The Jagged Orbit by John Brunner Read Free Book Online

be difficult, in view of his issue mask, but in a small community like this one it wouldn't be impossible.
    Regardless of that, though, he kept telling himself, someone with Pedro Diablo's status had no reason to be afraid of a fit of bad temper on the Mayor's part.
    He kept on telling himself so until he was actually shown into the Mayor's presence—if you could call being herded into a room at gunpoint "being shown." For Mayor Black was not alone. Seated next to his enormous desk was a honky: a thin man with a straggly apology for a beard supplemented by mismatched rozar flock, very pale hair combed carefully across the pink baldness of his crown, knees primly together and hands folded on his lap.
    Then Diablo's heart sank like a stone in a deep well He knew that stern, thin-lipped face. The features of Herman Uys, top South African expert on race, were perhaps as well known as any in the modern world.
    He was still struggling to work out why Uys's presence in Blackbury had been kept secret from him, Pedro Diablo, when the Mayor uttered his only statement of the interview.
    "Out of town, mongrel. You have three hours."

SIXTEENTHE POINT AT WHICH THE OUTLAY ON MAINTENANCE BEGINS TO EXCEED THE COST OF CHANGING TO A REPLACEMENT
     
    Without warning Flamen's comweb circuit reverted to normal and he found himself back in touch with Prior. The moment he realized, the latter's face took on a shifty expression which Flamen recognized from years of close association: the look which signified that he was about to put over some really monstrous con job on the assumption—almost always justified—that the person he was dealing with had overlooked some very subtle trap. He might be naïve in some matters, as witness his ready acceptance of a Lar as everything the advertising claimed, but when it came to closing a deal weighted in his own favor he was brilliantly devious. That, chiefly, was why Flamen put up with him. He had never dared tarnish his own image of himself by learning the whore's-trading skills required to keep afloat in the cut-throat ocean of modern business, yet he correspondingly did not dare to forgo them altogether. Prior was a perfect compromise: the epitome of self-deluded honor, who could dismiss the most flagrant kind of cheating from his conscience on the grounds that he had thought of it and he could not possibly be a dishonest man.
    Flamen tensed. If he, now, was to become the target for Prior's personal talent...
    "Matthew, as far as I can comp it out," Prior began, "you just made a very serious charge against the directorate of Holocosmic."
    "I don't recall making any sort of charge against anyone," Flamen said hastily. "But if you have something important and urgent to say, why not. . . ?"
    He cast around in his mind for a chance of privacy. Everything said over the comweb in these offices, as in the offices of any firm contracted to the Holocosmic network, was monitored, analyzed and if necessary relayed to the directorate. Ah yes!
    "Why not ride out to the Ginsberg with me and call on Celia?"
    "Not this afternoon," Prior said.
    "Oh, come now! She's your sister as well as my wife, remember." A hamhanded attempt to get something discreditable on the record; it failed.
    "I'm booked for exercises with my citidef group," Prior said, ever the solid, responsible member of society. "Besides, you know that Dr. Mogshack disapproves of intrusions from his patients' former environment, and I wouldn't care to go against his judgment."
    "I regard contact between husband and wife as highly normalizing, even if he doesn't." The juiceless old stick, Flamen added to himself—but it wouldn't do to utter the comment aloud, not when he had so narrowly scraped under the blade of Holocosmic's guillotine by appealing to Mogshack's reputation.
    "That's as may be," Prior shrugged. "Nonetheless, the point I'm getting at is this." He hesitated, with an air of calculation. "Matthew, to be blunt, I think you're becoming a trifle