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Lilleberg, for instance? What have you found out about her recent actions?"
"She would appear to have reverted to her former plans," Freeman sighed.
"She's back in KC, she's filed no application to move her pet mountain lion,
and in fact I can think of only one positive decision she has made since her
return."
"That being, I gather, to alter one of her majors for the coming academic
year. She now plans to take data processing, doesn't she?"
"Ah . . . Yes, I believe she does."
"A strange coincidence. A very weird coincidence indeed. Don't you think?"
"A connection is possible in fact it's likely. Calling it coincidence . . .
no."
"Good. I'm glad that for once you and I agree on something." Hartz returned
his chair to the upright position and leaned intently toward Freeman. "Tell
me, then: have you formed any opinion concerning the
Lilleberg girl? I appreciate you never met her. But you've met people
intimately involved with her, such as her mother, her lover and sundry
friends."
"Apparently a person with considerable common sense," Freeman said after a
pause for reflection. "I
can't deny that I'm impressed with what she did to help Haflinger. It's no
small achievement to elude . . ."
His words faded as though he had suddenly begun to hear what he was saying
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ahead of time. "Go on,"
Hartz purred.
"I was going to add: such an intensive hunt as has been kept up over six years
now. Since Haflinger absconded, I mean. She seemed to well, to grasp the
scale of it at once."
"And didn't disbelieve what he told her, either. Did she?"
"She didn't behave as though she did. No."
"Hmm . . . Well, I'm pleased to inform you that you'll have adequate
opportunity to confirm or deevee your opinion." Hartz hit another switch; the
wall screen in the office lit, showing a vastly enlarged face.
"Computer evaluation here at BDP suggests that your no doubt sophisticated
techniques might benefit from reinforcement by what to call it? an
alternative approach, let's say, which may strike you as old-fashioned yet
which has something to be said in its favor. Because we intend to destroy that
tapeworm
Haflinger gave to Hearing Aid!" With a sudden glare. "And before the end of
this year, what's more! I
have the president's personal instructions to that effect."
Freeman's mouth worked. No sound emerged. He was gazing at the screen.
"Despite any impression I may have given to the contrary," Hartz continued,
"we here in Washington are most cognizant of your skill, patience and
thoroughness. Certainly we don't know anyone who could have done a better job.
That's exactly why we're sending you a new subject."
"But . . ." Freeman raised a shaky finger to point. "But that's Kate
Lilleberg!"
"Yes indeed. That is Kate Lilleberg. And we expect her presence at Tarnover to
afford the extra leverage you need in order to pry the last most precious
secret out of Nickie Haflinger. Now you must excuse me. I can't spare you any
more of my time. Good afternoon."
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The Shockwave Rider by John Brunner (1975)
BOOK 3
SPLICING THE BRAIN RACE
MAN PROPOSES
"Now the way I see it "
"Who the hell do you think you are?"
THE LONG AND THE SHORT OF IT
This is a basic place, a farm. Listen to it.
Land. House. Barn. Sun. Rain. Snow. Field. Fence. Pond. Corn. Wheat. Hay.
Plow. Sow. Reap. Horse.
Pig. Cow.
This is an abstract place, a concert hall. Listen to it.
Conductor. Orchestra. Audience. Overture. Concerto. Symphony. Podium. Harmony.
Instrument.
Oratorio. Variations. Arrangement. Violin. Clarinet. Piccolo. Tympani.
Pianoforte. Auditorium.
But consider also:
Harp. Horn. Drum. Song. Pipe.
And similarly:
Alfalfa. Rutabaga. Fertilizer. Combine harvester.
Assign the following (no credit) to one or other of the categories implied by
the foregoing parameters:*
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Bit. Record. Memory. Switch. Program. Transistor. Tape. Data. Electricity.
On-line. Down-time.
Printout. Read. Process. Cybernetics.
[* Do not on any account give the same answer tomorrow as you give today.]
A CASE OF ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT
For the first time since the arrival on her threshold of the late? Sandy
Locke, Kate's annunciator
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The Shockwave Rider by John Brunner (1975)
sounded when she wasn't expecting anybody.
These days, you simply did not go call on somebody without advance warning. It
wasn't worth it. For one thing, people were spending less time in their homes,
statistics said, than ever before in history
despite the arrival of the world in full color and mock solidity thanks to
three-vee in the corner of the living room. And for another, perhaps more
important, calling without notice was liable to get you webbed in a net of
unbreakable plastic, possibly even gassed, at any home above the poverty
level.
So you used the veephone first.
In the middle of her largest room, whose walls she was redecorating with
enormous photo-
enlargements of microscopic circuit elements eventually, touched in with
metallic paint, they would be quite an efficient private computer Kate
stopped dead and pondered.
Well, no harm in looking at whoever it is.
Sighing, she switched on the camera and found herself staring at a man she
didn't know: young, fair, untidy, in casual clothes.
"You're Kate!" he said brightly.
"And you are ?"
"Name of Sid. Sid Fessier. Been spending summer vac in the paid-avoidance
zones. Ran into a poker name of Sandy, said to greet you when I bounced off
KC, and when it turned out I'd picked a hotel just one block distant . . .
Guess I should have called ahead, but hell one block on a fine day like
today!"
"Well, great. Come on up."
He whistled as he climbed the stairs: a reel or jig. And when she opened the
door, hit her with a webber that tied her into an instant package.
"Bagheera!" she screamed, falling sidelong as the strands of plastic tangled
around her legs.
Pop.
Still gathering himself for a pounce which could have carried him the full
length of the hallway, straight to the intruder's head, the mountain lion
flinched, moaned, made as though to scrabble at an irritation on his chest
and collapsed.
He was good, this man, and very fast. Even as he returned the gun to his
pocket he was slapping a patch of adhesive plastic over Kate's mouth to
silence her.
"Anesthetic dart," he murmured. "No need to worry about him. He'll be taken
care of. Right as rain in two or three hours. But I had to give him the
maximum dose, you know. Not my favorite pastime, messing with a beast like
him."
Having eased the door softly shut, he now produced a communicator and spoke to
it. "Okay, come and pick her up. But best be quiet. This looks like a
neighborhood where folk still take an interest in other people's business."
"You got the lion?"
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"Think I'd be talking to you if I hadn't?"
Tucking the communicator away again, he added over her furious futile grunts
and snorts, "Save your breath, slittie. I don't know what you've done, but
it's serious. I have a warrant for your arrest and detention without bail
signed by the deputy director of the Federal Bureau of Data Processing, who's
kind of high on the Washington totem pole. Anyhow, I'm not the shivver to
argue with. Just an errand boy, me."
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