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.Plasma cannon threatened from behind two semicircles ofsandbags.Between the gun nests stood another soldier with an electronicreader.Adele handed over the routing card she'd taken from the helmet of the commandolieutenant, a programmable chip in a rectangular polymer matrix.It hadcarried the commandoes' orders in electronic form that could be read on thehelmet visors of every member of the unit so that complex operations could beexecuted without communications errors.The faceless guard inserted the card in his reader.Adele had reprogrammed itso that it showed only a destination the Elector's Palace and reserved allother information under the highest security level of Blue Chrome operations.Page 161ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.htmlThe guard looked at the projected data, then returned the card to Adele andstepped out of the way."Proceed," he said.Or was it, "she said"? The voice was an electronic synthesis, just as were allsensory inputs the guard received.What sort of person could willingly liveand function in a prison so strait that it touched their skin at every point?But then, there were people who probably thought work in a library was asentence to Hell.The universe had room for all sorts; though God knew,present events proved that many people weren't willing to leave it at that.Adele turned left with the sailors sauntering behind her.Strip lights gluedto the ceilings brightened the main corridor.People, two or three in a clot,stood talking in hushed voices outside the offices.Inside were Kostromans at tables made from shelving laid over furniture andstacked with paperwork, some of it from moldy boxes that must have come upfrom storage in the basement.Each room had an Alliance overseer who looked tired but very much in command.The Alliance must have moved in a civilian administration as large as orlarger than the invasion's military component.Adele glanced to left and right in cold appraisal at those she passed.Bureaucrats, even Alliancepersonnel, avoided her gaze as she passed to the back stairs.No civilianwanted to know why a squad of commandoes had been summoned here.Because of the bright illumination she noticed the corridor's murals for thefirst time.They showed scenes of Kostroman life during centuries past.Thebackgrounds were so varied that they must be of specific different islands.Fishermen cast hand lines from a sailing vessel; a farm family picked citrusfruit;a starship lifted from the water as a crowd cheered.The artist had been skillful, but grime and the band rubbed by shoulders ofthose passing in the hall had reduced them to a shadow of what they must havebeen.Adele thought of her library.Was it perhaps enough out of the way thatthe palace's new masters had spared it, or had the books been treated with thesame brutal unconcern that had tossed antique furniture from the windows ofreception rooms to clear them for office space?She should be worrying about humans, not books; but the books and theirprobable fate filled her mind anyway.She smiled at herself with wry humor.The single soldier on guard at the narrow staircase down straightened when shesaw a detachment of commandoes coming toward her.She carried a submachine gunand to Adele looked very young."Out of the way," Adele said with a curt nod.The Alliance soldier jumpedsideways, knocking her weapon against the wall, pitting the ancient plaster.Adele pulled open the door and led her detachment down the stairs in singlefile.Lighting had been improved even here: battery-powered lamps were stuckto the wall at each landing.She hadn't expected the guard; there'd been no reference to a post at thestairhead in the electronic media Adele had examined.It would have been amistake to try to explain what the detachment was doing, however.The guardmust have been placed by someone of relatively low rank, so she was thereforebest ignored by commandoes claiming to operate on the instructions of BlueChromeCommand.Blue Chrome Command was Markos.Adele wondered if that would amuse him.Hehadn't seemed a man with a sense of humor.Adele smiled faintly.She was finding more humor in life herself since shebecame a Cinnabar pirate.The door to the basement level was open.A guard stood there as well.Heturned from watching workmen installing power cables to stare as thedetachment trooped past down the stairs.Adele gave him a hard glance.The subbasement was well lit also, but that was a doubtful virtue in a regionPage 162ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.htmlso decayed.The brick flooring rippled like the face of the sea a usefulsimile, because at least half of the surface was under water.The ceilingarches dripped condensate, and an apparent spring stirred one pool clear ofthe pale algae that scummed the others.A pump rumbled disconsolately, and the generator at the far end of thebuilding vibrated at a higher frequency.Workmen had drilled fresh holesthrough the ceiling to pass power lines to the upper stories.The air danced with brick dust.Adele approved of the additional wiring in principle.The execution of thework was simple butchery, however.One might as well shear a book down on theupper and lower edges so that it fit your new shelving.Her detachment had returned to double file; the only sound they made was thesplash of boots in the foul water.The bays filled with the detritus of pastgenerations looked like the wrack of a terrible storm.To Adele it was a sadreminder of the ephemeral nature of human civilization; but then, she saw mostthings that way.Hogg and the sailors probably had a different viewpoint.The pumps were in four brick alcoves jutting from the lengthwise exteriorwalls, arranged in an Xpattern with the outside entrance between the pair on the north side.Thepumps were huge cylinders sunk beneath floor level and venting through ceramicpipes half a meter in diameter [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]