Hellflower (v1.1) Read Online Free PDF Page A

got here.
    The astute student of human nature will notice I did not offer Junior the bribe that could of made things so much easier, as that would of made what was coming next unlikely to even the meanest intelligence.
    As soon as the cratty was gone I punched up the retrieval codes for the alMayne file-it was Tiggy, all right, who else?-and found he was up for the chop when the Lord High Executioner came on duty later today. And I found out where my little alMayne lovestar was.
    Restoring the terminal to its original state I lightfooted it over to a cabinet I’d cased as the most likely place to hide while I was stringing the button-pusher. I folded myself inside and shut the door just before he came back. I had my own reasons for thinking he wouldn’t look inside.
    "Captain, there are no— Where did she go?"
    There was a moment of stricken silence. Then I heard furious muttering and sounds of grabbing-your-jacket-and-getting-ready-to-leave. I’d kept Junior a whole five minutes past quitting time with my damsilly tale, and that left him so mad he didn’t even stop to wonder where I’d got to.
    In my business, it’s always a good idea to be a student of human nature. Now if I’d offered him that bribe, he’d sure and t’hell wonder why I’d vanished without getting what I paid for. This way I was just another exasperating space cadet.
    I heard the door hiss shut behind him and started counting my heartbeats. After I’d done that for awhiles I figured all sentient life and most of the bureaucrats was gone from this section. The only thing out there’d be tronics, and I had a way to deal with them. I hoped.
    I untucked my ears from between my knees and pulled a comlink out of my jacket pocket. The RTS let Pally and me talk to and hear each other and that was it; this’d let him hear things around me-like challenges from the securitronics patrolling the Det levels. It meant he could answer them in tronic, too, which would contribute to increased life expectancy for Yours Truly.
    All this was assuming the comlink worked, and we wouldn’t know that until we tried it. But what’s life without a spirit of inquiry?
    "It is not too late to change your mind," Paladin said through the transponder in my head.
    "Already paid rent on the speeder." I eased the door open.
    No alarms just a dark empty office. I opened the door farther and stuck my head out. Still nothing.
    Pally’d heard there was budget cuts for the civil services when he’d been cakewalking through the City Computer. Wanderweb justice being what it was, there wasn’t anything down here anybody could want to steal, but we’d still been expecting getting in to be harder than this. I started making plans for the rest of the evening at a bathhouse I knew and made to step out.
    "Wait," Paladin said. I waited. "There’s something there." I froze. "There is some form of security device in the room," said Paladin. I leaned farther out and saw it. It was about one meter across and less than half that high. It squatted malevolently in the middle of the floor glaring impersonal-like at everything in sight and didn’t seem to notice me.
    Noticed or not, I couldn’t stay here all night. Maybe I could scramble its brains and have Paladin pick up the chat before anyone noticed. "It is in contact with the Justiciary computer. It is likely that any interruption of that contact will constitute an alarm."
    And maybe I could just teleport to Security Detention.
    I swung the door open the rest of the way. It crashed against the wall with a well-oiled thud that damn near made my heart stop.
    "No change in status," said Paladin. "Are you all right?" "Terrific," I said. If I couldn’t get past this thing, Tiggy was going to have to forget about being rescued and I’d have to start thinking seriously about a career of being dead.
    What would set it off? Sound hadn’t, motion hadn’t, and with so many lizard-types in your Empire and mine it’d be pretty damn dumb to go