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On reflection, however, Reedeth doubted whether that would be suitable
employment for Madison. His
Army experiences had been successfully brought under control in his mind, but
it was a matter of record that his period in combat had thrown him completely
off his gyros, and who could say that exposure to close conwith modern
armaments would not trigger a reof his trouble?
How convenient it would be, he thought, if Flamen were to take up the Madison
case, make a grand
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file:///D|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry/Desktop/John%20Brunner/Brunner,%20
John%20-%20The%20Jagged%20Orbit.txt fuss about the plight of a knee stuck in a
hospital long after he had qualified for discharge&
Come to think of it, it might be possible to leak the story to one of Flamen's
knee counterparts, who enjoyed far bigger audiences and what was more mainly
overseas.
Reedeth brightened, and made a mental note to see if he could locate a tendril
of the grapevine leading to, say, Pedro Diablo. It would have to be done
discreetly, but properly handled it might very well result in somevolunteering
to act as his legal guardian and enahim to get out at long last.
But there was no time now to follow that up. Lyla had completed her survey of
the audience and returned to the edge of the mat they had spread out for her.
She nodded at Dan, who was standing by with his repoised, and reached for the
hip pocket of her Nix. Producing a small flat bottle which Reedeth only caught
a glimpse of, she shook from it a little red capFlamen tongued the switchbar
of his cameras to a closeup setting and captured her swallowing the pill.
Whatever it was. Reedeth hadn't realized that pythonesses took anything to
Page 36
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
help them go into trance. Was that a commercial product, or something
alchemihome-cooked from a cut-and-try formula?
Once more he consulted his desketary, and this time what he learned made him
stare at Lyla's slender body in sheer incredulity.
For a moment or two she stood stiffly vertical, eyes closed. A heartbeat later
she fell to the mat, writhing. Her back arched as though in orgasm. Spittle
leaked from the corners of her mouth as she began to pant and gasp. Her hands
contorted into claws and snatched at the air as though fighting off an
invisible attacker slash, slash!
The watchers, including Reedeth who had been prefor such an event because the
desketary had told him about sibyl-pills, tensed in alarm. The girl's muscles,
contracting more violently than an epileptic's, seemed likely to tear her
apart at the joints; her breasts bobbed on her torso like a pair of buoys on a
rough sea. Flamen was continuing to record, but from his expression it was
plain he didn't expect to be able to transmit this footage. If he tried,
complaints from neo-
puritans would almost certainly get him banned.
Only Dan Kazer stood by calmly, glancing every few seconds at the watch on his
left wrist, his other hand holding the pause switch of his recorder. Flamen
turned the cameras on him just in time to catch his look of expectancy as he
let the switch go, and almost in the same instant Lyla's eyes jarred open, two
deep wells into the remotest regions of her subconscious mind. From her mouth
emerged a dreadful loud forced voice, bariand masculine.
"Ghnothe safton!" she boomed.
"That's not English," Reedeth snapped at his desketary. "What is it Hebrew?"
"Classical Greek with a Demotic accent," said the desketary in a faintly
patronizing tone; Reedeth had often wanted to get back at the smug bastard who
had programmed the linguistic section of their data banks. "It's the motto
from the temple of the Delphic oracle and it means 'know thyself.'"
Meantime, her muscular frenzy ended, Lyla had risen to a sitting position
without using her hands, eyes still very wide and focused on nothing. She
crossed her legs, turned by scuffling with her toes against the mat so that
she was facing the audience, and placed her palms tobefore her face in a
sketch for the Indian gesture of namasthi.
There was a pause. Eventually Ariadne said, speaking directly to Dan in a
near-whisper but with her head close enough to a wall pickup for Reedeth to
catch the words, "Do we have to ask questions now?"
"You have to with some pythonesses," Dan responded equally softly. "Not with
Lyla, though. I told you when you hired her: this girl is very damned good."
Regardless of what she might now say, Reedeth had made his mind up about one
thing already. Lyla
Clay must be one of the most amazing people in the world, capable of a feat he
had never even dreamed of. If what the desketary had said about sibyl-pills
was true, she ought not now to be able to even sit up straight. She ought to
be in raving delirium.
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ged%20Orbit.txt (33 of 153) [2/1/2004 3:07:22 PM] [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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