Halo: First Strike Read Online Free PDF Page B

mother's side,
    Blacks from Chicago and Cubans from Miami on his father's.  Among
    his family background were slaves and field workers and bourgeois
    counter-revolutionaries, along with the odd artist and smuggler
    and con man.
     
    However, whatever his breeding or experience, he had to put
    up with lots of cheerful, condescending bullshit from Traynor, as
    he had to put up with Traynor in general, because the man was rich
    and powerful and the boss, and neither of them ever forgot it.
     
    The two walked toward the house that stood facing the lake at
    the lawn's far border, a Stately Home an idealized eighteenth-
    century English architect might have built for an equally
    idealized and indulgent patron.  Off a golden domed center stood
    three wings of creamy stone, the whole in restrained neo-Palladian
    with no modern excesses of material, no foamed colored concrete
    and composites, just the tan and creamy sandstone and rose marble
    speaking wealth and taste.
     
    They climbed up marble stairs and passed into the house and
    under a looming interior dome that soared high above the central
    rotunda where the house's three wings joined.  They walked down a
    hallway of dark wainscoting below cream walls and ceiling.
     
    Gonzales caught glimpses of side rooms through open doorways
    as they passed.  One room appeared to front upon a night filled
    with swirling nebulae and a million stars, the next on sunshine
    and dazzling snows.  Still another contained nothing but white
    walls, floors of polished marble and a five-meter hand centered
    motionless in mid-airindex finger extended, other three fingers
    curled against the palm, thumb erect on top like the hammer of a
    make-believe gun.
     
    Mahogany doors parted in front of the two men, and they 
    passed into the library.  Its dark-paneled walls gave away
    nothing:  even close up, the books might have been holo-fronts,
    might have been real.  Flat data entry modules were laid into
    mahogany side tables that stood next to red leather easy chairs
    and maroon velour couches.
     
    "Sit down, Mikhail," Traynor said.
     
    Gonzales could feel the silence heavy and somber among the
    dark invocations of another time, leather and furnishings
    conjuring up men's clubs, smoking rooms, the somber whispers of
    deals going down.
     
    Traynor's eyes lost focus as he went rapt, listening to his
    voice within.  Even if he hadn't been aware of Traynor's
    dependence on his Advisor, Gonzales would have known what was
    happening.  Traynor, higher up in the executive food chain than
    anyone else of Gonzales's acquaintance, needed permanent real-time
    access to the information, advice, and general emotional support
    his Advisor supplied, so Traynor was wired with a bone-set
    transceiver just under his left ear.  Wherever he went, his
    Advisor's voice went with him, through cellular networks and
    satellite links.
     
    Traynor finally looked up and said, "Look, I want you to get
    focused on a job you're going to do for me.  Can you do that?" 
    Gonzales shrugged.  Traynor said, "You're upset and angryyou
    were attacked, almost killedI know that.  But look:  you work
    for Internal Affairs, it's an occupational hazard.  You and your
    machine poked hard at this man's operation, and you spooked him,
    so he did something stupid."
     
    "And I want to make him pay for it."
     
    "You play along with me on this one, and maybe you'll be able
    to.  But laternow I've got other work for you."
     
    "Okay, I'll do it."  Gonzales knew he had to play along:  it
    was his only chance to even things up with Grossback.  Play now,
    pay back later.
     
    "Good," Traynor said.  "How much do you know about Halo City
    and Aleph?"
     
    "The city was put together by a multi-national consortium. 
    SenTrax has a data monopoly, employs a large-scale m-i to
    administer the city.  That's about all I know."
     
    The wallscreen at one end lit up with a glyph in hard black:
    _0
     
    The voice of Traynor's Advisor spoke