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could no longer breathe; he was frozen and couldn't move. All the
light went away. \He heard the wind. It was blowing harsh and
hard outside wherever he was.
Jake slowly awakened. He was flat on his back on a wide, carved-wood
bed, and his skeleton inside him felt as though it had been taken apart
and then reassembled not quite correctly.
Pushing backward with both elbows, he managed to get himself into a
sitting position atop the antique bed.
The night wind rattled the high, wide, plasglass windows that circled
the dim-lit room. All that showed outside were the clear dark sky,
stars and a pane half-moon.
He grimaced, shook his head, carefully, from side to side. He still
enjoyed awakening, even though right now he had to undergo the
discomforting aftereffects of having been knocked out with a stun heft
ltl.
"Cot one built into that arm of hers," he said as he attempted to slide
clear of the bed and stand up. "Very convenient for her."
Stepping onto the thickly carpeted floor caused, for some reason, all
his teeth to ache for a while. There were also assorted twinges making
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themselves known in his elbows and knees and along his ribs.
Doing it very gradually, Jake walked over to one of the windows. That
produced a whole new set of aches and pains.
He was in a tower, very high up. The treetops of the Selva Grande
showed about fifty feet below. They were swaying in the strong wind.
"This must be," Jake decided, "one of the ranger stations. Taken over
and redecorated by Warbride."
Small plasglass panels had been set in the pale pink walls here and
there around the room, and they glowed with a faint rose-colored light.
The carpeting was pale pink and so was the only door. Inhaling deeply,
Jake started for the door.
It slid silently open before he was closer than ten feet to it. Framed
in the brighter, harsher light of the corridor was War-bride. Hands on
hips, she stood smiling at him. She was dressed as she had been at the
rally.
"I'm truly sorry, cato, that I had to incapacitate you for--" She
glanced at the tiny watch built into her chrome arm. "For nearly four
hours. But I wanted to cool you off--you and Rare both." "You
succeeded, Elana."
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Her smile broadened and she crossed the threshold. She walked up to
him, put her arms around him and kissed him full on the mouth. "You
remember my name," she said finally.
Easing back from her, he said, "Would you prefer I shouted "Warbride' a
few times?"
Crossing to the bed, she sat on its edge. "The rally was--a political
necessity, Jake."
"I especially liked the story about how you got your nickname."
Laughing, Warbride said, "My speechwriter came up with that six months
ago-and it really seems to have quite an effect on audiences. He used
to be a professor of literature at Mexico University, before that
whore, President Romero, put his name on a death list. Originally I
was saying I was raped by three soldiers. I decided five sounds
better."
Jake watched her. "It was also interesting to find out how your
brother Jorge disappeared. I'd always thought he went into hiding to
avoid being nabbed for dealing Tek."
She shrugged one shoulder, brushed at her short-cropped hair with her
silvery metal fingers. "We changed poor Jorge's bio for propaganda
reasons," she said. "A martyr is better than a fugitive from the
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law."
"I think you can help me, Elana."
"Ah, then you didn't come here to rekindle--"
"Whatever we had once, Elana, is long gone."
"Muy triste," she said with a sigh. "But also true, alas. What is it
you need, Jake?"
"I'm working for the Cosmos Detective Agency, and they--"
"No longer a policeman," she said, shaking her head. "I always thought
that was a lifetime calling for you, Juanito."
"So did I--once." He went over to sit beside her. "Cosmos wants to
find Professor Leon Kittridge and his daughter. Their sky cruiser is
supposed to have crashed near here a couple of--"
"You're traveling with the Kittridge girl, which strikes me as very
strange. Yet you say that you are searching for her and--" \"She's
not Beth Kittridge." "Isn't she? From pictures I've--" "Where is she
now, by the way?"
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Smiling, Warbride pointed at: the floor with her metal forefinger.
"Perfectly safe, }ake," she assured him, "in a guest room two levels
down. That nina is very fond of you--and she was very unhappy with me
for stunning you."
"What about the Kittridge sky cruiser
"I was told that it did crash here in the Sefva Grande." "You didn't
see the wreckage?" "No, but Rare Vargas did."
"What happened to Kittridge and his daughter?"
"Both dead," said Warbride.
Jake went over to stare out into the clear black night. The wind was
blowing harder. "I don't think they're dead," he said, "because too
many people are still trying to keep me from finding them."
"Maybe it's only that you don't want to believe the truth." "The
truth, Elana, isn't something I expect to get from Vargas."
"Just because I used the stun beam on him tonight, cam, doesn't mean
that I don't love him and trust him."
"Violence and romance." Grinning thinly, Jake turned to face her.
"Tell me--what happened to Globo?"
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"He's in a cell down below. I want to look into his case myself."
"While I was in Cuidado, Globo arranged to have me knocked
Off:."
"Yet you took a risk like tonight's to save his life?"
"Hell, he was going to be executed for the wrong thing--that's not
justice," he told her. "After Globo's plan to get rid of me went
flooey, I had a nice chat with him. He says it was Vargas who hired
him for the job."
She stood. "That seems unlikely, since Rafe didn't even know you were
in Mexico."
"Sure, he did. Globo contacted him somebody close to him. I told
you, I've been trying to arrange a meeting with you."
"Then are you suggesting that Rare is jealous of you--that he doesn't
want an old lover of aline turning up again?" "Nope, that's not
Vargas' reason at all." "Then what is?"
"Quite a few people are interested in Kittridge. That's because he's
come up with a way to render just about every Tek chip on the face of
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the Earth absolutely useless," Jake said. "If I find him first, then
that process' Il be used to wipe out the Tek trade. For a while
anyway."
"You're claiming that Rafe wants to keep you from locating the
professor?"
"Yeah. And I'm pretty certain he knows where Kittridge and his
daughter are."
Angry lines appeared on her forehead and around her mouth. "I don't
see what your reason is for trying to turn me against him."
"Propaganda and persuasion isn't my specialty, Elana," he said. "But I
intend to find the Kittridges--and I figure Rare Vargas is one of those
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