Read Online Meeting at Infinity by John Brunner - Free Book Online

majority as always. He did not like to think what would happen if by a miracle Lyken held out.

7
    J OCKEY H OLE SAT in his usual place, behind the huge one-way glass frontage of the Octopus Bar, and watched darkness move in on his manor. Opposite him was Gaffles, quiet and patient. When Jockey was cogitating, and especially when he was looking out along Holy Alley, he liked silence.
    His expression was thoughtful.
    Jockey liked data. News, information, rumors—a well-spat string of any sort. Maybe it was due to Jockey and people like Jockey (there weren’t many) that the yonder boys had adopted that figure of speech into their wide talk: “spit the string!” Because knowledge was power. Know everythingabout someone, and you made him dance like a puppet on the strings.
    Jockey had knowledge the way his bodyguards had muscles—some he had, he hadn’t even used yet. Quite a lot of it he didn’t expect ever to use, because it related to people even as far up the tree as Manuel Clostrides and the merchant princes themselves. He didn’t often call that stuff to mind; he didn’t enjoy contemplating the gulf between him and them.
    This time was different. He turned to Gaffles.
    “Know? That number Curdy Wence—when he came in with his bit of string, I figured it was just curio.”
    Gaffles hunched forward. “But now—” he prompted.
    “Now maybe I feel it might pay. Listen at this list, and see how you see it.” Jockey began to tell items on his fingers, flicking them one by one. “It’s about Lyken. Lyken’s ’cruiters are out drumming up manpower like never for years. Gold? There’s a rumor running that something Lyken brought in was infected with some disease germ. Gold?”
    “I got the rumor,” put in Gaffles. “I also got that it was strictly from Tacket.”
    “We
hear that,” shrugged Jockey. “And who else? For the unmeasured ones, rumor is better. Next, we get that Athlone went to see Clostrides directly after Lyken left—and he comes out and fires his personal guard, Benny Mott.”
    (When that news reached him, Jockey had snapped, “Did you hire him yet?” And when the news-bringer’s face went white, Jockey had cursed him fluently for all of a minute prior to getting a legman after Benny to offer him a Rate Two for whatever information Athlone hadn’t had hypnolocked out of reach.)
    “We know one thing certain about Athlone,” said Gaffles.
    “That all he’s cared about these months is Luis Nevada? Gaffles, watch yourself. You’re getting astute in your age. How do you read this, then? Suppose the number Curdy toldus about—the dreg that wasn’t, Lyken took into his cruiser—was Luis Nevada?”
    Gaffles pursed his lips. “Jockey, you pay Curdy Rate One for just a curio?
You
saw this coming!”
    “I surprise me sometimes,” said Jockey dryly. He didn’t let it show, but he really meant that. Even to him, a Rate One wasn’t pennies; he’d gambled on a hunch in paying Curdy so well, and here was the reason, emerging hours later from his subconscious mind. It had happened before. It might happen again.
That
was what kept Jockey on top of the pile.
    He went on steadily, “I read that they’re getting set to dispossess Ahmed Lyken, the way they did to Ald and Porter. They won’t say so; they’ll fill the newstapes with crap about voluntary liquidation. But I’ll lay odds that Lyken’s going to get chiseled out.”
    “You been warning off Lyken’s ’cruiters all day, too.”
    Fact. Jockey nodded. He had been warning his valuable runners and agents to avoid the ’cruiters, because Lyken was tough. He’d fight. Jockey was still capable of hero-worship, and knew he was only a big frog in a small puddle. Lyken was a man he could admire for being large in the biggest of all.
    “It fits,” Gaffles was saying. “Athlone’s so far out of the class Clostrides belongs in, Clostrides wouldn’t
notice
him usually. Jockey, you think this is safe to be left with a raw cub like Curdy