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."Don't get too upset by what you heard up there from Raincloud," he said, turning his head to look at Mike and Jake, but still walking down the winding staircase.Mike could hardly bear to watch."Cityboss talks tough, but he barks more than he bites."A man hoping to convince himself?"Even when it comes to weapons?" Jake asked."Ah, well, maybe that's the exception.The weapons he showed you are the genuine article—enough to blow us all to Chippoland.I'll be honest, they scare the hell out of me." Old-Billy stepped onto the escalator, still facing back toward the other two.His right foot was no more than two inches from open air and a sheer drop of seventeen hundred feet."But I pray we'll never use 'em—Raincloud likes to play with the displays, but thank God he doesn't know most of the control sequences." He looked around, then at Mike and Jake.His voice dropped to a whisper."I'll say this when we're out here in the open, with only the wind listening, but don't ask me to repeat it.Raincloud's right off his head, and getting worse.You realized that, didn't you, when we were in there?"Could this all be a deep plot, with Martin Raincloud as master schemer? Mike found that hard to believe.Raincloud really seemed to scare Old-Billy as much as he scared Mike.But could Waters be worked with? "You don't share his view of Traders, then?""I don't hate you, if that's what you mean.Not at all.Raincloud loathes Traders; if he had his way he'd kill the lot of you.""And he doesn't try to hide it," Jake said."So why on earth did he agree to let us come here?""Beats me." Waters rubbed his liver-spotted pate."Three months ago, he swore he'd had it with Traders.He was frothing at the mouth.We'd seen the last of 'em, he said, screw 'em all, we'll have no more like that in the Great Republic.Two weeks ago, he tells me, hey, guess what, I changed my mind.We're going to have some Traders here.We need Traders.And then yesterday I'm pulled off other duties and told I'm it—the principal interface with you two.Without advance notice.""Come on now.You're the deputy.You must be involved with everything that goes on here."Old-Billy Waters offered Mike an incredulous glare."When did you ever hear of a deputy knowing half of what his boss was doing? I'm the last to know.Robin has more idea than I do, and she's just his bedwarmer.You ought to be here when he has one of his 'singing lessons' from her." He sniffed."I tell you, there's a lot of things I don't know, and a lot I don't want to know.As for being a negotiator, when I hardly know what one does."They had finally reached the bottom of the escalator.Mike stepped onto solid ground with unconcealed relief.Waiting for them on the roadway stood a tall, fat man with an enormous domed head.His small mouth was framed by a long, drooping moustache, and red stubble covered multiple chins in a two-day growth of beard.A gray cloak was swept around his body from neck to ankles.A flat-topped black hat, one size too small, perched above the great brow.He nodded past Waters, to Mike and Jake."Vandermond." The word was a pronouncement.A thick hand emerged from beneath the cloak.Mike stared at him in astonishment.Sabrina?"Sebastian Vandermond," Old-Billy Waters said.His bird-like look darted from Mike to Jake, then back to the man in front of them."These are our Trader visitors, Sebastian.""Obviously." Ice-blue eyes swept over them.Mike saw in that look disdain and enormous impatience.He recalled the definition of a psychopath: an individual unable to recognize the reality of other humans."What can we do for you, Sebastian?" Waters asked.The other man towered above the rest of them."Martin Raincloud promised us an hour with the visitors." Vandermond's tone held an Olympian indifference to Old-Billy Waters."Did he?" Old-Billy raised his eyebrows."Well, I was getting ready to show them around the city.""Good.Then I will do it instead." Vandermond moved to interpose his body between Waters and the two Traders."Come." The tone commanded more than the word."We need to talk with you."Mike and Jake were shepherded away.Old-Billy Waters stood nonplussed behind them."We begin negotiation in two hours," he shouted.Vandermond ignored him."First, a quick survey of Skeleton City," he said."And then, home.We have an important meeting there, and little time."Vandermond's idea of a tour was simple.He hurried them along, walking, pointing, holding his hat on with one hand, and saying little.That suited Mike.He needed to see for himself.As usual, Daddy-O's briefing began to seem most notable for what it had neglected to mention.He followed Vandermond's pointing finger and understood Raincloud's domain for the first time.Skeleton City stood in the eastern foothills.Thirty miles to the west, the cordillera that ran the length of the Great Republic rose snowcapped to fourteen thousand feet.The builders of Skeleton City had drawn their inspiration from those mountain heights.It was as if they had taken the original city on this site, a place not tall by Yankeeland standards, and stretched it.Like drawn sugar, each structure had thinned as it was pulled higher.The new cloud-capped palaces, buildings a third of a mile high, measured no more than three hundred feet across at the base.Even with the strongest materials from the Chipponese space factories, each building was unstable against compressive buckling and wind loads.The crosswalks, doubling as pathways and cables, provided the support that was needed.Skeleton City measured no more than half a mile across at ground level, but it existed as fully in three dimensions as other cities did in two.Vandermond pointed out and named the more important centers: Communication was high up in that building, Transportation down near the ground in this one, Agriculture all the way out at the edge of town.He did not consider worthy of note the groups engaged in casual conversation on the crosswalks, hundreds of feet above them.The wind was strengthening, and the slender pathways swayed and stretched in the varying gusts.The people did not seem to notice, adjusting automatically to the changing wind pressure.Mike forced his attention back to ground level.No wonder Martin Raincloud was a madman, and his assistants little better; anyone who lived in a place like this needed to be mad.Sebastian Vandermond.Sabrina Vandermond.Was it the result of a sex-change operation? Shades of Cinder-feller.It took a major effort of imagination on Mike's part to transform the towering colossus of Sebastian Vandermond to a female form.The tour went quickly.Within fifteen minutes they had returned to their starting point at Martin Raincloud's headquarters.This time, to Mike's relief, they went down.From an entrance at ground level they descended three floors to a pair of wide doors.Sebastian Vandermond swung them open and ushered Mike and Jake through.Two centuries rolled away.They were standing at the threshold of a Victorian living room, complete with sideboard, overstuffed horsehair settee, potted aspidistra in one corner, and, in another, a hanging cage containing a large blue-black cockatoo with a red crest.At the center of the room stood five wooden-backed chairs grouped around a low table.On one of the chairs, quietly reading, sat a small, fair-haired woman [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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