{"id":6344,"date":"2026-01-05T23:45:25","date_gmt":"2026-01-05T23:45:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/starblood-koontz-dean\/"},"modified":"2026-01-05T23:45:25","modified_gmt":"2026-01-05T23:45:25","slug":"starblood-koontz-dean","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/starblood-koontz-dean\/","title":{"rendered":"Starblood – Koontz, Dean"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Book Preview<\/h3>\n
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[Dean Koontz \u2013 Starblood] [Scanned by BuddyDk \u2013 August 5 2003] [Original typos hasn\u2019t been corrected]<\/p>\n

THE HOUND<\/p>\n

entered the room, sensed Timothy’s presence, made sure that he was the proper quarry. It fired three pins. Timothy slammed down on his mobility controls, streaked into the hall and down the cellar stairs. He slammed the heavy door of the shooting range. It was monstrously thick, plated in lead. Even the Hound would require time to break it down. He floated along the cellars that stretched back into the mountain, ripping the paneling away from the walls with his servos, and squeezing into the old part of the house. Behind him, he heard the heavy door explode before the attack of the Hound . . . and ahead was a cave-in, trapping him in this room, his pursuer no more than thirty feet behind. He turned, and saw the Hound’s sensors gleaming in the dim light . . .<\/p>\n

STARBLOOD DEAN R. KOONTZ<\/p>\n

LANCER BOOKS<\/p>\n

NEW YORK<\/p>\n

A LANCER BOOK<\/p>\n

STARBLOOD<\/p>\n

Copyright \u00a9 1972 by Dean Koontz All rights reserved Printed In the U.S.A.<\/p>\n

DEDICATION: FOR DAD<\/p>\n

LANCER BOOKS, INC. \u2022 1560 BROADWAY NEW YORK, N.Y. 10036<\/p>\n

“There was no 20th century hallucinogenic so heinous as PBT\u2014slang for Perfectly Beautiful Trip. We’re still plagued by it in this new century. The substance cannot be analyzed, and there is no known way to break an addict of his habit Addiction leads to non-involvement with productive society, an early loss of mental capacities, and too frequently, death. Many drugs, hallucinogenic and otherwise, seem to offer rich rewards to their addicts, but if there is one person in the world who has ever gained from PBT, his must be a singularly odd case indeed . . .” Address by Chief of Narcotics Bureau, World Health Organization<\/p>\n

“. . . a singularly odd case . . .”<\/p>\n

PROLOGUE<\/p>\n

Timothy was not human. Not wholly. If you include arms and legs in a definition of the human body, then Timothy did not meet the necessary criteria. If you count two eyes in that definition, Timothy was also ruled out, for he had but one, and even that was placed in an unusual position: somewhat closer to his left ear than a human eye should be and definitely an inch lower in his overlarge skull than was the norm. Then there was his nose: it totally lacked cartilage; the only evidence of its presence was two holes, ragged nostrils punctuating the relative center of his bony, misshapen head. There was his skin: waxy yellow like some artificial fruit and coarse with large, irregular pores that showed like dark pinpricks bottomed with dried blood. There were his ears: very flat against his head and somewhat pointed, like the ears of a wolf. There were other things which would show up on closer examination: his hair (which was of different texture than any racial variant among the normal human strains), his nipples (which were ever so slightly concave instead of convex), and his genitals (which were male, but which were contained in a pouch just below his navel and not between his truncated limbs). There was only one way in which Timothy was even remotely human, and that was in his brain, his intellect. But even here, he was not entirely normal, for his IQ was slightly above 250, placing him well within the limits of “genius.” He was the product of the artificial wombs, a strictly military venture intended to produce living weapons: beings with psionic abilities who just possibly might bring the Asians to their knees. To a certain type of military mind, the human body is little more than a tool to be used as the officer wishes, and such were the men in charge of the wombs. When results like Timothy slid from the steamy chambers, gnarled and useless specimens, they shook their heads, ignored public condemnation, and went on with their mad work. Timothy was placed in a special home for subhuman products of the wombs, where it was expected he would die within five years. It was in his third year there that they came to realize Timothy (he was the T birth in the fifth alphabetical series, thus his name) was more than a mindless vegetable . . . it happened at feeding time. The nurse had been dutifully spooning pap into his mouth, cleaning his chin as he dribbled, when one of the other “children” in the ward entered its death throes. She hurried off to assist the doctor, leaving Timothy hungry. Due to the training of a new staff nurse that afternoon, he had inadvertently been skipped during the last meal. He was ravenous now. When the nurse did not respond to his caterwauling, he tossed about on the foam mattress. Legless and armless as he was, there was nothing he could do to reach the bowl of food that rested on the table next to his crib, painfully within sight of his one, misplaced eye. He blinked that eye, squinted it, and lifted the spoon without touching it. He levitated the instrument to his mouth, licked the pablum from it, and sent it back to the bowl for more. It was during his sixth spoonful when the nurse returned, saw what he was doing, and promptly fainted dead away. That same night, Timothy was moved from the ward. Quietly. He did not know where they were taking him. Indeed, lacking the sensory stimulation afforded most three-year-olds, he did not even care. Without proper stimulation, he had never developed rational thought processes. He understood nothing beyond the basic desires of his own body: hunger, thirst, excretion. He could not wonder where they were taking him. He was not permitted to remain ignorant for long. The military hungered for success (they had only had two others) and hurried his development. They tested his IQ as best they could and found it slightly above average. They were jubilant, for they had feared they would have to work with a psionically gifted moron. Next, the computers devised an educational program suited to his unique history, and initiated it at once. They expected him to be talking in seven months: he was verbalizing in five weeks. They expected him to be reading in a year and a half; he was quantitatively absorbing on a college level in three months. Not surprisingly, they found his IQ rising. Intelligence quotient is based on what an individual has learned, as well as what he inately knows. When Timothy had first been tested, he had learned absolutely nothing. His slightly above average IQ score had been garnered solely on that native ability. Excitement at the project grew until Timothy no longer reached a meaningful IQ of 250. It was now eighteen months since he had lifted the spoon without hands, and he was very nearly devouring books, switching from topic to topic, from two weeks of advanced physics texts to a month of nineteenth-century British literature. The military didn’t care, for they did not expect him to be a one-field expert, merely educated and conversant. At the end of eighteen months, he was both these things. The military turned to other plans . . . They coached his psionic abilities carefully. There were dreams in military minds, of Timothy destroying the entire Asian Army with one psionic burst. But dreams are only dreams. The fact was soon evident that Timothy’s psi powers were severely limited. The heaviest thing he could lift was a spoon full of applesauce, and his radius of ability was only a hundred feet As a superweapon, he was something of a washout. The generals were disappointed: after the initial paralysis wore off, they opted to dissect Timothy to see what they could discover of his ability. Luckily for him, the war ended. The Bio-Chem people came up with the ultimate weapon. They released a virus on the Asian mainland at roughly the same time the army was discovering Timothy’s limits. Before the generals could act on him, the virus had destroyed approximately half of the Asian male population\u2014it was structured to affect only certain chromosome combinations that occured only in Mongolians\u2014and had induced the enemy to a reluctant surrender. With peace, the wombs were put under the administration of the Bio-Chem people, and the project was dissolved, But the scientists were still fascinated with Timothy. For three weeks, he was exhaustively tested and retested by his new masters. He overheard their discussions about “What his brain might look like . . .” It was a rugged three weeks. In the end a leak reached the press and the story of the horribly deformed mutant who could lift spoons without touching them was a three-day sensation. The Veterans’ Bureau, the largest bureau of the now peace-oriented government, stepped into the uproar and took control of him. Senator Kilby announced that the government was going to “rehabilitate” the young man, provide him with servo-hands and a grav-plate system for mobility. He was a three-day sensation again. And so was the politically wise senator who took credit for his rehabilitation . . .<\/p>\n

