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and marched back in the direction of the gate. Abaquaan started
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"Wait," Mackeson called over the radio. They stopped and looked back.
"Trying to communicate it all to the Taloids through just that box would be a
hell of a tedious business," Mackeson said. He waved an arm to indicate an
open extension built onto the end of the administration building just ahead.
"That annex is our meeting room for Taloid talks, and communications equipment
is installed there. We'd get along a lot faster if we brought
Arthur and his friends inside where we can show them some pictures too."
"That sounds good," Zambendorf agreed. Abaquaan nodded, and they started
walking back again.
Mackeson switched his suit radio to another channel. "Mackeson to Captain
Mason at the gate. Bring the Taloids there inside, would you, and have them
escorted to the admin block annex. Also put a call through to the duty
controller and have the lights switched on in the annex and a couple of
communications techs suited up and sent out. It looks as if we're going to
have an impromptu conference."
Fifteen minutes later, Zambendorf was standing in the center of a mixed group
of Terrans and Taloids inside the annex, staring wide-eyed and speechless at
the scene being transmitted from a NASO reconnaissance drone hovering over
Padua city. It was a telescopic view of an evidently wild procession that
stretched from one end of the city to the other. Thousands of Taloids were
involved, festively dressed, singing, dancing, waving pennants, bearing
banners, and playing musical instruments. The ecstasy and rejoicing could be
felt from the pictures.
But most astonishing was the shape that seemed to be the centerpiece of the
whole celebration, which was being pulled along on a large, elaborately
decorated and draped, mobile platform by several dozen Taloids fanned out
ahead and hauling lines. As best Zambendorf could estimate from the size of
the Taloids moving alongside, it stood about ten feet high and seemed to be
fashioned from some metal that gave it a reddish hue. There could be no
mistaking what it represented: It was a wrench an immense, painstakingly
rendered, replica of a standard toolbox wrench. And immediately behind the
platform bearing the Sacred Wrench, a huge banner was being carried on which
were written crudely but recognizably the mystic symbols U.S.
GOVERNMENT.
"Good heavens! Did we do that?" Zambendorf said disbelievingly.
"Those are the guys that Arthur was so worried about?" Joe Fellburg asked in a
weak voice. "He doesn't have any problems now. It's all over down there."
Abaquaan shook his head dazedly. "I'm not seeing this. Somebody tell me it
isn't real."
"Well, Caspar Lang told Karl way back that he wanted him to sell Moses in
Padua," Drew West reminded everybody. He shrugged and tossed out his hands.
"So he got what he wanted Moses went over real big. Is it our fault if
Caspar miscalculated the effects?"
"That sure was some act, Karl," Vernon complimented. "You know, I don't think
even Gerry could top that one."
Clarissa looked at the screen again and wrinkled her nose. "And before anyone
tells the president, the answer's positively no," she told everybody. "There's
no way I'm gonna try a repeat performance over
Moscow just no way!"
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Thirg, Kleippur, and Groork exchanged awed looks. "Do I understand this news
correctly?" Kleippur said. "The Wearer is not to be imprisoned?
Already word of the injustices of the Great Ship's king have reached the
mightier kings of Lumia, and they have sent orders by which he and his
lieutenants have been dismissed?"
Thirg nodded slowly. "Now, methinks, we see the Wearer's plan unfolding in its
entirety," he said. "Carthogia saved and free from further threat of
molestation; Eskenderom and Frennelech undone; Kroaxia pacified and reduced to
harmlessness within a single bright; . . . and now within the Lumian house
itself, the would-be architects of havoc exposed and vanquished.
Indeed these are powerful champions that good fortune hath appointed as our
allies."
"Carthogia shall be free to pursue its quest for knowledge, and its borders
shall be always open to true inquirers from all nations," Kleippur declared.
"Thus shall the works of all be concerted, our resources directed to
enterprises of constructiveness, and one day robeings shall, through their own
dilligence and inventiveness, find Lumia and the other shining worlds beyond
the sky."
"And the nations like Kroaxia, whose collective understanding will require
time yet before it is mature, have been provided with a harmless distraction
which will predispose them meanwhile in thought and deed toward reasonableness
and tolerance," Groork said. "We must be careful to ensure that our acquiring
of Lumian knowledge is paralleled by the cultivation of a comparable measure
of such Lumian wisdom."
"So it shall be," Kleippur assured him.
Eventually the two groups repeated their farewells, this time amid a lighter,
more exuberant mood than had prevailed previously. The Terrans entered the
airlock at the rear of the annex, and Zambendorf turned in the outer door to
send a last wave back to the Taloids before passing through into the
administration building proper, where the first thing everybody did was get [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]