Terraplane Read Online Free PDF Page A

as required without standard dupes, using a remarkably complex encoding program. The code employed remade itself when
outside penetration was attempted. I raped the system in one
minute thirty-one and five forty-sevenths seconds, during which
time the code adjusted to block intrusion one hundred and eight
times. Upon final entry all records self-erased in accordance to
program directives."
    `All lost?"
    `All," she said.
    "One question further, Alice. The Dream 'Ieam's awared of our
directives?"
    "Of course," she said. "Continue as you have. The Dream Team
is the most incompetent of all covert surveillance and corrective
units."
    "Closing time, Alice. Pass word topside."
    "Luther," she added, "wait until airborne before renewing contact. Though words go unheard, they know a signal passes. Take
care."
    "Good night."
    Her blue rinsed from the white; she was gone. In memory my exwife's voice sounded almost as Alice's, and the match would have exacted had she had spirit like Alice's. Mayhap I was wrong; it
possibled that as time's lobotomy settled over years, that which
seemed most unexpectedly familiar became the recipient of all
long-bound pain. It was the hour's least attractive and most oftoccurring thought, and as on every night I bade it leave my mind.
Once unlinking, feeling the usual sadness at taking leave of Alice,
I didn't bedaway immediate; I sat staring into the screen's milk,
attempting to hear the radio strains of Gayaneh over the toilet's
perpetual gurgledeglurp. When ease enough to allow sleep
returned to me, I bedded, settling into troubled sleep. Eyes overlooked my dreams, eyes watchful, eyes alert; little-girl eyes,
dimmed by pain. From the sandy bloodred dune upon which I
stood, panting, catching breath, the sound of breakers scarring my
ears, Johnson rose, dragging me into his depths, where I so surely
belonged. I awoke, screamless. Jake, safely earphoned, slept on.

    At morningside we attached scramblers previous to wording. At
check-in we'd bug-run, stopping the count at forty-seven within
the living room alone. If we'd searched and destroyed all, we
would still have been eared, through the radio, the phone, the
window, so long as our words rang free. With scramblers and
phones, we communicated sans worry.
    "Seven-forty," said Jake, reading his watch, collapsing before the
TVC. As heard scrambled, his voice sounded as a tape rewound at
hypermode. "We've an eight-thirty set to toystore it?" I nodded.
"Why such earlybirding? Heavy action expected?"
    "No," I said; he frowned. "Washes idle speculation. Recall that
as cover goes, we move toys. Just two businessmen keen to measure
product. That gives our check hours to clear."
    "Transporting footways or on rubber?"
    "I've called for a cab. Eight o'clock arrival."
    "A cab sans media?" he asked. "The background racket gave me
splitters nightlong." The room's radio, by daytime, blared no classical, as I would have wished, only American apocalypso or European postwave redone con tempo. Over TV's air showed whatever
its wires sucked from the sky. Backgrounding us as we spoke was a
Leningrad exershow called jump, People! Russian television, no less enjoyable than America's, bore one demonstrable diff: those
televised here were ugly, therefore close-to-real; people on American air always seemed alchemized from some unnatural clay.

    "Alice's info enlightened as to whether this associate's worth the
bullet?"
    "She's the catch of the day," I said. "Good as Alekhine."
    "Can't viz this fucker half a minute till the throb digs in," Jake
said, eyeing the screen, rubbing his temples violently. I recognized
his problem. Taking a hotel-provided blank, inslotting it, I taped a
minute of air. Rewinding, I paused and pressed superslo playback.
White blurs imaged midscreen. "What goes?" he asked. "Jam
session?"
    "Of sorts. Here's your pain's excuse."
    Pressing freeze, I showed the words whole as they emerged, four
frames per phrase, and