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reasons I didn't want to meet that rescue ship, which, in any event, would be
a good half a year away unless they had somebody closer. Three months anyway.
"I can't understand how Moses could hear us,"
George noted. "After all, didn't the same limitations also apply to him?"
"No," I responded. "He was picking us up directly, receiving us by his own
transceiver from our number-
less internal, biological transceivers. We eventually got him with a radio and
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just assumed he was getting us the same way."
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The Web of the Chozen
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Then I had the solution. The ship's computer was almost literally a part of
me. /( had its own voice, of course, for broadcast at a beacon station when
the pilot was dead.
I scanned the computer logic and told it what I
wanted. It complied with a direct link into the station.
The only trouble was, I couldn't be on visual in the station and talking
through the computer in the ship.
So, of course, we sent George in to smile for the cameras. They wouldn't know
the difference.
Once again I told the story, again I made the omis-
sions about my own family here and about my own feelings of literal alienation
from them. I needed
Moses destroyed, and only they could do it.
After, we ate a little, then slept. Schedules were for the humans, and the
beacon.
The second return message was quite different, and an hour late.
"Holliday!" said a voice that sounded terrible, evil, monstrous to me. "This
is to put it mildly hard to believe. That that creature is now you?" It broke
off a moment, then continued. "Well we will certainly send a force out! That
an old computer well, it's hard to accept, but there you are and there this
story is."
There was another pause. I was troubled by a cer-
tain slight familiarity in the voice even though it sounded so strange.
The voice a woman's, I realized continued.
"Well, now, we'll proceed to the beacon immediately and from there to this
Patmos to solve this, er, situa-
tion. Wait for us."
For Seiglein to take possession of their new pets?
Not me.
Suddenly I recognized the voice. It had once sounded sweet to me, even pretty,
although that was hard to imagine now.
It was Olag 4516 Brosnyak.
I tried to visualize her, remember her as she was
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r
The Web of the Chozen when I walked out on her two years before. That was
somehow hard to do. Was even memory a victim of this process? I wondered.
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Oh, I remembered what she looked like, the whole relationship, which we knew
was only a between-
mission thing. She belonged too much to the Corpora-
tion, and I belonged to no one but myself.
I dismissed the memory as unimportant. The reply was important, and we worked
it the same way.
"Good to see you, Olag," I began, trying to sound as human as possible. "Yes,
the first intelligent alien mankind has made contact with is me. Look, I want
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to see all this go down, and I want to be there after to talk about what will
happen. Pardon me if I remind you of our talks about my faith in anything,
most of all the Corporation. You have the coordinates. I'll wait another
fifteen for your reply, then, no matter what it says, I'm off for Patmos.
Don't be so shocked, either, at the way I look. Look at the people's faces in
those apartments near your office, staring into their Crea-
tivisions, munching their nutritious food cubes. At least some of these people
still talk to each other, and watch-
ing grass grow is at least as constructive. See you."
I signed off, and George pushed the transmit but-
ton. I felt the shudder, and knew the capsule was off.
We went through another entire eat-teach-eat-sleep cycle before there was a
reply. This time it wasn't Olag
 it was somebody higher up. Another woman, but she sounded even more monstrous
and evil.
Must be a Seiglein, I thought acidly.
"All right, Holliday," the stranger said, and I wished
I could see what she looked like. "You win. Your psych profile and record
indicate that you are as crazy and as antisocial as scouts usually are that's
why you're out there, and we're here, and you're in this mess look-
ing like that."
Pig's ass, I thought. If any of those toadies from the
Corporation had been on Patmos they'd be singing halleleujahs with Moses and
loving it now. But, of
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The Web of the Chozen course, that was the other reason why I was out here and
they were back there.
"Now, we recommend that you do not get too close to the Peace Victory before
we handle the matter. Af-
ter all, if what you say is true the computer can regain control of you. You
will be our check that the computer is dead. The PV was made by Macklock back
on Earth and we don't have all the plans and information on it we'd like. It
was a long time ago."
I smiled. I didn't get out here to go back the fool, I
thought. I would be there, and we'd all be in the freezer.
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I'd neglected to tell them a few other things, too.
"You are getting the Cruiser Courrant under Gerald
Alois Seiglein himself, along with two destroyers. After the PV is destroyed,
approach and stand off the
Courrant and we will attend to you."
That was it, the end of the message.
And I didn't like the end line at all.
Like hell I was going to come under those guns!
Particularly not for second grandson Gerald Alois
Seiglein.
103
Twelve
We laid off about two-thirds of the way to Patmos.
Actually, I was in something of a bind, since I had no clear time sense and
didn't dare stick near the beacon nor go back to the vicinity of Moses.
Fortunately, the timing mechanism for the L-jump was adaptable as a stopwatch
of sorts, and my own calculations said that if Seiglein were coming he would
be coming from
Altara, his family's private little fiefdom, and that would take one hundred
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ninety-seven days.
There was no hurry. We used the time well in teach-
ing Ham and Eve, and we were very careful in the way in which it was done.
This was, after all, the first time two Choz Seconds or later could be taught [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]