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"Actually she was returned to the Centre. By that brutal cyborg, Sam
Trinity."
Jake sat on the edge of the bed. "How come a government agent is concerned
with this?"
"I still don't have all the details, Cardigan. It's my understanding, however,
that Mechanix International and the Office of Clandestine
Operations have been working together on something very secret and extremely
nasty."
"And Alicia found out about that?"
"Exactly, but because she's the daughter of Owen Bower,
everyone decided to be gentle with her," he continued. "So she was put in
the hands of Dr. Isaac Spearman and..." Winter paused, brought one hand up to
his eyes and began to cry. "Oh, lord, the things I've been a party to,
Cardigan. I went along with it initially, but, when they
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brought the poor girl back a second time, I simply..." He twisted on the bed,
tugged a plyochief out of his trouser pocket and wiped at his eyes.
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"Spearman worked on her somehow--made her forget all about what it was she
wasn't supposed to know?"
"Yes, that was done to her about a year or more ago," he replied. "The trouble
is, and that's one of the chief problems with many of
Spearman's more experimental electronic therapies, that the cures aren't
always..." He laughed. "Jesus, I still sound like that bastard. Calling that
awful process a cure. At any rate, Cardigan, she apparently started to
remember again. That frightened Trinity and certain people at Mechanix. But
since she was still the daughter of the head man, no one wanted to silence her
permanently." He laughed again. "The humane thing, they decided, was to ship
her back to
Spearman and let him have another try."
Jake asked him, "And who's Tin Lizzie?"
Dr. Winter frowned at him. "That's the nickname of one of the robot nurses in
the Restraint Wing, which is where Alicia is. How did you--"
"We got trouble, folks," announced Georgia, popping into the chill
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room.
Jake stood clear of the bed. "What's wrong?"
"Some OCO agents have been spotted upstairs," she answered. "It's likely
they'll head down here eventually."
"We'll have to move Winter," said Ryder. "And get ourselves the hell out of
here, too."
"Not before," said Jake, "I ask him a few more questions."
MADAME SONJA, BOTH lazguns still trained on Gomez, had moved over beside her
son's chair. "That bump looks awful," she was saying. "Are you absolutely
sure, Shelly, that he didn't hurt you seriously?"
"Mom, he just bopped me on the coco with his fist. I'm okay, truly."
"In your offspring's line of work, senora," mentioned Gomez, who had dropped
his stun gun and raised his hands, "physical harm is one of the occupational
hazards."
"You've got a hell of a nerve, grease ball the spa owner told him. "You break
in here, hurt my Sonny Boy and then--"
"Mom, hey, what did I tell you about using Sonny Boy in front of
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visitors?" "This shlunk isn't a visitor, he's an intruder--one step away from
a burglar."
"Line of duty," suggested Gomez. "Your Sonny Boy here happens to be a fugitive
from the law, ma'am. Which means that private detectives, police officers,
bounty hunters and the like are going to feel free to drop by and--"
"I'm going to have to move on, Mom." Wobbling moderately,
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Gates got to his feet. "My hideout here isn't safe any longer."
"Sit." She nudged him back down with a plump elbow. "Nobody else knows you're
here except this housebreaker. So all we have to do, Shelly, is work out a
foolproof way to silence him."
"No, that's not a good idea at all," argued her son. "Killing people isn't
part of my--"
"We don't kill him," she told him. "We just toss him in a storeroom for
awhile. We'll feed him now and then and make sure that--"
"The Cosmos Detective Agency, a large and powerful, not to mention easy to get
ticked off, organization, knows I'm up here in New Hollywood, folks," Gomez
pointed out. "They know for whom I was hunting and they, Generated by ABC
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in turn, will come hunting for me before I've spent very long starving in your
storerooms."
"Mom, it'll be a lot simpler if I simply pack up and go someplace else to--"
"Oof," said Madame Sonja. She suddenly rose up on tiptoe,
let go of her left hand lazgun and then the right. Dropping to her knees
with an echoing thunk, she teetered and then fell forward onto the carpeting.
"Mom!" Gates knelt beside her.
Gomez was gazing toward the open doorway. He'd been the only one who'd noticed
the hand with the stun gun that had appeared there to fire at
Madame Sonja while she was preoccupied in arguing with her suntanned son.
"Honestly, Gomez, it's an absolute wonder to me that you've survived in this
world anywhere near as long as you have. I know you got me out of a jam
earlier, but you most times, honestly, seem incapable of taking care of
yourself or--"
"How did you happen to drop by here, Nat?"
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The redhaired reporter came into the room. "Knowing you for an ingrate, I
wasn't exactly expecting a hug and a heartfelt thank you for saving your
miserable neck, yet I--"
"Thanks. Now how did you find me?"
"By following the signal being given off by that tiny mike I planted on your
coat when we parted," Natalie explained. "You're really, you know, so
transparent when you attempt to be cunning. I sensed at once, and I would have
even were I not the crackerjack reporter that I am, since you're that obvious
when you attempt to be sneaky, that you were onto something big. I realized
that this could well be the important yarn I need to save my own stymied
career and get it out of the doldrums of show-business reportage so that--"
"An interview with Carlos Taffy, chiquita, would serve the same purpose."
"That do ink A conversation with him is just more pap for the half wits who
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follow the dreadful tripe I've been forced to purvey." She shook her head,
then laughed. "But this, Gomez--inside info on the
Alicia Bower vanishment, this is a real story."
"I'm not too pleased," mentioned Gates as he rose up and glared over at her,
"to witness you standing around smirking moments after felling my
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poor dear mother. It smacks of the kind of callous behavior that the media
these days is all too--"
"Oh, stop your jabbering." She swung the stun gun toward him and fired.
"Oof." The stunned fugitive stiffened, flapped his arms once and then fell
over atop his sprawled mother.
Nodding with satisfaction, Natalie said, "Look around for something to carry
him off in--a sack hopefully."
"Why do we want to pack Shelly, cara?"
"Because we're taking him back to Greater LA in my Newz shuttle," she
answered. "He's, which should be obvious even to you, essential to my story.
If I don't miss my guess this'll win me back my former high position in the
broadcast sphere. "Daredevil reporter captures fugitive. Comes close to
solving heiress mystery."" She smiled, nodding positively. "Oh, and if it's
not imposing on you, and keep in mind I just now pretty much saved your
worthless life, Gomez, I'd appreciate it if you'd shoot a couple of minutes of
vidfootage of my standing over this fellow. I've found that this sort of
obvious shot, involving the commentator in the action as it were, impresses
the rubes and adds a whole heck of a lot to the impact ora news story. I left [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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