CHAPTER 1<\/p>\n

Timothy stood on the patio that jutted beyond the cliff and watched a flock of birds settling into the big green pines which spread thickly down the mountainside. He was fascinated by nature because it contained two qualities he did not \u2014an intricacy of purpose and general perfection. As most normal men are intrigued by freaks, so Timothy was intrigued by the nature of normalcy. He directed his left servo-hand to pull apart the branches obscuring his view of a particularly fine specimen. The six-fingered prostho swept away from him on the grav-plates that cored its palm, shot forty feet down the embankment to the offending branch, and gently pulled it aside so as not to disturb the birds. But the birds were too aware: they flew. Using his limited psionic powers, Ti reached into the two hundred micro-miniature switches of the control module buried in the globe of the grav-plate system that capped his truncated legs. The switches, operated by psi power, in turn maneuvered his hands and moved him about as he wished. He recalled his left servo now that the bird had gone. It rushed back to him and floated at his side. He looked at the watch strapped to the servo and was surprised to find that it was past time for his usual morning chat with Taguster. He flipped the microminiature switches and floated around and through the patio doors, Into the somewhat plush living-room of his house. The house was the pivotal spot of his life, giving him comfort when he was depressed, companionship when he was lonely, a sense of accomplishment when his life seemed hollow. He had built it with money earned from his two volumes of autobiography, a proud monument built over the ruins of a Revolutionary War, pro-British secret supplies’ cellar. It was maintained by the revenues from Enterstat, the first stat newspaper devoted to gossip and entertainment, a project launched successfully with the book monies. He crossed the fur carpet and glided into the special cup-chair of his Mindlink set. Raising a “hand,” he pulled down the burnished aluminum helmet and fitted it securely to his bony cranium (the helmet too had been specially crafted). He used the other servo to flip the proper toggles to shift his mind into the receiver in Taguster’s living-room. There was a moment of blurring when intense blacks and grays swarmed formlessly about him. It was said that this was the moment when death tried to rush into the vacated body \u2014and when the Mindlink circuits dissauded it from claiming another victim as it wished. Then his consciousness flashed onto the Mindlink Company’s beam past thousands of other entities going to other receivers. In less than a second, the blacks and grays swirled dizzily, then cleared and metamorphosed into colors. The first thing he saw through the receiver was Leonard Taguster lying dead against the wall . . . For a moment, he attempted to break away from the artificial brain blank and the camera eyes of the receiver, tried to plunge back into the chiaroscuro world of the beam. Taguster simply could not be dead. And if he were, then Ti simply could not admit it. There was, after all, no one else in his world, no one with whom he might talk with ease, as equal; no one else who would easily understand him. After Taguster, there was only the house, and the house could not converse. Then the core of him, which had survived so much in the past, gripped him and forced him to cease his childish flight from reality. He settled firmly into the receiver again and looked out through the glass eyes of the cameras attached to the brain blank. No, Taguster was not dead. There was blood, surely, pooling about the concert guitarist’s head, but the same head was also moving, nodding in near unconsciousness, but nodding nonetheless. Ti operated the voicebox of the machine, spoke in a mechanical harshness. “Lenny!” Taguster raised his head a little, enough for Ti to see the thin dart buried half in his throat. Taguster tried to say something, but he could only manage a thick gurgle, like syrup splattering against the bottom of a galvanized bucket. Timothy felt a silent scream welling up inside him, heard it booming deep within him. A moment later, he realized it was not silent, but given voice by the receiver. That frightened him, and he looked away from the wounded body of his friend, trying to regain his wits. Darts? Who would want to kill Leonard Taguster? And why hadn’t they finished the job? The musician made frantic noises, as if he desperately needed to communicate something. His head bobbed, jerked, as convulsions hit him. Ti wished he had not looked back. Taguster’s eyes were wide open and brimming with tears. He knew he was dying. Ti’s mind swam inside the receiver, receding into the swirl of black and gray, then surging into color and life again as his fear of retreating overcame his fear of remaining. He was fighting off inglorious panic, and he knew it. But Taguster wanted to say something and that was the important thing to remember. But how could that be accomplished, with the man’s pale throat so horribly violated? Taguster scrabbled a limp hand against the wall as if writing without implement, and Ti got the idea. He turned the head of his receiver around so that the cameras showed him most of the room. There was a desk with various writing tools lying on it, a mere twenty feet away against the far wall. But a receiver was not mobile\u2014and Taguster could not move. Ti thought of retreating from the receiver and returning to his own body, calling the police from his house. But Taguster’s desire to communicate was too intense to ignore. Ti squinted eyes that he didn’t have (the cameras could not rightly be called eyes, and his own single orb was at home, lying lopsided in his irregular skull) and forced his psi energies to coalesce in the vicinity of the desk. He reached out and toyed with the pencil. It flipped over and almost rolled onto the floor. He doubled his effort, lifted it, and floated it across the room to where Taguster lay dying. He imagined he was sweating. Taguster picked the instrument up and held it as if he were not certain what it was. He coughed bright blood, stared at that a moment. When Timothy urged him to write, he looked up blearily at the receiver cameras, seemed to make an expression of assent . . . or pain. He wrote on the wall: MARGLE. The letters were shaky and uneven, but readable. Then Taguster sighed, dropped the pencil. It made an eerily loud sound as it clattered on the slate floor. “Lenny!” Timothy seemed to remember having heard the name before, though he could not place the source. However, he felt justified in slipping out of the set now to call the police. But as he was loosening himself from the brain blank, someone screamed. It was a woman; it came high and piercing, bursting out full strength and turning into a gurgle, trailing away in seconds. It had come from the bedroom, and Ti tensed his mind and shifted into the bedroom receiver extension. It was a woman. She had been trying to get out of the window, but her flimsy nightdress had caught on the latch, delaying her one moment too long. There were three darts in her back. Blood dripped off the frilly lace and onto the floor. Ti had been working under the assumption that the killer had left. Now he shifted the camera to the left and saw the murderer. A Hound floated toward the doorway, twin servo-hands flying ahead of it, fingers seemingly tensed as if to strangle someone. The dart tube on the burnished belly of the spherical machine protruded, ready. Here was the killer: thirty-odd pounds of ball-shaped computer that could track with seven sensory systems. And only the police should have one. But why should the police want Taguster dead . . . and why should they choose such an easily traced means of obtaining his destruction? The Hound disappeared through the doorway, suddenly reminding Ti that Taguster was back there in the living-room, half dead. The Hound was returning to check on its work. Ti shifted his consciousness into the main receiver again. Taguster was in the same position, still gurgling. When the mechanical killer entered the room, the dying man saw it. Ti found a curio, a small brass peasant leading a brass mule, a handcrafted trinket Taguster had brought back from a trip to Mexico. Lifting with his psionic power, he threw it at the Hound with all the force he could muster. The toy bounced off the dully gleaming hide and fell harmlessly to the floor. The Hound drifted toward Taguster, firing tube open. Timothy found an ashtray, tried to lift it but could not manage. He cursed the limitations of his power. Then he remembered the gun on the desktop, lying opposite the pencils, heavy and ugly. He touched the pistol psionically, but could not budge it. He pressed harder, eventually moved it slightly until the barrel pointed directly at the Hound. Pulling the light wire of the trigger was easy enough. The gun spat a narcodart that bounced off the beast with no effect other than to elicit a scanning by its sight receptors. Then the Hound shot Taguster. Four times in the chest. Timothy felt as if all his energy had been sucked out of him by an electronic vampire. He wanted only to fold up, shrivel in upon himself, and slide home into his temporal shell where, at least, he could gain succor from his books, his films, his house. But he could not let the Hound escape. He sent the cameras swiveling in search of articles small enough for his talent to handle. He found a number of trinkets and figurines and rained these uselessly upon the machine. The Hound surveyed the chamber, perplexed, firing darts in the direction of the hurled souvenirs, unable to discover its assailant. Then it turned a spatter of darts on the receiver head and floated out of the room, out of the house and away . . .<\/p>\n

