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

with a thin plastic fork and knife I recognized as the dissolving type. They'd melt into a sticky puddle in an hour or less, then dry up into a powder shortly after that. Standard for prisoners.
    The food was lousy, but I hadn't expected better.
    The vitamin-enriched fruit drink with it, though, was pretty good; I made the most of it, keeping the thin, clear container (not the dissolving type) in case I wanted water later. Everything else I put back in the port, and it vaporized neatly. All nice and sealed.
    About the only thing they couldn't control was bodily functions, and a half-hour or so after eating my first meal as a new man, you might say, nature called. On the far wall was a panel marked toilet and a small pull ring. Simple, standard stuff. I pulled the ring, the thing came down—and damned if there wasn't a small, paper-thin probe in the recess behind it. And so I sat on the John, leaned back against the panel, and got brief and relief at the same time.
    The thing worked by skin contact—don't ask me how. I'm not one of the tech brains. It was not as good as a programming, but it enabled them to talk to me, even send me pictures that only I could see and hear.
    By now I hope you're over the shock of discovering who and what you are, Krega's voice came to me, seemingly forming in my brain. I was shocked when I realized that not even my jailers could hear or see a thing.
    We have to brief you this way simply because the transfer process is delicate enough as it is. Oh, don't worry about it—it's permanent. But we prefer to allow as much time as possible for your brain patterns to fit in and adapt without subjecting the brain to further shock, and we haven't the time to allow you to 'set in' completely, as it were. This method will have to do, and I profoundly regret it, for I feel you have the most difficult task of all four.
    I felt the excitement rise in me. The challenge, the challenge...
    Your objective world is Lilith, first of the Diamond colonies, the commander's voice continued. Lilith is, scientifically speaking, a madhouse. There is simply no rational, scientific explanation for what you will find there. The only.thing that keeps all of us from going over the brink is that the place does have rules and is consistent within its own framework of logic. I will leave most of that to your orientation once you make planetfall. You will be met and briefed as a convict—along with the other inmates being sent there with you—by representatives of the Lord of Lilith, and that will be more effective than anything I can give you secondhand.
    Though the imprint ability of this device is limited, he continued, we can send you one basic thing that, oddly, you will not find on Lilith itself. It is a map of the entire place, as detailed as we could make it.
    I felt a sharp back pain followed by a wave of dizziness and nausea; this quickly cleared and I found that in fact I had a detailed physical-political map of the entirety of Lilith in my head. It would come in very handy.
    There followed a stream of facts about the place . not likely to be too detailed in any indoctrination lecture.-The planet was roughly 52,000 kilometers around at the equator or from pole to pole, allowing for topographic differences. Like all four of the Warden Diamond worlds, it was basically a ball— highly unusual as planets go, even though everybody including me thinks of all major planets as round.
    The gravity was roughly .95 norm, so I'd feel lighter and be able to jump further. That would take a slight adjustment of timing, and I made a note to work on that first and foremost. It was also a hair higher than the norm for oxygen, which would make me feel a tad more energetic but also would make fires burn a little easier, quicker, and brighter. Not much, though. The higher concentration of water than normal combined with its 85-degree axial tilt and slightly under 192,000,000 kilometer distance from its sun—made this world mostly hot