[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

world and his place in it, and she can't understand them. They will have to
ease carefully into the peace, into each other, and know it might not work in
the absence of the things that brought them together. There ought to be room
for that, the coming apart. Or the other. Especially the other.
She takes another drink. "You promised to show me the autumn aspens. And all
I've seen is this fucking desert. You owe me."'
"Daud," he says. She feels coldness touching her at the name, at the
inflection he gives it. Knowing, the both of them, that Daud is responsible
for yesterday's catastrophe, that there are broken hulks on the stony Nevada
plain, shards of aircraft lying under the protective waves of the Pacific, men
wrapped in canvas and covered by thin desert soil, all with Daud's smoking
signature. Cowboy won't forget that, and his code does not treat treason
lightly.
"I'm buying him a ticket." Lightly, hiding the dread in her. "Getting him
away."
"What if he doesn't go?"
Reassurances freeze in her throat. Because it is Daud's nature to betray, and
she has felt the sting of his betrayals all her life, hardened herself to
them, told herself it was only because he was weak, that he needed to betray
in order to know he was trusted, and she had always forgiven him... But the
forgiveness had infected her somehow, as if forgiving Daud made it easier to
forgive her own treacheries. She doesn't want Daud around, not a living
reminder of her own capacity to betray the things she cares for.
She can't stop loving him. She knows that. What she can stop is trying to be
him.
"He'll go," she says. "I won't give him a choice."
Cowboy's eyes are hard as flint. "I won't, either."
Encourage Daud in one last betrayal, then. Of Nick. If Nick exists, if he
hasn't already betrayed Daud by using him for Tempel's purposes. A final
betrayal. To save his own life.
The phone purrs quietly in its cradle. Sarah answers it.
"This is Reno, Sarah." He's still acting as switchboard operator, coordinating
the fragments of the net that are still in operation, keeping communications
open with the various panzerboys and thirdmen who will be visiting the ranch
in the next few days.
"I have a call from Roon," Reno says. "He wants to talk to the two of you."
"Tell him to fuck himself."
"He says it's business."
She looks at Cowboy. "It's Reno. Roon wants to talk to us."
To her surprise there is a grim light in Cowboy's eyes, as if he were
expecting this.
The voice is smoother now, more in control of itself. The echo effect has
vanished.
"The Orbital Soviet is unhappy, Cowboy. Couceiro was someone they liked,
someone they could understand. They didn't like him being brought down by a
bunch of mudboys."
Cowboy grins and reaches for his bottle of whiskey. "What are they going to do
about it?"
"They can't change the rules on stock trading. The system's too big, and
they're making too much money from the situation as it is, by their own
manipulations. And they know they'll just drive the stock market underground
if they try to restrict it-communication's just too uncontrolled, any face
bank could run a market just by telephone.
"No, Cowboy." The voice is calm. "What they're going to do is put you out of
business."
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Ice touches Cowboy's flesh. "Oh?" he says. "How do they plan to do that?"
"They've decided that the existence of black markets, along with the way the
Orbitals are competing to supply them, is a danger... It's creating too many
uncontrollable elements. So they're going to legitimize the markets. Later
this session they're going to have one of their tame legislators introduce a
bill in the Missouri legislature to repeal their tariff restrictions.
That'll create a Missouri-Kentucky corridor across most of the Midwest. Once
Missouri goes, the other states will fall like dominoes. The panzerboys just
won't be needed anymore."
"What can you do to stop it?" [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]