CHAPTER 2<\/p>\n

For a time, Ti remained in the living-room staring at Taguster’s corpse. He felt too emotionally weakened to move elsewhere. Memories flipped past his mind like a parade of lizards, tail flicking after tail, cold claws sunk into his brain. With each came more realization that there would be no more experiences with Taguster, no more conversations to be stored for later retrieval and reflection. What he remembered now was all that he would ever have. When a friend dies, it is much like a candle flame being snuffed\u2014the warmth and brightness gone, leaving a vague recollection of what it had once been like. He broke from Taguster’s receiver and allowed his mind to flow into the Mindlink beam, through the penumbra landscape, back into his own body. He sat for a moment, regaining lost energies, and slowly became aware of the tears welling out of his eye and running down his pallid, clammy skin. He was not crying so much for Taguster as for himself \u2014for the one thing he feared more than all else was loneliness. Those days and nights when he had been hopelessly immobile in the government hospital preyed on him now. The forgotten terror of being unable to communicate was renewed and metamorphosed into anguish. There were few men with minds as alert and as deeply structured as his own, few who could possibly be close friends. Indeed, Taguster was the only one he had ever called friend . . . and now he had no one at all. The flow of his own tears finally forced him to lift the helmet from his head and shut off the machine, forced him to come to grips with the situation. If his greatest weakness was his almost irrational fear of loneliness, then his greatest Strength was his ability to stand alone. His weakness and his strength were two sides of one coin. He sat there, letting the tears dry on his face, and thought through the events of the last half hour. Ordinarily, he would have wasted no time in summoning the police. But it had been a Hound that had murdered Taguster, and that was a distinct complication. If some\u2014or any\u2014legal authorities had conspired to take the musician’s life then it was madness to let them know there was a witness to their murder. He had to know more of the story behind the killing, though he had nothing but a name: Margle. He rose from the cup-chair and crossed the room, moved through a painting-lined corridor and into the library he prized so much. He threw a toggle along the wall, next to the comscreen; a panel slid back, revealing a computer keyboard, a direct line to the Enterstat computer. He punched out the letters of the name and depressed the bar marked FULL DATA REPORT. Thirty seconds later, a printed stat sheet popped out of the information receival slot and into the plastic tray, glistening wetly. He waited a moment for it to dry, then reached with a servo and picked it up, shaking it to release any static that might make it curl. He held it up and read it, blinking now and then as a stray breath of the copying fluid drifted upward and stung his eye. Klaus Margle. He was connected with the Brethren, the underworld organization that had encroached on the territory once held sacrosanct by the older Mafia\u2014and had finally deposed and destroyed the elder organization because it controlled the supply of PBT. PBT had replaced nearly all other drugs and quasi-drugs in man’s eternal quest to avoid the un-pleasantries of modern life. Since gambling and prostitution had been dignified by liberalized laws, drugs had become the chief commodities of the underworld. It was rumored that Margie was the chief Don of the intricate counterculture of illegality, though this information could not be checked for authenticity. Physically, he was six feet tall and weighed two hundred and eighteen pounds. His hair was dark, but his eyes were a surprising baby blue. He had a three-inch scar along his right jawline: source unknown. He was missing a thumb on his right hand: reason for amputation unknown. He believed in taking part in the common dangerous chores of his organization; he would not send one of his men to do something he had not once done himself\u2014or would flinch from doing now. He was a man of action, not a desk-chained executive. He currently dated Polly London, the rising young senso-starlet who had appeared in Enterstat’s glamour section more often than any other woman. Klaus Margle. End of information. This explained the Hound and brought a touch of sanity to the surreal atmosphere of the crime. The underworld could obtain anything it wanted; it was rumored that half the city’s officials were on the gift sheet of the Brethren. Through one or more of those men, Margle’s people had secured the Hound. Which made it quite possible that Timothy would be putting his nonexistent foot into a nasty patch of briars if he should contact the police. Punching the number for the Enterstat editor’s private desk phone, he waited while the comscreen rang the number. The two-dimensional medium was almost entirely a business service now that the three-dimensional, full sensory Mindlink had taken over communications for more intimate purposes. It also served as a very private means of contact for people like Timothy. In a moment, the blank screen popped with color, and the face of George Creel, Enterstat’s editor, swam into view like a fish speeding toward the side of his glass aquarium. It settled into proper proportions, held still. The big man’s melancholy eyes stared out at Timothy. “Morning,” he said. “What’s going on?” There was no subservience in his tone of voice, though he had a great deal of respect for his boss. It was the sort of respect that did not need to be vocalized, for both of them knew it existed. Ti also regarded Creel highly. The man was efficient, intelligent, and had gone through enough years of hardship and terror to be tempered into a fine precision instrument. Creel was black, and had been eleven years old during the Black Wars. He lived in Chicago when that city attempted to break away from the rest of the nation. The boy survived the final battles when many children had not, and the years of distrust and hatred which followed molded this present man. “I want some information on a story prospect, George.” “Writing again?” Creel asked. “Just something that interested me,” Timothy said, hoping he could hide his roiling emotions. “Who is it?” “Klaus Margle. He dates Polly London. Missing a thumb on his right hand. Scarred on his face. And he may be the Don of the most influential family in the Brethren.” “I’ll put some researchers on it. Tomorrow okay?” “I want it inside an hour.” “It’ll take four or five good men.” “Deadlines too tight?” “No,” Creel said. “I can spare them. Call you in an hour.” He signed off on his own authority, his face dwindling until it had disappeared altogether. Timothy mixed himself a strong whiskey sour and waited. The quiet of the house seemed unnatural. But even after he slipped a cartridge into the stereo tape deck, the place seemed hollow, like a pavilion after a political congregation: cold. He was glad for the strident buzz of the comscreen an hour later. “He’s some fellow, isn’t he,” Creel said. “Stat it,” Timothy said, anxious to see what the staff had found. Creel placed the documents under his recorder scope, one sheet at a time, then punched the transmit button. Moments later, wet copies dropped into the tray in Ti’s wall. He restrained himself from rushing forward to look at them. Creel, he could tell, was already too interested. Timothy did not want to blow any of this until he knew exactly what was going on. It was not that he did not trust Creel. It was only that he trusted himself more. Creel would have acted the same way. When all the papers had been received, he thanked the observant black man and rang off. Nestled in a comfortable cup-chair, power off in his grav-plates, servos holding the data sheets, he thought he could see Leonard Taguster’s face in the print, formed by the letters. He quickly blinked the illusion away and studied the reports. When he had finished reading everything the researchers had found on Klaus Margle, he knew beyond doubt that the man was the chief of the Brethren. The list of other underworld figures assumed liquidated under his auspices became awesome. By studying the list, Timothy could see the story of an industrious and ruthless criminal genius assassinating his way up the ranks and into the top roost. The information also showed that it had been a wise move not to contact the police. Klaus Margle had been arrested nine different times\u2014and had been released each time for “lack of evidence.” If the police investigated this, without strong supportive evidence, Margle would go free. Then he would come hunting a societal reject named Timothy . . . He was thankful, now, for his self-sufficiency. This business could not be turned over to police until he had possession of conclusive evidence that Margle could not buy his way out of. He was going to have to handle it himself, using all the connections in his power and every point of his high IQ. Activating his grav-plates, he went to the Mindlink set, slid in, and coupled up. He was not going to enjoy returning to that house where the musician and the girl lay in their own blood. It was bad enough losing a friend, but to have to handle that friend’s corpse in the manner he planned made him distinctly ill. A moment later he was settling into the brain blank in Leonard Taguster’s living-room receiver. The body was still there, twisted grotesquely in death agonies. He looked quickly away, but found his eyes drawn back like metal filings to a magnet. He focused the cameras on the closet door he wanted. He hoped Taguster still kept the thing where he used to. Ti palmed open the closet door with his psionic power. Warning lights flashed amber and red, and a loud clanging alarm sounded. He shut those off and looked inside\u2014at a perfect likeness of the musician, except that, unlike its model, it was not full of pins and slicked with blood. Taguster had commissioned the production of the simulacrum to help him avoid the adulation of his fans. It always forced its way through crowds, bullied past young girls waiting at his hotel\u2014while he walked quietly in the back door or followed an hour later when the people had gone. Its complex brain was cored with Taguster’s memory tapes and his psychological reaction patterns, making it possible for the fake to pass as the real even in the company of casual friends \u2014although someone as close to him as Timothy could not be fooled for more than a moment. Ti reached psionically under the flowered sportscoat the machine wore and brought it to active status; its eyes opened, unclouded, and attained the same penetrating gaze that Taguster was famous for. “You,” Ti said. “Come here.” But despite the fact that he was trying to be businesslike, his voice was hoarse. It walked out of the closet and stopped before the receiver. For a moment, Timothy could not bear to order it to do anything; it seemed as if such an act would demean the memory of the real Taguster. But such orders were necessary to the success of the plan. “You recognize my voice?” he asked it. “Yes.” “And that I am one who is permitted to give you instructions?” “Yes.” “Sim, there is a young woman at the window in the bedroom. Dead. Get her and bring her into the utility room off the kitchen. Don’t spill her blood on the carpet. Go.” The robotic device walked briskly off toward the bedroom with the same slight lopsided gait that had been his master’s. A moment later it returned, the woman’s body cradled in its arms. The blood had ceased to flow and was drying in her nightdress. She had been a truly beautiful woman\u2014but there was no time to contemplate that now. The simulacrum stalked across the room and out of sight. Timothy shifted into the kitchen receiver and watched the machine carry her into the utility room. He could see only a portion of that area through the open door, for there was no receiver in there. “Empty the freezer,” he directed the simulacrum. It complied, piling the hams and roasts and vegetables on the floor. “Now put her body inside.” It did this too. Ti tried not to envision the bloodied girl-corpse lying in the rime-frosted icebox . . . He directed the robot to retrieve Taguster’s corpse and to do the same with it as with the woman. If it should require any length of time for his plan to work through, he wanted to be certain the bodies were well preserved for a future autopsy. It was gruesome, but it was the only thing he could do. He had seen worse things in his lifetime, of course . . . When both bodies were in the freezer and the food they replaced was dumped into the incinerator chute, he sent the simulacrum about the house cleaning up all traces of the murders, scrubbing blood from floorboards and carpet, washing the wall down where the musician had scribbled on it. When the machine-man had finished, the place looked completely normal, quiet and serene. “Sit down and wait for me,” he directed it. It complied. Timothy returned home on the Mindlink beam. In his library, he hovered before his typewriter and used his nimble servos to compose a new headline story for the four-thirty edition. Polly London would surely read the paper to see if she were mentioned, and it was quite conceivable that she would pass along this story to Margle if Margle didn’t subscribe to Enterstat himself. When he finished the piece, he rang Creel on the comscreen. The face ballooned out of the center of the tube, and the shiny black eyes gazed out. “Was the data complete enough?” he asked. “Fine, George. Look, I have another story that goes in the four-thirty edition. Tear out the lead already in the master starter, no matter what it is, and put this in with two-inch caps.” “Stat it,” Creel said. He did. Seconds later, he saw it drop Into Creel’s desk tray. The editor picked it up and read it over. “What’s the headline?” he asked, picking up a grease pencil. Ti considered a moment. “Ah\u2014CONCERT GUITARIST VICTIM OF WOULD-BE KILLER.” “He’s not got that sort of reputation with the average middle-age gossip seeker. And the murder wasn’t even a success. So you’ve got reasons beyond putting out a good edition.” “Yes,” Ti said. Creel waited a moment. When he saw he was not going to get any further details, he nodded his head and broke the connection. Ti returned to the Mindlink set and to Taguster’s house. The simulacrum was waiting where he had left it, hands folded demurely in its lap. That was the quickest way to delineate between the mechanical and the real man. Leonard Taguster had been a man supercharged with nervous energy, always moving, doing, looking, reading, talking, feeling. He would never have sat anywhere in such patient anticipation. Ti considered his next set of directions a moment, and then said, “Call the Harvard Detective Agency and contract one of their best investigators. Tell him an attempt was made on your life and that you want him to discover who was behind it Tell him you want to see him tomorrow after you’ve compiled what information you can. Four o’clock tomorrow, tell him.” The simulacrum followed Ti’s instructions. Then it turned to Ti as the screen went blank behind it. “Anything else?” “Not yet. You might as well go inactive.” When the machine had returned to its chair, Ti used his psi talent to palm the shut-off switch beneath the loud sportscoat. The thing sagged in its chair; its eyes clouded, and in a moment it seemed to be asleep. At four-thirty, Enterstat would report an unsuccessful attempt on Taguster’s life and that the Harvard Agency had been hired to investigate. If Margle read the story, he would call Harvard, perhaps posing as a friend willing to pay Taguster’s bill, concerned about the musician’s welfare. The firm would either agree or say Mr. Taguster would have to approve. And Margle would think his man was still alive. Then, given his propensity for personal involvement, Margle just might take it upon himself to discover first-hand why the police Hound had failed in its mission. Timothy was counting on that. He waited, nervously . . .<\/p>\n

Ti had everything prepared. The movie camera was positioned back in his own house, right next to the Mindlink set, ready to be jacked in and record on film whatever transpired in the house of Leonard Taguster. If only Margle would show . . . At ten to ten, the comscreen burred. And burred again . . . Quickly, he activated the android. Its eyes blinked, unclouded. It stood erect and strode off to the comscreen just as naturally as if it had been awakened from a sound nap. It punched to receive the call. The big screen lighted, although no image was being received\u2014just dazzling whiteness. The android, though, was transmitting and being received. Klaus Margle\u2014for who else would not want his face seen on the comscreen?\u2014was getting a full-face view of the man he had ordered destroyed and had thought dead. “Who is this?” the simulacrum asked. There was no reply. “Who is this?” The comscreen went dead. The other party had rung off without saying a word. The android returned to his chair and looked at the Mindlink receiver. “Did I act correctly under the circumstances?” “Yes. Yes, you did.” “Then, would you tell me what those circumstances are? If I am to perform as well as expected, I must be thoroughly grounded in the situation.” The simulacrum was not in the least interested in its master’s death, which it surely must have grasped by now, having helped to dispose of the corpse. It was only concerned with meeting expectations. Timothy was not sure whether a machine benefited or suffered from its lack of humanity. After a briefing, they sat in silence. When darkness came, they turned on the softest lights. At ten o’clock, Timothy realized he had not eaten anything all day\u2014and that he was terribly thirsty as well. But he dared not leave the receiver to attend to the needs of his body. Margle might arrive while he was gone. At a quarter after eleven, then, they heard the first sounds of the intruder . . .<\/p>\n

