The Archimedes Effect by Tom Clancy Read Free Book Online

about her manner invited intimacy. She seemed genuinely interested.
    He took a deep breath. Who would it hurt? “The man who gave it to me was moments away from dying when he did so. The reason he was dying was because I had just shot him.”
    If that bothered her, it didn’t show. “I thought you looked like police or military. Go on.”
    He wanted to grin again. He remembered a story he’d heard, about an ex-GI who had been involved in a shooting at his home. Guy had been jumped by some local bikers, so he’d pulled a piece and fired three rounds, killing one of them. Friends called later to talk to the shooter, and the comments ranged on one end from folks saying how awful it must have been to have to shoot and kill a fellow human being, to old soldiering buddies who said, “What kind of grouping did you get?” Jennifer Hart’s comment sounded more like the latter than the former.
    “I work for a government agency. The man—who was shooting at me when I shot him—was a hired killer. He was also a very good classical guitarist.”
    “And you feel that you need to learn how to play it? I don’t see the reason.”
    He didn’t blame her. He didn’t see the reason, either, exactly. And what could he tell her? Would she understand that Natadze was a good enemy? Smart, tough, adept.
    He shrugged. “It seems like the right thing to do.”
    She nodded, as if understanding exactly what moved him, though it may have simply been acceptance. For the moment, anyway. “Okay. Let’s get started, then. Can you read music?”
    He smiled again. “Not a note.”
    “TAB?”
    “That a soft drink?”
    She laughed. He enjoyed being able to make her do that. “Not exactly,” she said. “It’s a kind of notation for stringed instruments—guitars, lutes, like that. We’ll get into theory as we go. Let’s do the basic stuff first. There are six strings on your guitar, numbered usually from the thinnest and highest to the thickest and lowest. When you hold the guitar on your leg—I’ll show the basic position—the lowest bass string will be up. Going down from that toward the floor, the strings are usually tuned to E, A, D, G, B, and E, in that order. Here’s a way to remember them: Elvis Ate Dynamite, Good-Bye, Elvis. . . .”
    Kent grinned again. He could remember that. Hell, he could remember Elvis Himself. Saw him once, in Las Vegas . . .

Louisiana Jay’s Dig
Whispering Dunes, Egypt
    Jay stood at the top of the tallest sand dune, looking at the huge archaeology dig below. Hundreds of natives wearing flowing white robes toiled in the hot sun, carefully unmasking the ruins of the temple beneath the sand. Some used shovels, some used small hand trowels, and others used whisk brooms made of papyrus to brush away dust on the stones.
    Right out of an old adventure movie. Or maybe one about mummies and tomb raiders . . .
    Like most of his VR scenarios, it wasn’t really a temple but a metaphor for something else—in this case a huge comparison database.
    The work hadn’t been easy, and the pressure was on.
    Because the distributed program had mixed and matched various features of U.S. military bases around the globe to create the alien bases, the question was: How many more bases had been incorporated into the alien designs? How many more potential targets were there?
    He would be passing on what he already had to the Army’s computer people pretty soon, but another run wouldn’t hurt.
    If Jay could deconstruct the game and identify features of the bases that hadn’t been attacked, the good guys might be able to get ahead of the bad guys.
    Unfortunately, as with every solution, there were problems.
    First was finding copies of the game software. The program hadn’t been released all at once—new bases had been constructed and sent out to the game players in installments. To complicate things, the game server that had sent the files out had shut itself down when the first base was attacked. In addition, the game