Read Online A Blink of the Screen by Terry Pratchett - Free Book Online Page A

a man who’d got his ideas about stealth from watching adventure films. He was holding a small handgun. It didn’t look as though it had much stopping power, but Linsay didn’t approve.
    He let off a shot that nicked the rock a few feet from the man’s head.
    ‘Throw the gun this way,’ he suggested.
    He watched shock, panic and resignation chase one another across the man’s face, as it scanned the thicket of anonymous bushes that had just spoken.
    ‘The gun,’ he repeated. He could make out the detail of the man’s belt. Gumment issue, of course, but light duty. That meant he could only have come up from Forward Base.
    ‘Okay, bush,’ said the man. He tossed the gun in Linsay’s general direction and slowly moved his hands …
    A sliver of rock nicked his ear as another round hit the glassy boulder beside him.
    ‘The belt, too,’ said the bush.
    ‘You’re Larry Linsay,’ said the man. ‘They said you were stone paranoid – no offence, you understand.’
    ‘None taken. Move those hands real careful now.’
    The hands moved real careful. ‘You don’t know me, I guess we never met. I’m Joshua Valienté. Security man. From Forward Base, you know?’
    He flinched as Linsay appeared only a few feet away. Approaching someone by movin’ up towards them through an adjacent world was an old trick, but it never failed to disconcert.
    Valienté found himself looking up into a pair of grey-blue eyes that were entirely without mercy. This bastard’d really shoot, he told himself. Don’t even look at your own gun. He’d really shoot you, up here where no one else will ever come. He wouldn’t even have to bury the body.
    ‘Prove it,’ said Linsay.
    Valienté shrugged what he hoped was an unaggressive shrug. ‘I can’t.’
    ‘All good security men carry little plastic cards,’ said Linsay. ‘They have little pictures of themselves in case they forget what they look like.’
    ‘Not when they’re off duty. Can I stand up?’
    Linsay stepped back. Possibly that meant yes. Valienté didn’t risk it.
    ‘There isn’t any Forward Base now,’ he said as levelly as he could. ‘The station’s there all right, but there aren’t any people. They’re dead.’ He paused, waiting for the reaction. It was like dropping a brick into a pool of treacle.
    ‘Aren’t you going to say anything?’ he asked.
    ‘No. I’ve got the gun. You talk.’
    ‘All right, you soulless bastard; someone poisoned them. You know the little spring, where they get the water? In there. I was out hunting. But I saw her when I came back. Smashing up equipment. Then she went
movin
’. I followed her up here until I caught your beacon.’
    Linsay regarded him for some time.
    ‘I go back to Base once in a while,’ he said. ‘I’ve never seen you before. Didn’t even know they had security men.’
    ‘I only came up three weeks ago.’
    ‘I see you’ve been doing a great job,’ said Linsay.
    ‘Look, she’s
here
. Somewhere. And if we stand here all day then she’ll be at the other end of a trajectory.’
    The chase had taken four days, nearly. The murderer had used the Base’s generator to give an initial boost, but the guard had been bright enough to scavenge for spare charged batteries. They meant a weight penalty, but not for long. There was a trail of burnt-out cells across three thousand alternate Earths, discarded after a series of mind-punishing
moves
that drained the power and sent the guard pinwheeling across unsuspecting landscapes. Pity about the belt. There had been time either to take one of the more rugged models that were specifically designed for the high meggas, or to find extra batteries and a knapsack to carry them. There hadn’t been time for both.
    There ought to have been time to do something about the bodies. It hadn’t been a subtle poison, just a slow-acting one. There would have to be time later.
    The guard wasn’t very experienced at tacking on the
move
, but he knew one thing: never flip across