CHAPTER 3<\/p>\n

There was the crackling of wood splintering under great strain, then a sharp crash as the kitchen door was wrenched from its frame. The simulacrum rose and strode off toward the kitchen. Timothy shifted into the receiver there. The door was, indeed, bowed out of its frame, shivering as something heavy struck it again and again from the other side. Then it gave; the latch ripped loose and clattered noisily across the room. The door swung inward; the house had been breached. Beyond floated the Hound . . . At first, Timothy was confused, unable to understand why Margle would have sent the same mechanism to do what it had failed at once before. Then he understood that there must be men outside, waiting, and he felt better. Mentally he smiled as he realized that the Hound might very well fail again, since the simulacrum was not vulnerable to any of its weapons. The Hound detected the mechanical Taguster, lurched, and whined almost like a real dog. It surged through into the gloomy kitchen and fired half a dozen darts. The pins struck in the pseudo-flesh of the simulacrum, but the poison could do nothing to its nonhuman system of wires and tubes. The Hound swung to the left and shot another six darts into the mechanical’s side. Again, the weapon failed to kill or cripple. The simulacrum advanced on the Hound. Ordering its servos ahead, the Hound latched metal fingers around the fake Taguster’s neck. The second servo battered at the simu-flesh face. The simulacrum’s nose bent. It reached up and grabbed the Hound’s servos, tearing them loose from itself. It turned and rammed the ends of the metal hands against the walls, snapping some of the fingers. Pieces of metal tinkled on the floor. Wires and insulation hung from the shattered digits. The hands of the Hound floated where they were, grav-plates still operational but unable to heed the commands of their master. Ti ordered it captured and destroyed. The simulacrum moved forward and grabbed the sphere. The Hound strained to move away from the machine-man, but it was no match for the powerful arms that restricted its movement. It shot darts into the simulacrum’s chest, but to no avail. The fake Taguster dragged the assassination machine across the room and thrust it hard against the wall again and again until the housing over the grav-plates buckled. It ripped the housing off, pulled the plates from their connections, and tossed them across the room, where they floated above the sink. “Toss it back outside,” Timothy said. The simulacrum obliged, walking onto the platform of the rear patio and heaving the alloy beast over the edge. There was an explosion of sound as what had been the Hound struck the driveway. It shattered into a dozen or more large pieces; nuts and bolts and slivers of glass rolled across the pavement. The simulacrum came inside again and crossed to the receiver. It was time for more waiting. Minutes passed, then half an hour, and Ti began to worry that they might have scared off the men outside. Just as he was ready to verbalize his fears to the simulacrum, there was the unmistakable sound of shoes squeaking on the patio stairs coming up from the rear lawn. Timothy dropped into the Mindlink beam, returned home, and activated the cameras filming off the visual two-dimensional comscreen. When he returned to Taguster’s home, frantic he would have missed something, the Brethren gunmen had not yet arrived. They entered two seconds later, preceded by tear gas grenades. The kitchen filled with acrid blue-green fumes that soon roiled through into every room in the house. Moments later, three dark figures came through the doorway wearing breathers and waving pin guns around like small boys playing with newly purchased toys. Timothy focused the cameras on them and was elated when he discovered Margle’s face. He did not take the cameras off their faces, but the intruders were oblivious to him. When they saw the simulacrum, they decided it was Taguster with a breather of his own, and they opened fire. The darts sank in the robot’s chest, but they had no effect The machine continued to advance on them. One of the trio palmed the light switch. In the ensuing brilliance, they saw all the darts puncturing the simulacrum and knew the thing for what it was. They holstered their guns, moved in on it, pinned its arms, and shut down its systems. “Search the place,” Margle ordered. His voice, Timothy was surprised to discover, was rather reedy, ineffectual, almost silly. Yet it had a quality of viciousness that demanded it be obeyed. When they had searched the enormous house to their satisfaction, they met in the kitchen again. Timothy followed them via the receiver. They exchanged negative reports, and as Margle was outlining a suggestion for a search of the grounds, one of the henchmen with him noticed the soft light of the bulb on the Mindlink set, indicating the occupation of the brain blank. He pointed it out to Margle and approached the set with his gun butt drawn back to smash the glass in. “No!” Margle snapped, pushing the man aside, hunkering directly before the cameras so that Timothy had a full-face view of the scarred, angry features. Timothy saw that Klaus Margle had that same cool efficiency, the same self-confidence that he and Creel possessed. But it went further than that. In the terror and pain of getting to the top, Klaus Margle had rejected the smaller goal of learning to cope and command in favor of the larger goal of being able to dominate and demand. It was the same chilly madness that infected dictators. “We’ll trace you,” Margle said. And Timothy knew that was true. The Brethren could easily afford the services of a Mind-link technician who would not be against picking up a tidy sum for some swift extracurricular\u2014and extralegal\u2014work. “Well trace you, and then we’ll come for you.” He grinned. It was an almost effeminate grin, his lips too full and sensuous for that scarred and battered countenance. Then he raised his pistol butt and smashed in the glass . . .<\/p>\n

Half an hour later, just as Timothy finished running the film through automatic developing equipment, Detective Modigliani arrived from the city police in response to the call Ti had placed immediately after returning home from Taguster’s house. At first, there had been some hesitance about sending a detective to the house, since Timothy refused even to state what his problem was. But when they had discovered who he was, all the red tape seemed to shred through like crepe paper. Modigliani was a thin, intense man with a pencil mustache and a quick way of moving that made him seem somehow birdlike. He introduced himself in tight, sharp words, his voice thin and almost irritating. Ti ushered him into the living room with all the courtesy he possessed, correctly deciding that Modigliani was not the type to respond to more forceful techniques. When they were both seated, the thin man said, “This is most unusual.” “It’s an unusual case.” “Tell me.” He made it seem as if Timothy was the criminal and not the good citizen reporting a violation of the law. When Ti finished the story without eliciting even a raised eyebrow from the detective, Modigliani said, “Quite extraordinary. And you say you have the film?” “Yes.” Modigliani scowled. His eyes were hooded cobra eyes. “You’ve invaded someone’s privacy, you know.” “What? Modigliani did not move any part of his body even a fraction of an inch. It seemed he was carved of stone. “It’s an invasion of privacy to use the communications media to photograph others in their own homes.” “But I was getting ‘evidence!” Timothy protested, already aware that protest was useless. “That’s the work of the police,” Modigliani countered. “I know,” Ti said desperately, trying to hold his rising anger in check as he rose from his cup-chair, “that Klaus Margle has been arrested nine times without serving any time whatsoever.” Modigliani shifted forward a little at the waist, as if the stone sculpture was cracking. “What are you suggesting?” Again, he had the look of a bird\u2014a predatory bird. Ti restrained himself. “Nothing. Nothing. But would you like to see the films? That’s what I asked you here for.” Modigliani nodded his interest, and Timothy led the way into the library, where the projector and screen were prepared. He dimmed the room lights. The projector hummed, and the screen was filled with images out of a surreal fantasy. Eddying clouds of smoke, then three dark figures with small breathers clamped in their nostrils. The picture zoomed in on the leader of the raiding party, and there was Klaus Margle. Ti shivered at the cruel, delicate yet scarred face of the underworld Don. But there was only his face. As the film progressed, Ti discovered he had been so anxious to get good shots of Margle’s face that he had missed all the damning action they had been involved in. The camera had been trained only on their heads, catching only hints of the fight with the fake Taguster. The threatening face of the last few feet of film lost all force when the words and their harsh tone were absent. It was almost a friendly smile without the words behind it. The film stuttered, slipped, was gone. “Not much,” Modigliani said. When Timothy weakly began to argue, the detective interrupted. “Faces.” You could have filmed Mr. Margle almost anywhere.” “But the tear gas\u2014” “And I didn’t see him killing anyone. I still think we should be concerned with an invasion of privacy here, rather than murder.” Timothy saw the futility of disagreement, but he felt bound to argue. In the end, he could manage only to persuade Modigliani to call Taguster’s house. Either the receiver would be broken, giving credence to his story, or they would meet Klaus Margle and his men. But, to Ti’s horror and surprise, Leonard Taguster’s face popped onto the comscreen, smiling. “Yes?” he asked. Modigliani turned and gave Timothy an I-told-you-so look of infuriating cheerfulness. “It’s the simulacrum,” Timothy hissed. Modigliani turned to the fake Taguster, explained the details of the situation. The mechanical Taguster laughed heartily at the notion he might be dead and agreed to allow the detective to inspect his house through the Mindlink receivers there, fully confident nothing would be found. Five minutes later, Modigliani had been there through Mindlink and had examined the place in detail. “Nothing,” he told Timothy as he removed the normal helmet which Ti kept for the convenience of guests who couldn’t very well use the one specially formed for his misshapen skull. “The kitchen receiver\u2014” “Was in fine working order. I don’t know what you wish to prove\u2014” “They had the services of a technician, an electronics expert. In an hour and a half, it could just have been done.” “And Taguster?” “That was not Taguster! It was his simulacrum, damn it!” “Sims will do nothing to harm their masters; Leonard Taguster’s sim would never protect his owner’s murderers. Besides, the killers would have to be among those whose voices the robot was programed to obey. You’ve told me that only Taguster, his manager, and you have that ability.” “They could have reprogramed the machine,” Timothy said. “That takes a real expert,” Modigliani said, feigning obviously phony surprise at such a suggestion. “You know as well as I that they could afford it. And they could have had just enough time to fix that bent nose, too.” Modigliani’s seeming stupidity was beginning to annoy Timothy until he wasn’t able to suppress his rage any longer. His twisted face flushed and his servos danced nervously. Then Modigliani gave him the name of the game. “Sir, I must caution you to refrain from slander. Mr. Klaus Margle is nothing more sinister than the owner of several garages and restaurants. A hotel too, I think. He is a respectable businessman who should not have to suffer abuse that\u2014” Ti interrupted. “You know damn well that Klaus Margle is\u2014” “This is being recorded, and you must be informed of that if you intend making actionable statements.” He parted the halves of his coat to reveal the mini-recorder strapped to his chest. It was obvious now why Modigliani was being hard-headed. He’d been bought. When he had learned that the accused was Klaus Margle, he had seen where his duty had lain\u2014and it wasn’t with truth or the police department. Ti realized his own rage would be interpreted as the inane prattling of a misfit when the time came for Modigliani to prove him an unreliable witness. Any jury, hearing the tape, seeing the twisted form it had issued from, would declare Margle innocent. He had never felt more isolated and alone. “I’ll have the film and be going,” Modigliani said, returning to the library. Timothy floated quickly after him, but he was too late. When he came through the library doors, the detective had removed the film from the projector and was returning, the cartridge tucked firmly under his arm. “You can’t have that!” Ti snapped. “You violated a man’s privacy. Well have to show this to Mr. Taguster and see if he wishes to place charges against you. We will be in contact with you in the near future.” And he was gone. Timothy stood at the window, watching the detective leave. He knew full well that the film would be destroyed between here and police headquarters. The tape record would be edited as Modigliani saw fit before it was placed in police files. And the detective would receive a bonus from the Brethren this month, a bonus for a job well done\u2014if not exactly in the interests of the public he had sworn to serve. He returned to Taguster’s house, ignored the simulacrum, which was reading a book and greeted him cheerily. He went from room to room, looking for even the smallest sign of murder or of the later presence of the Brethren gunmen. He found nothing. He returned home. In despair and frustration, he pounded the leather of the Mindlink cup-chair with his servo-hands. Then, when his rage subsided, he saw he had clawed and ripped it until the stuffing showed through in many places. Now he was no longer able to weep for the loss of the musician; now there was only a cool, deep hatred for those people\u2014and a determination to get them, to kill them. Strangely, the thought of murder did not repulse him, though he had always been extremely nonviolent. He had reached that time in his life\u2014as most men eventually do\u2014when powers greater than he had so relentlessly and ruthlessly backed him into a comer and begun shredding at the fabric of his life that no response was too excessive. With many men, it is the government, a king or a dictator or a president. With others, it is a large corporation, a blank bureaucratic monolith without a single shred of humanity. For Timothy, it was these men who took the law into their own hands\u2014with the blessings of the authorities who earned part of their living from them. Fury. It was worthwhile sometimes. Now, as he waited for the arrival of Klaus Margle, he did everything possible to nurture it . . .<\/p>\n

