[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

slim, medium-tall young man with dark curls and darker eyes -was escorted from
the foot of the theatre by a shield of efficient-looking security guards in
white uniforms who had taken up the first row of seats in the auditorium. The
guards had to keep a hundred or so people back from the door the young man had
exited through; the besieging crowd waved notebooks and cameras and recorders,
pleading with the blank-faced guards to let them through.
She stood for a while, sporadically jostled by the departing crowds of mostly
young and very polite people filing out of the lecture theatre. She was trying
to recall witnessing a more charismatic speaker, but could not. There had been
a startling buzz of emotion crackling through the whole theatre throughout the
hour of the lecture she'd caught, even though the things the young man had
actually been saying weren't particularly original or dramatic.
Nevertheless, the feeling was infectious and undeniable. She'd had the same
feeling of excitement, of impendingness that she got sometimes when she heard
an especially talented new band or singer, or read some particularly promising
poet, or saw some screen or stage prodigy for the first time. It was something
akin to the first, lustful stage of obsessive love.
She shook herself out of it and checked the time. There was another tube back
to Trench in an hour. She very much doubted she was going to have any luck
getting to see this fellow who seemed to control access to everything
including fifteen-year-old hospital records, but she had to see the
authorities anyway to get her gun back; they'd taken it from her when she'd
gone into the lecture theatre.
The Commonwealth Foundation appeared to be part charity, part Irregular
University and part political party. It seemed to have taken over most of
First Cut's largely deserted lower warren, and this young man, Girmeyn, gave
every appearance of being its leader, even though nobody ever quite addressed
him as such.
`Girmeyn will see you now, Ms Demri,' the white-uniformed guard said.
She had been watching screen, sitting in the draughtily warm cave of a
waiting-room with about two hundred other people who were petitioning to see
the man.
She looked up, surprised. She'd given up any hope of seeing Girmeyn when she'd
seen the crowd. All she wanted
Page 173
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
now was to retrieve the HandCannon.
`He will
?' she said. People sitting nearby stared at her.
`Please follow me,' the guard said.
She followed the white-uniformed guard as he led her to the end of the
waiting-room and into a corridor. The corridor ended in a long, comfortably
furnished chamber looking down into a huge cavern.
The cavern was walled in naked black rock. Its smooth floor was covered with
ancient, glittering machinery which towered twenty metres into the space,
almost level with the windows of the gallery. The complicated, indecipherable
machines - so ambiguous in their convoluted design they could have been
turbines, generators, nuclear or chemical reactors or agents of a hundred
other processes - glittered under bright overhead lights. Huge pale
stalactites fluted pendulously from the roof of the cavern in moist folds of
deposited rock, counterpointed by stalagmites on the cavern floor beneath.
Where the machinery got in the way, the deposits had merged, the never less
than metre-thick columns conjoined to and mingling intimately with the silent
machines.
She stared at the scene for a few seconds, made dizzy by the sheer weight of
time implicit in the slumped topology of the palely gleaming,
technology-enfolding pillars.
`Ms Demri?' an elderly white-uniformed man said.
She looked round. `Yes?'
`This way.' He held out his hand. Girmeyn sat behind a large desk at the far
end of the room, surrounded by a variety of people with yolk-screens,
hand-screens, brow projectors, patch-screens and, judging by the one-eyed
aspect of a couple of them, lid-screens. She was shown into a large seat to
one ' side of the desk, across a smaller table from a similar seat and just by
the windows looking out into the cavern.
She sat still for a few minutes, watching what looked remarkably like a prince
conducting the affairs of state, before the young man stood up behind his
desk, bowed to the people and walked over to join her. The men and women
surrounding the desk mostly stood where they were; some sat down on seats and
some on the floor. Sharrow stood up to shake his hand. His grip was strong and
warm.
`Ms Demri,' he said. His voice was deeper than she'd expected. He bowed to her
and sat in the other seat. He was dressed as he had been in the lecture
theatre half an hour earlier, in a conservative black academic gown. He was
even younger than she'd thought; early rather than mid-twenties. His
exquisitely tangled medium-length hair was blue-black, his pale brown,
depilated skin was smooth and unblemished. His lips were full and expressive
beneath a long, delicate nose. His jaw was strong and he had a dimple on his
chin. He sat relaxed but formal in the seat, his dark eyes inspecting her.
`It's very kind of you to see me,' she said, `but I really only want access to
some fifteen-year-old hospital records.'
She glanced behind her. `There are so many people waiting out there, I feel
positively unworthy.' [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]