Four Lords of Diamond - Book 1 by Jack L. Chalker Read Free Book Online Page A

in the console—somehow I no longer hated him very much, no longer felt anything at all for him. When this was all over he'd be wiped once more—perhaps killed himself if my brother agents on the Diamond and I found out too much. At best he'd return to being that stagnant milquetoast.
    Me, on the other hand . . . Me, I would still be here, still live on, the real me. I would become more complete than he would.
    I was under no illusions, though. Kill me they would, if they could, if I didn't do their bidding. They'd do it automatically, from robot satellite, and without a qualm. / would. But my vulnerability would last only until I mastered my new situation and my new and permanent home. I felt that with a deep sense of certainty, for I knew their methods and how they thought. Fd have to do their dirty work for them, and they knew it—but only until I could find a way around it. They could be beaten, even on their own turf. That was why they had people like me in the first place: to uncover those who expertly covered over their whole lives and activities, who managed to vanish totally from their best monitors—to uncover them and get them.
    But there'd be no new expert agent sent to get me if 7 beat them. They'd just be putting somebody else in the same position.
    I realized then, as they had undoubtedly figured, that I had no choice but to carry out the mission. Only as long as I was doing what they wanted would I be safe from them while still in that vulnerable stage. After that—well, we'd see.
    The thrill of the challenge took over, as it always did. The puzzle to be solved, the objectives to be accomplished. I like to win, which is even easier when you feel nothing about the cause, just the challenge of the problem and the opponent and the physical and intellectual effort necessary to meet that challenge. Find out about the alien menace. It no longer concerned me either way—I was trapped on a Warden world from now on anyway. If the aliens won the coming confrontation, the Wardens would survive as allies. If they lost, well, it wouldn't make a damned bit of difference, only continue the current situation.
    That meant the alien problem was purely an intellectual challenge, which made it perfect.
    The other objective created a similar situation. Seek out the Lord of that particular Diamond world and kill him if I could. In a sense accomplishing that would be more difficult, for I'd be operating on totally unfamiliar ground and would therefore require time and perhaps some allies. Another challenge. And if I got him, it could only increase my own power and position in the long term. If he got me instead, of course, that would solve everybody's problem—but the thought of losing is abhorrent to me. That set the contest in the best terms, from my point of view. Track down assassination was the ultimate game, since either you won or you died and did not have to live with the thought that you lost
    It suddenly occurred to me that the only real difference between me and a Lord of the Diamond was that I was working for the law and he—or she— against it. But no, that wasn't right, either. On his world he was the law and I would be working against that. Fine. Dead heat on moral grounds.
    The only thing wrong at this point, I reflected, was that they were starting me at a tremendous disadvantage. The normal procedure was to program all pertinent information into my brain before setting me off on a mission—but they hadn't done that this time. Probably, I thought, because they had me once on the table for four separate missions, and the transfer process, to a new body, was hard enough without trying to add anything afterward. Still, this method put me in a deep pit. I thought sourly that somebody should have thought of that.
    Somebody did, but it was a while before I discovered how. About an hour after I had awakened a little bell clanged near the food port and I went over to it. Almost instantly a hot tray appeared, along