CHAPTER 4<\/p>\n

He stood at the window, nervously watching the night. Time ticked by like water dripping from a faucet. Behind him, there was a pistol from his collection propped between a stack of books, aimed at chest-level on the door. He could trigger it with his psionic powers when the time came. In his servo-hands were two more weapons. There was no use asking for police help. All calls would be routed to Modigliani, and that would be a dead end. These lethal devices were all he had to stop them from killing him as nonchalantly as they had killed Taguster. He heard them as they entered the courtyard behind the house. They made no attempt to keep silent, blundering noisily along to let him know they had no fear. Footsteps on the pavement. Then a soft burst of laughter . . . The door rattled, shook. It crashed inward as the Hound, yet another one, smashed through in a cloud of wood splinters. Ti had not been expecting this at all. His guns were absolutely useless. He turned into the dining area, dropping the pistols and calling his servos after him. He had been expecting men, not machines. Now what? He heard the Hound in the kitchen, but by the time he reached the living room, it was humming into the dining area, on his heels. Don’t panic, he told himself. Don’t panic\u2014just hate. It’s only the hate that will save you. The Hound entered the room, sensed his presence, sought him with its cameras and radar grids, ascertaining if he were the proper quarry or not. It would only need a split second to make that decision . . . He sought an escape route\u2014though he realized that the great house which was equipped to sustain him in luxury was not equally appointed to preserve him from death. The place would be surrounded; the doors were useless. Suddenly, he remembered the Revolutionary War cellars upon which the house was built. If he could get into those, there were countless outlets to other places on the mountain. The Hound fired three pins. Ti slammed down on his mobility sphere speed controls, streaked into the hall, through the cellar door and down the steps (there for the convenience of his legged guests). He crossed the Tri-D room and went into the shooting range, slamming the heavy door behind him. It was monstrously thick, resurrected from the Tory cellars. It was a munitions storehouse door, plated in lead. Even the Hound would require some time to break that down. He floated along the left wall where the cellars lay behind the thin skin of his house, stretching far back into the mountain. After the first four or five, which were man-made, the caves were rough and fortified. When he reached the end of the room, he used his servos to rip loose the half-round that filled in the corners of the plasti-wood paneling. Metal fingers gripped round that paneling, he proceeded to pry it away from the wall beams. He looked through, seconds later, into the cool darkness of the Tory cellars. Behind, the Hound struck the leaded door, hard. Unable to squeeze between the beams, Ti shifted his grav-plates so he lay on his side, then moved ball-first through the gap and into the darkness. Once inside, he shifted to vertical position and sent his servos back to restore the panel as best they could. It might confuse the demon machine for a few minutes, though it could not be a completely successful ruse. The Hound would be after him soon enough. Through the partition, he heard the door to the shooting range give; then it crashed inward to admit the Hound. He moved forward slowly, letting his eye adjust to the lack of light. Soon he could distinguish the outlines of fallen beams and broken tables, of rotted and shattered chairs, a few stretches of shelving that had once held ammunition but which were now bowed and warped away from the walls and covered with ugly lumps of fungus. He moved into the second cellar room. Behind him the Hound ripped loose the wall panel he had balanced in place, the sound echoing frantically in the cul-de-sacs of the Tory chambers. Light from the shooting range dispelled the gloom. The Hound came quickly after. Ti moved toward the third cellar at top speed. He slammed his shoulder stump into a half-fallen beam, but he kept moving, his hatred and his fear denying the pain his nerves insisted was there. The Hound came faster. When he reached the entrance to the fifth cellar, Timothy found nature had conspired against him. There had been a cave-in, and the beams and rocks of the ceiling had collapsed to effectively bar his escape. With the Hound at his neck, there was no time to break through. He turned on his pursuer. Its sensors gleamed in the dim light, thirty feet away. It fired three pins . . . He moved aside as he saw its intent. The darts studded the rubble wall behind him, where they quivered like arrows. He sent his servos to an overhead beam lying in the Hound’s path and had them worry its tenuous connections with the rotting ceiling. Just as the Hound passed beneath, the beam tore loose and crashed into it. The only effect was a momentary deflection in the machine’s course. The Hound swerved, bobbled, recovered in only moments and swept closer, firing another three pins. All three missed. Ti was surprised, for he had not had time to take evasive action\u2014and Hounds were not known for sloppy marksmanship. The Hound fired three more; again, they all missed. Ti abruptly realized he was turning them aside with his psionic power! The second time, he had been more conscious of his effort. Now he stood with his back to the collapsed ceiling, waiting the next attack. It fired, and the darts spun away to either side. Over the next several minutes, he deflected another two dozen of the slender spines. The Hound ceased shooting and bobbled gently from side to side, regarding him with its measuring devices. A moment later, it dispatched two servos for his neck . . . Reacting quickly, he called his own servos to him. Four feet from his face, the enemy’s hands and his own met and locked, metal fingers laced through metal fingers. He set full power into his hands and tried to snap the other set of prosthos. His hopes for a swift triumph were destroyed when he saw the Hound had similar ideas. Its own servos wrenched at his, the four members swaying back and forth in the air, gaining and losing the same space in a rhythmic duel. Finally, when both sets reached full power and stress, they did not move at all, but merely strained in frozen tableau against each other. The grav-plates on all four hands erupted almost simultaneously in smoke and sparks. The metal hands dropped to the floor as if they were a single creature, a metal bird with shot pellets in its wings. Now both hunter and hunted were handless. Hunter and hunted . . . Timothy realized the nomenclature was no longer adequate. With both of them handless, and with Ti able to neutralize the pin weapon, the balance of power had been equalized. As he moved past the Hound, he was aware that another facet of his power had made itself known tonight. Under moments of stress and anxiety, he seemed to acquire new abilities. The hate had been valuable, and he would still need it. And with his power to influence small objects in transit as well as when they were still, he might be able to give vent to the hatred when he encountered Klaus Margle. The Hound stopped following him when he moved into shooting range again. It bumped purposelessly against the beams, as if its mind had been in its hands and, losing them, it had lost all cleverness. Ti floated upstairs and stopped in the hallway to listen. He could hear footsteps in the kitchen . . . He was prepared for them. Confidence surged through him, augmenting his hate. He drifted into the living-room just as the gunmen walked in with their weapons drawn. “Your Hound is finished,” he said, drawing their attention from the areas of deeper shadow which they were cautiously exploring. The man on Margle’s left swung and fired. Timothy deflected all but one pin, lifted that and turned it back on the gunman. The dart sank into the Brother’s chest, its poison exploding into his bloodstream. He gagged, doubled over, and dropped. “I won’t kill you if you surrender,” Timothy said wearily. The hate was still there, but a deep welling sadness had joined it. Margle and the remaining man were crouched behind a sofa, unwilling to surrender merely because of a lucky shot. In the dark, they could not have seen that his hands were gone. “You’re crazy,” Margle said, his voice high and sharp, grating on the nerves. He was quiet, waiting for Timothy to speak and reveal his position. “Why did you kill Taguster?” Ti asked, remaining at the same place. “Why tell you?” Margle asked. There was a giggle in his voice, an edgy little laugh that sounded almost sadistic. Apparently, they could not see him yet. “You’re going to kill me. Or I’ll kill you. Whichever way, telling me why you murdered Taguster won’t make much difference, will it?” “He was on PBT,” Margle said. “What excuse does that give you for killing him?” To discover that their reason was so thin made the death seem all the more meaningless to Ti and resurrected the hatred which had begun to die in him. Margle chuckled, as if lax and unwatchful\u2014although he was not. His kind of man never was. “It was getting too expensive for him. He decided to gather information on us. The Narcotics Bureau has never been able to synthesize the stuff, even with samples they obtained. Taguster was trying to get enough to give them some sort of clue so that, in return, they would make him a legal addict Then he could get PBT free from supplies the UN has confiscated. One of his paid informers informed to us. We ransacked his house while he was out, found the file he had on us. Not much, but enough to get a good many people sold down the river\u2014which means something might leak to help the UN find out what the stuff is.” “That shouldn’t have bothered you. You could buy the authorities off.” “Local, not UN. Did you ever try bribing a UN delegate officer, the kind they have in narcotics? Impossible.” “So you killed him.” Margle was still trying to pin him down, keep him talking long enough to level a fairly accurate barrage at him. “The Hound did. You were pretty clever about that, you know. Had us worried. But calling the local constabulary\u2014now that was a stroke of pure idiocy. It made finding you much easier.” Ti knew enough now. There had been a side to Taguster he had not known. It hurt him a bit to think the musician had not fully trusted him, but all of that was past now. Taguster was dead. He moved toward the couch, making no effort to conceal himself. “There!” Margle shouted. Both men rose, seeing him in the same instant, and fired point-blank into his twisted body. He deflected all the pins. Then Ti was behind the couch and on top of them. They danced backwards, opening fire. He returned the pins, getting Margle in the cheek and the gunman in the neck. They died with such precision that it seemed like a grotesquely choreographed dance. He left the room and phoned Creel, getting him out of bed. He asked for two reporters and two cameramen to cover all angles of the incident. Creel, true to form, asked no questions; he merely wondered if he might come over too. He smiled slightly when Timothy said yes. As Ti waited for his people to arrive, a weariness settled over him like a hand sliding onto a glove. He had once made a promise to himself that he would never kill. It had been a way of making amends to the gods\u2014if there were gods\u2014 for having been the product of an experiment of war. And now he had broken that promise in order to avenge the death of his only close friend. It was going to take some time before he would be able to think this through, to learn and understand which was the most precious: integrity of one’s self, or unlimited love and devotion for another human being. He could not cry. He wished he could\u2014that might relieve the tension. But Taguster was dead, his mind and personality beyond retrieval, and the world still turned. The hate would have to be dissolved, burned down, disposed of. A man could not live with such hatred. No matter how he had been hurt. He decided that, after the statsheet people and the police left, he would get roaring drunk. And stay drunk for two or three days. And then everything would be fine. He was sure that would end it …<\/p>\n

