant above. His flyer's small, silent engine worked against the curve of
space that the Radiant imposed, lifting him and carrying him on a
hand-controlled flight path that skimmed over glass-roofed plazas and
apartment complexes and offices. In its concavity, the inner surface of the
Fortress fell more distant from his straight path, then reapproached. Ahead
lay the brightly lighted mouth of the traffic shaft that would lead him out to
the Fortress's outer layers.
Under Sabel's briskly darting flyer there now passed a garish, glassed-
in amusement mall. There entertainment, sex, and various kinds of drugs were
all for sale. The
Contrat Rouge he thought was somewhere in it. He wondered in passing if the
girl Greta understood that here her occupation put her very near the bottom of
the social scale, a small step above the level of the barely tolerable
prostitutes?
Perhaps she knew. Or when she found out, she would not greatly care. She would
probably be moving on, before very long, to some world with more conventional
mores.
Sabel had only vague ideas of how folk in the field of popular entertainment
lived. He wondered if he might go sometime to watch her perform publicly. It
was doubtful that he would. To be seen much in the
Contrat Rouge could do harm to one in his position.
The wide mouth of the shaft engulfed his flyer. A few other craft,
electronically guided, moved on ahead of his or flickered past.
Strings of lights stretched vertiginously down and ahead. The shaft was
straight; the Fortress had no appreciable rotation, and there was no need to
take coriolis forces into account in traveling through it
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Saberhagen, Fred - The Ultimate Enemy rapidly. With an expertise born of his
many repetitions of this flight, Sabel waited for the precisely proper moment
to take back full manual control. The gravitic pressure of the Radiant, behind
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him and above, accelerated his passage steadily. He fell straight through the
two kilometers' thickness of stone and reinforcing beams that composed most of
the Fortress's bulk. The sides of the vast shaft, now moving faster and faster
past him, were ribbed by the zig-zag joints of titanic interlocking blocks.
This is still Dardania, here
, he thought to himself, as usual at this point. The Earth-descended
Dardanians, who had built the Fortress and flourished in it even before
berserkers came to the human portion of the Galaxy, had wrought with awesome
energy, and a purpose not wholly clear to modern eyes. The Fortress, after
all, defended not much of anything except the Radiant itself, which hardly
needed protection from humanity.
Their engineers must have tugged all the stone to build the Fort through
interstellar distances, at God alone knew what expense of energy and time.
Maybe Queen Helen had let them know she would be pleased by it, and that had
been enough.
The Fortress contained about six hundred cubic kilometers of stone and steel
and enclosed space, even without including the vast, clear central cavity. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]