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Chapter 17
"Mr.
Taverner," Peggy was saying insistently. "Come along with me; put your
clothes on and follow me to the outside office. I'll meet you there. Just
go through the blue-and-white doors."
Standing off
to one side, General Buckman listened to the girl's voice; pretty and
fresh, it sounded good to him, and he guessed that it sounded that way to
Taverner, too.
"One more
thing," Buckman said, stopping the sloppily dressed, sleepy Taverner as he
started to make his way toward the blue-and-white doors. "I can't renew
your police pass if someone down the line voids it. Do you understand?
What you've got to do is apply to us, exactly following legal lines, for a
total set of ID cards. It'll mean intensive interrogation, but" - he
thumped Jason Taverner on the arm - "a six can take it."
"Okay,"
Jason Taverner said. He left the office, closing the blue-and-white doors
behind him.
Into his
intercom Buckman said, "Herb, make sure they put both a microtrans and a
heterostatic class eighty warhead on him. So we can follow him and if it's
necessary at any time we can destroy him."
"You want a
voice tap, too?" Herb said.
"Yes, if you
can get it onto his throat without him noticing.
"I'll have
Peg do it," Herb said, and signed off.
Could a Mutt
and Jeff, say, between me and McNulty, have brought any more information
out? he asked himself. No, he decided. Because the man himself simply
doesn't know. What we must do is wait for him to figure it out ... and be
there with him, either physically or electronically, when it happens. As
in fact I pointed out to him.
But it still
strikes me, he realized, that we very well may have blundered onto
something the sixes are doing as a group - despite their usual mutual
animosity.
Again
pressing the button of his intercom he said, "Herb, have a
twenty-four-hour surveillance put on that pop singer Heather Hart or
whatever she calls herself. And get from Data Central the files of all
what they call 'sixes.' You understand?"
"Are the
cards punched for that?" Herb said.
"Probably
not," Buckman said drearily. "Probably nobody thought to do it ten years
ago when Dill Temko was alive, thinking up more and weirder life forms to
shamble about." Like us sevens, he thought wryly. " And they certainly
wouldn't think of it these days, now that the sixes have failed
politically. Do you agree?"
"I agree,"
Herb said, "but I'll try for it anyhow."
Buckman
said, "If the cards are punched for that, I want a twenty-four-hour
surveillance on all sixes. And even if we can't roust them all out we can
at least put tails on the ones we know."
"Will do,
Mr. Buckman." Herb clicked off.
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