CHAPTER 5<\/p>\n

A darkly painted personal grav-plate automobile, without benefit of any chrome fixtures, drifted up the mountainside in the dim wash of moonlight that managed to filter through the relatively heavy cloud cover of the humid summer night. The craft’s interior lights were off, as were its headlamps and its fore and aft warning beacons. It was nothing more than a shadow among other shadows, and its power plant had been insulated against emitting noise so that the illusion of ethereal unreality could be maintained; it was a ghost searching the night, nothing more. In the forest below, small animals scattered for cover into burrows and holes in rotted trees, somehow aware of the machine’s presence. But the rest of the world knew nothing of it Farther up the cliffside, an ultra-modern house jutted from the forest, perched precariously on thrusting fingers of rock. Despite its advanced design, it seemed an integral part of the natural forces around it. The driver of the grav-car had required several minutes, at first, to make out the lines of it. Now, as he drew closer, his admiration for its architecture increased, even though he would soon take steps to destroy it utterly. He held the car steady as it drew level with the house, and when he was certain it was deserted but for its owner and single occupant, he took his craft up again. When the car was above the roof of the house, with the entire grounds of the mansion visible below it, the driver put his machine on hold, opened his door, and released the package he had been sent to deliver. The package was a cylinder three feet long, tapered to a round bullet snout at both ends, with a central diameter of twenty inches. It was featureless, its burnished coppery metal husk shimmering in the moonlight. It was quite heavy, though it did not drop any faster than a bit of dandelion fluff might have. It slid level with the house, changed from vertical to horizontal progression, and passed by the long windows of the cliffside patio. It was noiseless and efficient-looking. And though its design gave no indication of its purpose, it had an air of deadliness about it. Overhead, the grav-car moved cautiously along the side of the mountain, hugging the dark, jagged shapes of the trees, and slipped swiftly into the envelope of the night. Only when it was a mile away did the driver flick on the lights. And even then he phased them in slowly to avoid drawing the attention of another craft or someone on the ground. Five minutes later, fully illuminated, he picked up speed and returned to the garage from which his mission had begun. And all the while, the Selective Assassination Module he had left behind him was cutting an entrance portal in the glass patio doors. A jointed arm extended from the anterior end, tipped with a diamond cutting edge. As it worked, a fine glass powder fell to the flagstones. When the work was near completion and all but a perfectly circumscribed entrance had been cut, a second arm appeared, spidery but agile, and attached itself by a suction cup to the glass that would be removed. When the final cut was made, this new arm removed the circle of glass from the door, lowered it onto the patio floor, and released it. It moved forward and into the darkened living-room. Timothy’s house had been breached once again, but with a far greater degree of subtlety than Klaus Margle had employed some two weeks ago . . . Though some moonlight found its way between the heavy velveteen drapes, the interior of the mansion was much darker than the night world beyond its confines. The SAM opened the receptivity of its visual scanners; two points on its anterior and two on its posterior, all the size of quarters, changed color from the fire-flecked coppery hue to yellow, emitting a slightly fuzzy amber radiance. The thin spindles of the tool arms had been retracted and left no trace of their exit and entry in the smooth hull. Other devices, as yet unused, could also be called forth and put away without trace. Such dexterity and heavy armament were possible through extreme microminiaturization; and the machine’s power source was not contained within its housing. It gained operational energy from a broadcasting generator some miles away. It was an expensive means of murder. Weapons Psionic, its makers, charged whatever the traffic would bear, limiting its clientele but clearing excellent profits on those devices it did construct. And, though expensive, it was foolproof. Weapons Psionic had no known headquarters, files, or staff. Though massive efforts had often been launched to discover the whereabouts of the company, both federal and United Nations police had failed miserably to uncover even a trace of it. Even the purchasers of its merchandise were ignorant of company’s home. But those who bought the SAM liked that, for it meant that none of them could sell out Weapons Psionic and thus destroy a valuable tool of the underworld. A SAM provided anonymity for the killer, a perfectly untraceable means of murder. And for men closely watched by the authorities, such a cold, clueless tool as this was priceless. The SAM’s supersensitive receptors began to function now. The heat sensors directed the killer’s attention toward a hallway on the right which more than likely lead to sleeping quarters. The aural pickups correlated the initial data by the heat sensors, and the assassin turned toward the hall. It allowed its “ears” to listen: light breathing, a ragged sound of air moving through deformed nasal passages. It permitted its heat sensors to probe longer: a quantity of body heat radiating from the very end of the corridor. It drifted quietly forward . . . At the end of the hall, it ceased forward progression and rose on a level with the bedroom door handle. A thread of metallic substance weaved out of the husk and disappeared into the door’s automatic mechanism. The seeking filament touched the motor within, and the portal slid soundlessly open. The SAM retracted the thread, hesitated, then slid forward into the dark, seeking . . . It located the twisted body of the mutant lying in the sling bed against the far wall. It called forth a dart nozzle from its anterior snout and fanned the body with fifty poisoned spines. There was no sound from the form as they sank in; the poison would be too swift for that. The SAM used the filament to turn on the overhead lights, then drew the thread back into its husk. When it was only half a dozen feet from the mutant, the amber light was bright enough to reveal that the target was not dead. There were no darts in it. Instead, the spines prickled the wall behind and littered the floor below. The assassin stopped, fired another series. They were deflected. Timothy rose from the sling bed and set his servos after the SAM. He was quite aware that the thing might have more than one weapons systems, and that if he did not act quickly he might end up a corpse despite the advantage of his psionic powers. The assassin drifted backward toward the door, but a servo slipped past it and closed the portal. Ti wondered if it wouldn’t be better to let it escape. Then he realized he would have nothing to show the authorities, no way to ascertain the identity of his assassin. He would be left waiting for their next attempt, helplessly\u2014like a man in a stalled car on railroad tracks, watching the locomotive screaming toward him . . . A nozzle protruded from the SAM’s husk, spewing a napalm-like chemical. But the deadly bright flames did no harm, since Timothy was able to deflect the chemicals on which the flames depended. A moment later, his servos clasped the device at each blunt end and held it still. Timothy flushed a wave of psionic power through the cylinder, flicking closed all the switches in the SAM’s guts, which all succumbed to the relatively light pressure of his ESP ability. The slight yellow luminosity of the sight sensors vanished as the device opaqued its hull and was still. In seconds, it had ceased to be a flame-spouting, dangerous antagonist and had become a docile hunk of metal. Cautiously, he directed his servos to release the weapon. They moved away from it, and it did not respond in any fashion. Since its grav-plates generated their own power, it remained weightless, though stationary. He took the cylinder down the corridor, through the living room, into the library. On the keyboard of the Enterstat computer, he punched: REQUEST SOURCE OF THIS DEVICE. DESCRIPTION AS FOLLOWS. After the description, in which he did not ignore any detail no matter how trivial, he pushed for a full data report. While he waited, he decided it must be the Brethren who were after him; surely his murdering Klaus Margle would have temporarily angered the man’s cohorts. Then again, he had opened a position in the hierarchy of the underworld, and he could only have made a friend of the man who filled it. Yet only the money of the full organization could have purchased a device such as this; a splinter group of Margle’s friends could never have financed it. His thoughts were interrupted as the data started into the receival tray. He picked up the sheet, startled by the brevity of the report on something so intriguing as the assassination device: SOURCE OF WEAPON: WEAPONS PSIONIC . . . ADDRESS UNKNOWN . . . NO MEANS OF CONTACTING WP; MAKES OWN CONTACTS WITH PROSPECTIVE CUSTOMERS . . . NO OFFICES . . . NO FILES . . . NO EMPLOYEES . . . WEAPONS CANNOT BE TRACED TO PURCHASER IN ANY KNOWN MANNER . . . WEAPONS CANNOT BE TRACED TO POINT OF PRODUCTION . . . PARTS OF WEAPONS CANNOT BE TRACED TO POINT OF PRODUCTION. This was all very interesting, but it put him no further ahead. Someone had been contacted by Weapons Psionic and had agreed to purchase the killer. But who? And if it was the Brethren\u2014why? He would have to answer that before he went to the police, if he went to them at all. And to get his answers, he would need to know more about this device. He went to the comscreen and called George Creel’s home number. When the screen lit, after a long wait, Creel looked like something that had climbed out of the paleozoic swamps a little behind schedule and had lain all day on the mud banks trying to decide whether it could grow legs fast enough to survive. “Remind me not to call you in the middle of the night,” Timothy said. “I just ruined my breakfast.” Creel grinned. His features firmed up when he saw who was phoning, and he looked halfway human again. “What is it?” he asked, the words distorted by a yawn he could not quite stifle. “Have you ever heard of a company called Weapons Psionic?” “Bad,” Creel said, making a face. “What about them?” “We have a story concerning them tomorrow. You heard the name Wallengrine?” “Sounds familiar.” “Herbert Wallengrine was heir to the Wallengrine plastics fortune, twenty-seven years old. His father died eight months ago, and the will was settled four months later. Seven hundred million involved. Herbert Wallengrine was killed by one of these robotic assassins\u2014attacked his grav-car while it was in flight, destroyed the engine. But when it couldn’t get at the grav-plates through the heavy armoring, it smashed through the windscreen, slammed into his chest, and self-destructed. They’ve arrested his wife on suspicion, but she knows as well as they do that\u2014even if it was her\u2014they’ll never prove it. She stood to inherit every dime of the seven hundred million. Besides that, it was well known she had taken on a lover and that Wallengrine was planning a divorce on grounds of unsanctioned adultery, cutting her off without a penny.” He paused. “We’re using it on page two.” “Do we have any contacts who could dismantle one of these machines?” Creel examined Timothy’s image carefully. “You have one?” “Let’s say my question is academic. Do we know a good electronics man who might be able to handle it?” “Lambertson,” Creel said. “We’ve used him on a few things before, to take apart bombs so we could get an exclusive on the story.” “Can you get in touch with him now?” Creel shrugged. “I will. Whether hell come or not is up to him, of course. But with the money we can offer and the word that this is a SAM he has at his disposal, he’ll probably jump at the chance.” “SAM?” Timothy asked. It was the first time he had heard its name. “Selective Assassination Module,” Creel said. “You didn’t buy it, then?” “No, George.” “It didn’t get sent to you, did it?” he asked, his dark face growing even darker. “Yes.” “That’s bad,” Creel said. “My, that is bad.” They said goodnight and broke the connection almost simultaneously.<\/p>\n

