Read Online Web of Everywhere by John Brunner - Free Book Online Page B

while Hans belatedly considered a corollary to his last assumption: suppose that obsession with the maintenance of privacy diminished as the means available to protect it increased? ‘Used to have a boy-friend there. Maybe you know Christos Micallef?’
    Hans shook his head.
    ‘Lucky you. She’s a thorough-going bitch.’
    ?
    But before he could speak again a bell chimed, and Aleuker was suddenly looking past him, into the house, instead of at him.
    ‘Hmm! Looks as though the rush is starting. I hope we didn’t underestimate the numbers – we had the whole project computed, but … Well, that’s my headache, not yours. Have a drink, make yourself at home, excuse me while I go welcome the number two.’
    Small wonder, Hans realized as he turned and recognized the second arrival. It was the girl he had nearly met at Oaxaca. Aleuker was grinning from ear to ear. His jubilation faded a little, though, when her boy-friend followed her.
    That should have been amusing. Hans, however, was in no mood to find anything funny. Frankly, he was scared at his own temerity. He was as out of place here as a diehard Christian at a Way of Life ritual. Maybe he ought to leave again at once?
    No, the hell with that idea. He’d brazen it out for an hour at least, make himself scarce when his absence had lasted long enough for Dany to be contrite. His main purpose had been achieved: he was here, he’d spoken to Aleukerpersonally, even though he fully expected he’d be forgotten again in five minutes, and it wouldn’t worry anybody if he hung around in some quiet corner for a while.
    He advanced on a passing waiter and helped himself to a glass of wine, and, turning away, found himself being smiled at by a genial man in blue suède.
    ‘Thanks for winning me my bet with Chaim!’ he exclaimed. ‘It’s not every day of the year one can take money off that fellow. He insisted, you see, that according to his computers – mine really, but what the hell? – nobody would figure out those silly clues of his and arrive here before eight p.m. local. And then up you turn and blow his deadline to smithereens!’
    ‘Uh – did I?’ Hans muttered, restraining himself from consulting his watch because it would show some utterly irrelevant hour.
    ‘Why, yes. You clocked in well under the wire,’ the man in blue declared. ‘By the way, I’m Boris Pech. Did I hear you say you’re a recuperator?’
    ‘Not
the
Boris Pech?’ Hans blurted.
    ‘What?’ The older man blinked. ‘Oh – oh, I guess you might say so. Advancement Authority, if that’s what you mean. But I was about to ask you: do you ever work Europe, by any chance?’
    ‘Uh … Yes, now and then. When we get clearance to dig over a zone that’s been pronounced free of plague and radiation.’
    ‘Ah. Then I wonder if you’ve come across anything that might help us out of a tight corner. We’ve combed North America, Russia, what little of Japan we can get at, without joy, and Europe’s our last hope really, though I guess there may be something in Brazil … But of course Brazil is about the most unhealthy spot on the planet nowadays.’
    ‘So I’m told,’ Hans muttered. There was even less news from the interior of South America currently than from Central Africa or China. It was no simple case, like the latter two, of people having decided that skelters were evil and therefore being apt to slaughter skelter-travelers on sight; there were bloody wars in progress as a score of petty local lordlings tried to carve themselves new empires, massacring those who tried to resist.
    ‘Well, the problem’s this,’ Pech went on. ‘A bunch of us landed a skelter on the moon last year, as you know, and doubtless you’ve been wondering why so far we haven’t made any use of the damn’ thing!’
    Hans nodded. He’d heard about that venture, announced as the first earnest of man’s ability to surpass the scientific achievements of the pre-skelter period, which so many people still