Book 1 - Shadowline by Glen Cook Page B

time.” The stricken face of the
Blackworlder ghosted through his thoughts. The man had not doubted
his fate for one instant. “I need to buy more.”
    She turned the tears off as quickly as she had switched them on.
She began talking in a small, soft voice devoid of editorialization
and emotion. She began at the beginning and told nothing but the
bitter truth about everything except her motives.
    She had seduced Dee and talked him into taking her to Old Earth
with him. She now believed he had acquiesced for his own reasons.
Their stay on the mother-world had been dull. The one thing that
had impressed her had been the poverty of that gutted, overcrowded
planet. Michael had been upset because the holonets had not been
interested in his coverage of the action on The Broken Wings.
    “From Old Earth we went to Blackworld. He kept me locked
in the ship while we were there. The only reason I found out was he
talked in his sleep. He wouldn’t say squat when he was awake.
He was worried and scared. Things weren’t going right,
somehow. He was a little paranoid, like he was afraid somebody
might be after him but he wasn’t really sure. After
Blackworld we went to see Richard Hawksblood. He isn’t such a
big deal in person, is he?”
    She had not been allowed to approach Dee and Hawksblood most of
the time. She did know they were talking about Blackworld. What
little she knew she had learned from Richard’s
underlings.
    Then Michael had vanished. No one knew where he had gone. Some
thought Tregorgarth, some thought The Big Rock Candy Mountain.
    “It was The Mountain, Polly. Go ahead. You’re doing
great so far.”
    “I had to hang around and wait. It was boring. I hardly
ever saw Hawksblood. He was working on the Blackworld project. I
never realized how complicated your work is. You don’t just
jump in the ring like a boxer, do you?”
    Storm smiled the weakest of smiles. If nothing else, Pollyanna
had confirmed his intelligence about Richard. Hawksblood was in on
Blackworld for sure.
    “It was two months before Michael came back. That was a
couple of weeks ago. He was really happy. Before, when his tapes
were turned down and he thought somebody was after him, you
couldn’t hardly live with him. All he said was that he saw
the man and everything was all right. He wouldn’t even talk
in his sleep.”
    Who? Storm wondered. Not him. Who else had been on The Big Rock
Candy Mountain? Why had Michael been there, anyway?
    “He was back about a week when he grabbed me and that
yacht and took off for here. Every couple of days he locked me out
of Command. Whenever he let me back in the instel set was warm. I
don’t know who he was talking to. Then we got here. And the
rest you know.”
    And the rest he knew.
    He checked the time. Her tale had taken an hour to tell. He had
a few questions. He doubted she could answer them.
    Pollyanna, he thought, was one hell of a puzzle. She was all
surface and no depth. Even when you bedded a stranger she took on
some kind of shape as bits and pieces of bed talk jigsawed
together. But not pretty Pollyanna. She remained strictly
one-dimensional. Her only real attributes seemed to be her beauty
and her vagina, and her devotion to both. She had rebuilt her
makeup while she talked.
    She was a damned android built for modeling and screwing! You
could penetrate her body, but not her facade.
    Even Lucifer was baffled by her. She seemed to exist solely to
be appreciated for her beauty, like a classic painting or cherished
poem. Curious.
    He had not thought much about Pollyanna before. She was like
that painting. There to be enjoyed and otherwise ignored. It was
time to start poking around, back in the silly shadows.
    He would have to unravel her by reversing the usual process, by
what he did not know.
    Pollyanna had made a second point clear. The Blackworld affair
was deeper than he had suspected. A potential mercantile war over
trillions worth of radioactives did not excite Michael. Pollyanna
said he