Walter Lambertson was a huge, heavily muscled man with a lumbering walk and a face flushed by too many years of drinking. He carried a large toolbox and met Timothy by the patio doors after laboriously climbing out of the grav-car which seemed half again too small for him. “That’s where it got in, eh?” he asked, his voice a gruff rumble. He did not even bother with introductions but proceeded right to business. Timothy decided the world could not be totally insane if heroically proportioned men like Lambertson still strode the earth. Timothy took him into the library, where the big man expressed surprise at the size of the killer. “You’ve got one of the biggest I’ve ever seen,” he said. “Must have one hell of a lot of guts to it.” He listened to Timothy’s story while he unpacked his tools. There were dozens of pieces of equipment in the box, most of them no larger than a man’s hand with working ends so minute that the purpose of them was unfathomable. “I’m afraid you’ll have to leave,” Lambertson said when he had everything arranged on squares of white felt. “It’s damn hard work, and it can’t bear distractions. Sorry.” Ti nodded; he waited until Lambertson grasped the SAM, and then left the room with his servos trailing behind. He shut the door and continued into the living room, where he made himself a stiff drink and sat down to wait. He realized, halfway through the drink, that the hatred which had dissipated in him had begun to flower again. It was not a hatred for the men of the Brethren so much as hatred for their attitudes, their outlooks and visions. Why couldn’t men just leave each other alone? Why was it necessary to fight and kill and always resort to violence before thought? When he finished the drink, hatred alive and well now, another grav-car came in over the trees and settled onto the patio beside Lambertson’s vehicle. For a moment he tensed, wondering if this were the Brethren follow-up team checking on the success of the SAM. Then he saw Creel’s face as the man walked into the patio lights, and he relaxed. “I tried to get to sleep,” Creel said as Ti met him at the door. “But I couldn’t manage it, knowing what was happening over here. Where is he?” Ti motioned toward the library and explained that Lambertson required privacy for the operation. Briefly he recounted the events of the night to Creel. As he was finishing, Lambertson opened the library door and called to them. He had cracked the nut and dissected the meat of the machine in a little under two hours. In the library, the floor was littered with parts of machinery, all quite small and intricately formed. Lambertson had laid things out in rows, each row representing a weapons system. “What was in it?” Ti asked. “This was the dart system,” Lambertson said, pointing to a line of parts. “I was very careful not to touch the tips of the pins. They were discolored an odd green-blue\u2014tipped with something worse than narcotics. This,” he continued, pointing to a second conglomeration of pieces, “was a flame gun complete with a bulb of napalm. It would never last very long; only good for short bursts. But that’s all that is necessary with something as nasty as that.” “This?” Timothy asked. “Laser,” Lambertson said. “A cell containing energy enough for approximately five three-second blasts.” “And this?” “Projectile weapon. Shoots twenty-two-caliber slugs with explosive tips. Fourteen rounds contained in this barrel mechanism which revolved to spit each slug into the firing nozzle.” Even Lambertson’s rugged features were creased with distaste as he catalogued the killing devices. “And here,” he went on, now professionally enthusiastic over what he had found, “we have a gas grenade launcher with two grenades: these. Each no larger than a grape, but enough gas, poisonous or not, to blanket a room in seconds.” “So they built five weapons systems, all to get me,” Timothy said. “Six,” Lambertson corrected. He picked up a blocky part with a number of wires issuing from it. “This is a pack of highly compressed black powder. All it needed was an electric shock. If you hadn’t shut down the SAM when you did, it might very well have used this last resort and destroyed the house.” Lambertson waited for the news to sink in. Then: “Who do you know who would go to this expense and trouble to get you?” He cocked his head like a huge, quizzical Saint Bernard. “I don’t know,” Ti said. “I had thought the Brethren. But I can’t come up with a believable, sensible motive.” “I know a motive,” Creel said. “It was something I was going to tell you tomorrow and didn’t get to tell you on the comscreen earlier. Just found out about it today. The Brethren did this\u2014I’ll guarantee it. The motive was revenge. The spot you made available in the Brethren hierarchy by killing Klaus Margle was filled by his brother, Jon.” “I see,” Timothy said, looking at the dismantled SAM again. “I see what you mean.”<\/p>\n

