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Express is climbing high above the white, wheeling eye of a low-pressure system about to impact the Pacific coast; the sun glows off the delta's black cockpit struts. The sky above is a brilliant blue, just beginning to go dark with the promise of space. Cowboy tells his helmet to lower his visor as he climbs toward the sun. He tastes anesthetic gas as he whistles through his teeth. "Reno." Cowboy doesn't bother to verbalize his message, just sends it through his chips and keeps whistling. "Tell them I'm in position." "Roger." Reno's got his electronic fingers stretching across microwave relays from coast to coast, keeping the communications net together more efficiently than the Dodger's mercenaries. Cowboy runs automatically through the displays, seeing the engines idling at blue, the rest of the columns green. From far below he can feel California's radars reaching out for him, touching the skin of Pony Express with feeble paws, not able to bounce a strong enough reflection from the delta's rounded surfaces and absorbent antiradiation paint. These aren't as powerful as the Midwest's radars-no need for them to be. They aren't used to deltas running Page 154 ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html illegal missions high over the Pacific. "Cowboy? Are you busy?" Reno's distant voice, bubbles rising slowly in crystal. "Just circling. Waiting for our friends." "I found out something. I've been poking around in the crystal here at the labs." "Isn't that likely to cause, ah, a termination of your contract?" "I'm bored, Cowboy. There's nothing to do here." "It's dangerous, Reno." "No. Their outside defenses are pretty strong, but once you get into their system, their security isn't very good. Their stuff would have been adequate ten years ago, when they set up, but now it's easy enough to break. I borrowed an intrusion program from our Maximum Law friends when they weren't looking." Cowboy thinks what could happen if the lab people discover the tampering and freeze Reno's crystal. An unavoidable accident, they'll say. "You're taking chances, friend," he says. "I had a good idea of what I was looking for, once I saw how this place is put together. It isn't exactly a black lab, but they're into a lot of gray areas. That's how come Michael knew about them, and knew they'd take someone like me, just a mind over the phone without a body. They're used to dealing with customers who have a lot of money for one reason or another, and who want to appear with a new face and identity." "Even more reason to stay out of their comp, I'd say." "Have you ever heard of Project Black Mind?" Cowboy thinks for a moment while he runs over the engine and weapons displays. "No," he says finally. "Can't say as I have." "I'm not surprised. I never heard of it, either, before I got in here. It's an intruder program of the worst sort. Developed by the U.S. National Security people just before the war. The same people who set up this lab, years ago. And who are still running it." No surprise, Cowboy thinks. Intelligence types like to keep their fingers in many pies. Used to run lots of interface banks to launder money for their operations, and when the face banks made money, they looked for places to invest. When their government was flattened by the blocs, they just kept on doing what they knew best. "Okay. So what does it do?" "Sets up a mind in crystal. Then goes into another mind, a live mind, and prints the first mind on top of it. Imposes the first personality on the second. Backs up the program." Cowboy feels the crystal in his head turn cold. This time he forgets not to vocalize, blurting into the mic in his face mask. "God, why? What good would it do? The guy wouldn't have the target's memories to draw on, or anything. " "He might, he might not. Brain transfer is an inexact science. " "There are safeguards. No program can jump from crystal into someone's head." "Black Mind says different." Cowboy thinks of someone swarming into his mind through his sockets, destroying his memories, his personalities: His body, his remaining mind, turning into the puppet of someone else. Worse, Cowboy thinks, than what Roon [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] |
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