Book 2 - Starfishers by Glen Cook Read Free Book Online Page B

Bureau’s work was a game. A vastly
recomplicated form of the chess to which Mouse was addicted. The
universe was his board. He would sacrifice his most precious pawn
for a minuscule advantage.
    He had been taking on the entire Sangaree race for a generation.
And, with the implacability of a glacier, he was winning.
    The prices of little victories left Niven appalled.
    It took some sweet talk on his part to get to the Med
Center’s commercial records. He never was quite sure what
made the old nurse give in. Somewhere along the line he said the
right things. Pretty soon her death mask fell apart and reassembled
itself in imitation of a smiling face. Then she fell all over
herself explaining the data-retrieval system.
    The information was there. A bonanza, and only thinly disguised.
More than Mouse could have prayed for. This was the data center
from which the whole operation was controlled. And it was not
guarded by so much as a data lock.
    The Sangaree were notoriously sloppy administrators. They had
entered the interstellar community as predators, and had never
really adapted to the demands of modern commerce. Action-oriented,
they tended to ignore boring details, especially on worlds they
believed safely in their pocket.
    Like making sure no one without an absolute need had access to
their records.
    There had been a time when the need for protection would not
have occurred to them at all, just as certain hues might not occur
as existing to a color-blind man who had spent his entire life
among others with the same affliction. But they were learning.
Beckhart was teaching them via the Pavlovian method. The weakness
was his favorite angle of attack.
    The Sangaree did keep one secret. They wrote it down nowhere,
and defended it to the death. The need to protect it was the one
thing that could bring all the Families together. Even Families in
vendetta would set aside their enmity long enough to keep
Homeworld’s location from becoming known.
    On Borroway Sangaree children had murdered their younger
brothers and sisters and had then committed suicide rather than
face human interrogation, and that just because they had been
afraid they might know something the human animals would find
useful.
    The hospital records were perfect. Niven unearthed few names,
but did gather business intelligence pinpointing critical
distribution points on more than two dozen worlds. Crimped there,
the pipelines would require years of healing.
    He found it incredible that a people could be so ingenious in
marketing and so inept in administration. But the Sangaree were
pure power people. They provided the muscle, money, guns, and
merchandise. They let human underlings take most of the risks. And
lumps.
    From the Sangaree viewpoint their human associates did not much
matter. The tips of the kraken’s tentacles were nothing but
ignorant, expendable animals. They could be replaced by others just
as ignorant, greedy, and expendable.
    Only one or two people on a market world could point toward
Angel City. Only from the back of the beast itself could the
entirety of the monster be seen. And the beast was solidly in
Sangaree pay.
    Marya caught him before he finished. “What in the
world?” she demanded when she found him immersed in the data,
far from his usual orbit.
     
----

----

Five: 3048 AD
Operation Dragon, Lifting
Off
    “Sorry I startled you.” A she-wolf’s grin made
it plain that the Sangaree woman felt no remorse whatsoever.
“I’m Maria Elana Gonzalez. Atmosphere Systems.
Distributions Methods. Sometimes I do a little Hydroponics Ecology.
I don’t have a Master’s for either, though. Too busy
with other things.” She smiled her gun-metal smile.
    Yes
, benRabi thought,
the lady has other interests. Stardust and
murder
.
    “Moyshe benRabi,” he replied, in case she had
forgotten.
    “An unusual name.” She smiled that smile.
“Jewish?”
    “So I’m told. I’ve never been in a synagogue
in my life.”
    “You wouldn’t be a