CHAPTER 6<\/p>\n

In the foyer of the apartment complex, Timothy found her name, POLLY LONDON, embossed in heavy gold lettering against a black velvet nameplate. He pressed the call button beneath her comscreen and drifted back a foot or two to give the person who answered a full view of him and not just a picture of his nose. The screen lighted with an abstract black and moss-green pattern that shifted and changed in a hundred ways to delight the eyes, sensuous and rhythmic as the colors kept time to soft semiclassical music in the background. Over all of this came a well-modulated voice which had the sound of exceedingly fine breeding; of course, it was nothing more than a computer structuring sentences from a tape storage unit\u2014Polly London was wealthy enough to be able to dispense with human servants. The voice asked, “Who is calling, please?” “Timothy,” he said. “Of Enterstat,” he added in belated clarification. “I have an appointment for two o’clock.” There was a pause as the computer checked out that assertion. Crimson and yellow explosions burst across the screen. Then the computer said, “Would you please touch your fingers to the identification plate below the comscreen so that your prints may be checked with your records in the city computer?” “I have no hands,” Ti said, amused by the machine’s lack of data. “Can’t you make visual confirmation against my description in central files?” “Highly unusual,” the computer said. “But I have no hands.” The colors vanished from the screen, were replaced with humming whiteness as the computer used its own visual scanners to examine him. The colors returned in a minute. “You may have admittance.” “Thank you.” To his left, a blue and silver abstract mural slid away, revealing an elevator entrance. Inside, he was not required to push a button or pull a lever for her floor. Her private computer secretary and odd-jobber now controlled the rising cage. Indeed, it was likely that no one but Polly London and the building superintendent knew which floor was hers. With individualized computer butlers like this, all anyone living here would need as an address was Cochran Towers West. The ultimate in privacy . . . From the elevator, the computer directed him, in soft tones issuing from wall speakers along the way, down a corridor carpeted in brown-black carpet much like fur. The walls were richly paneled in teak and indented every forty feet where an apartment door lead off the common hall. The doors were not uniform in design, though each managed to fit tastefully with the decor of the hall\u2014if one considered ornateness tasteful. Polly London’s door was nordic in design, a heavy slab of wood that seemed ancient, though the weathering had probably all been done by hand in a week. The border was a fresco of Viking faces, helmets, ships, costumes, and words. In the center of the door was a heavy iron knocker. The fingerprint lock identification circle was concealed in the design of a fighting ship under full sail. There was, of course, no handle; if the door refused to open to your prints, then you were not authorized entrance anyway. The door began to roll open under the power of a rollamite device that could handle its two or three hundred pounds with ease. “This way,” the nether-world voice of the computer said. “To your right.” He went down a long hallway, turned to his right through an arch, and floated into a plushly furnished room whose walls were a mixture of natural rock and teak wood, blending in and out so smoothly and repeatedly that he felt certain his eyes must be deceiving him. To his left, a waterfall meandered down a section of the wall that was stone and had been thrust into the chamber in descending steps. The water splashed into a pool where live flowers floated over multicolored stones that radiated upward through the pool as if they were precious gems. The floor was as thickly carpeted as the hall. The furniture\u2014great, marshmallow-like beige pieces that looked enormously comfortable and resembled mushrooms growing lazily out of the floor\u2014was broken by stone end tables and storage units. Sitting in one of these beige mushrooms, next to a stone table, was the most beautiful woman Timothy had ever seen . . . She was tall, but that only meant her legs were marvelously long and sensual. Her figure, in all areas, was perfect, with a narrow waist and full, upthrust breasts. Her face was angelic, but not so perfect as to be sterile. Her nose was almost too pert, small and upturned. Her eyes were wide-set but lovely, a startling shade of green that reminded him of seawater or lime candy. Her buttery yellow hair framed her face, ended teasingly at the points of her breasts where they pushed against the fabric of her dress. None of the hundreds of pictures he had seen of her had done her justice. She had a childlike grace and beauty combined with the sensuality of a grown woman, a quality photographs could never convey. He was glad that his withered organs were indicative of a withered interest. He had never been aroused by a woman; that was fortunate, for he could not have borne normal desires trapped as he was in this hideous shell of his. Still, though there was no desire there was\u2014at times, rare and easily forgotten\u2014a deep-seated yearning for something he could not name, a yearning that made him feel cold and hollow. He had that feeling now. He only got it around especially sensual women, exceptionally stunning in all aspects. He felt hollow and unfulfilled. His skin grew clammy, and his throat was so dry that it ached. She motioned him to the chair across from her. “This is an honor. I usually get interviewed by your reporters.” She was charming, with a light and airy quality that did not give evidence of the uneasiness she felt, of the slight disgust that his appearance had aroused in her. As he settled into a mushroom chair and turned off his grav-plates, he assured her it was his pleasure, not hers. She showed him how to order a drink from the console beside the chair, and in a minute he had a screwdriver. He sipped his drink and was thankful for the taste of vodka and orange juice. “I’m more than a little curious,” she said, leaning toward him. She spoke almost musically. “I can’t understand what sort of special article you want to do that would require your own participation.” “I lied to you,” he said quite bluntly. He knew he must speak faster and more directly than he had planned, for he would find himself liking her too much too soon. There was that childlike directness that transcended sexuality, and she could use that alone to wrap men around her long, well-manicured fingers. “Lied?” she asked, not comprehending, as if no one had ever done such a thing with her before. And perhaps this was so. Lying to this woman would require the same sort of bully villainism that motivated a selfish teenager to tell a younger brother that Santa Claus was a hoax. “I’m not here to do an article for the paper,” he said. “It was the only excuse that would get me in here to see you.” She frowned, still not able to grasp the purpose of sneaking in to her house under false pretenses. “I don’t wish you harm. I need a favor of you.” She started to rise, but he motioned her down. She looked a bit agitated, and her reaction was almost childish\u2014though he felt that she was incapable of anything more than childlike anger. It was not that she was mentally immature\u2014just that she had never experienced the nastiness of the world as he had, had never needed to build up a thick skin and a nastiness of her own. “This is my house,” she said. “Are you trying to tell me what I can and can’t do in my own house?” “I’m sorry,” he said. “But if you rise, I’ll have to turn on my grav-plates and rise as well to be sure you don’t try to call for help\u2014which would be foolish since I don’t wish to harm you. And since I would merely tell the police I was here for an interview and show them the notes I’ve made. I’d pretend you were a headline hunter.” “Notes? But\u2014” “I made them beforehand. Just for such an eventuality as this.” She smiled again. “You are clever, aren’t you?” “I like to think so, yes.” “Well, what is this favor?” She leaned back, sipped her own drink, her anger totally abated. He hoped she would never meet someone who would be too sharp and cold to be won over by her charm and innocence. The proper sort of sadist could bring her world down in a day, could break and ruin her without half trying. It might have been nice to have been raised in a world where evil had not existed\u2014but it could also be deadly never to have formed the proper methods to cope with enemies. “You dated the late Klaus Margle, didn’t you?” he asked. He thought he saw her eyes get a little glassy, as if she were holding back tears. When she spoke, there was a tremble in her voice. This amazed him when he considered the Klaus Margle he knew, a man without scruples or morals, willing to kill when the need arose. He supposed that it was possible that there was a totally different side to the man, though such a realization surprised him. He was relieved that the papers had not reported how Margle had died, and that the actual shootout was implied to be the doing of the police. “I did,” she said. “I went with him for a good while. He was like a little boy around me. Very gentlemanly. I just don’t believe all these things in the papers.” “They’re true,” he said as gently as he could. “So you say.” It was impossible to get angry at her, but he could feel anger at her almost cultured blindness to reality. He held his reaction in check and said, “His brother is trying to kill me.” Surprisingly, her response to this was not as naive as her comment about Klaus. “I don’t like Jon,” she said. “Klaus you could always have fun with. He enjoyed Me. I never saw Jon smile. I think he would have liked to take me away from Klaus. But he frightened me a little.” “I want to get Jon Margle before he gets me,” he said. Her face went sickeningly pale, and she took a long sip of her drink. He realized what had terrified her, and he attempted to explain what he meant. “I don’t mean kill him. I just want to get him, for the police. If they want to execute him, they can. Or put him away for life. But I have to find some way to get something on him, or I won’t have peace of mind.” She ordered another drink, took the plastic bulb out of the receival tray, broke it and poured the contents into her glass. “I don’t understand what you want of me,” she said, her hands trembling. “You must know other people in the Brethren.” “No,” she said, clearly meaning it. Her answer unsettled him for a moment, and then he realized how ignorant she might have been of Klaus Margle’s other self. “You know some of his close friends?’ “Yes, but they aren’t\u2014” “Let me decide what they are and aren’t,” he said. “I want you to think very carefully about Klaus’s friends. Was there any one of them who disliked his brother?” “Many,” she said. “Good. But think about them and come up with the one who liked Jon the least. Maybe someone who was terrified of him. Or contemptuous. Someone who would not like working under him.” “I don’t have to do any of this,” she said, genuine anguish in her voice. “Why should I even sit here and listen to you tell me Klaus and his friends were gangsters?” “Because they were,” he said. “And if you don’t cooperate on this little thing I want, I’ll use the voice of Enterstat to discredit you, to ruin your career.” “Impossible!” she said, looking up, defiant. She was a good actress, and she knew it. “Not if I lie,” he said. “We’ll fake evidence and write atrocious lies. And sure, you’ll take us to court. But by then you’ll be ruined. And even if you get a million or so in settlement, it can be absorbed by Enterstat\u2014not easily, I admit, but without ruining me. And I think you much prefer the art of acting to the money it makes for you. You are primarily an actress, not a moneymaker. Being blackballed from senso-films would hurt emotionally, not financially.” He saw that she believed him, but that she could hardly accept that anyone would be this cruel to her\u2014or to anyone, for that matter. He had cracked her naivete, and he was not exactly pleased with himself. “It’s my life,” he said in a way of explanation and justification for his crudity. “I think I know the man you need,” she said. “When can I get in touch with him?” He was not happy with the way she slumped now, with the way he had broken her spirit. “I can’t just go phone him, if Jon is as deadly as people say. It will have to be\u2014discreet.” “Tomorrow,” he said. “Make an excuse to see him if you must. But I can’t wait longer than tomorrow. I might be dead if you don’t help me soon.” He laid a card with his comscreen number on it on the coffee table. “Call me as soon as it’s arranged.” “Tomorrow,” she said dismally. He felt terrible. The yearning and the hollowness in him had been augmented now by a feeling of brutishness, of insensitivity. But, damn it, this was the only way to reach the girl, and through her was the only way to reach someone within the Brethren structure who might be willing, for the proper consideration, to turn over information that would send Jon Margle up the river. “Tell him the money is unlimited. Almost any price he names within reason.” He found his own way out. It seemed like several thousand miles . . .<\/p>\n

Almost twenty-four hours later to the minute, in the middle of Wednesday afternoon, she called him. Her face, larger than life on the comscreen, was painfully beautiful, though in no way as fascinating as it had been in person. She avoided his eye, staring at points beyond him in the room, staring down at her own hands which\u2014he thought\u2014twitched and intertwined in her lap. She spoke softly, almost inaudibly, like a small, embarrassed child. He could not understand this. Had she been frightened, he could have reasoned why. But embarrassment? “In an hour,” she said. “My place again.” “I’m afraid not,” he countered, wishing that she would look him in the eyes just once so that he could see that marvelous, shimmering sea-green once again. “That could be too easy a trap. It has to be someplace public.” She seemed confused, but then she flipped her long yellow hair out of her face and said, “Huzzah Amusement Park,” as if the informer was sitting beside her, giving her instructions out of camera range. “Around the\u2014around the fountain. Where they throw coins and make wishes. An hour.” “I’ll be there,” he assured her. She rang off, blanking the screen, though he stared at it for some minutes longer, retaining a vision of buttery hair, tan skin, and a quick flash of green . . .<\/p>\n

Timothy was oblivious to the stares he elicited as he entered the amusement park. He had long ago learned to live with the attention he drew, ignore it and rise above it. The sign of an ignorant and tasteless man, Taguster had once told him, was the tendency to stare at someone else who was different, whether they were abnormal in form or only in the clothing they chose to wear. A number of people stood at the mammoth pool into which the fountain emptied its water and drew more to spout. They tossed coins into the blue water, trailed hands in the coolness of it. Then he caught sight of Polly London. She was wearing a relatively expensive pants suit and a large and floppy hat with great, round sunglasses. Her hair was black\u2014she was wearing a wig\u2014but even that change in coloration could not camouflage her beauty. She seemed, in fact, even more stunning than before. “He’s around the fountain,” she said. “It’s not so public on the other side.” “Let’s go,” he said. The pool had a diameter of two hundred feet, and to walk around its circumference required a good deal of nudging, jostling and\u2014in Polly’s case\u2014trampled feet. In a few minutes, they broke out of the worst of the crowd, through scattered tourists, to the far back of the pool where the bench that rimmed it looked out onto woods and was screened from the other side by the rock tower of the fountain and the huge spray of water. Here there was only one couple, arms around each other, watching the rise of the water, and a small, thin, intense man in a dark suit. He rose as they approached, then sat down when Polly did. Ti hovered before them, very close so that whatever was said could be kept from the ears of the young lovers. Introductions were made, and Ti discovered the man was Mr. Kealy; he thought it likely this name was a cover identity. The thin man was nervous, looking about as if he expected someone to jump from one of the trees. “I doubt your friends would be here,” Ti said, trying to reassure the man. “It’s hardly their form of entertainment.” Kealy nodded, looked at Polly; their eyes locked a short moment. She seemed to wince, and Timothy wondered what the two of them had just exchanged without benefit of words. “Timothy,” Polly said, drawing his attention to her lovely face. “Mr. Kealy wants to talk money first. He\u2014” She abruptly stopped talking, raising a tightly clenched fist from her lap toward her mouth, and the look on her face gave Timothy almost enough warning. He whirled as Kealy slipped the hypodermic syringe into his hip, just above the silver cap of his mobility system. Had it been a narcodart, he might still have had time to deflect it. But it had all the force of the small man’s arm behind it\u2014and was therefore unmoved by the ESP talent. Kealy depressed the syringe plunger; icewater flushed into Ti’s hip. He wanted to scream. And he wondered if it were too late to bother . . .<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Book Preview [Dean Koontz \u2013 Starblood] [Scanned by BuddyDk \u2013 August 5 2003] [Original typos hasn\u2019t been corrected] THE HOUND entered the room, sensed Timothy’s presence, made sure that he was the proper quarry. It fired three pins. Timothy slammed down on his mobility controls, streaked into the hall and down the cellar stairs. He … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6343,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[421],"class_list":["post-6344","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-dean-koontz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6344","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6344"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6344\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6343"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6344"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6344"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epub-book.com\/download\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6344"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}