Jack L. Chalker WOS 3 Gods of the Well of Souls

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them." Suddenly the magnitude of what he'd done hit him. "And get some people
in here really quick," he added. "Lunderman's left the computer turned on
with the damned security already deactivated!"
The sun had been up for hours when they struggled back to Subar, but all of
them felt it had been worth it. Terry almost cried for joy when Gus came back
and ran to hug him.
There was no sign of the colonel, but all the entrances and exits were heavily
guarded and it was felt that he was still in there somewhere.
Inspector Kurdon looked exhausted but generally satisfied. "Sixty-eight of
ours killed or wounded, but at least two hundred of theirs dead and almost a
hundred in custody, and we broke that cancer that has been eating into the
soul as well as the soil of my nation for far too long.
It has been a worthy night indeed." "What about the computer? Have your people
learned anything?"
Gus asked him. "Not as much as we might have had the colonel not gotten in
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there first but far more than I think any of them would have wished. What you
caught him doing was unleashing what my computer people call a tapeworm." The
term wasn't exact, but that was the way it got translated to Gus. "A program
that goes in and finds and destroys specific information. A second was ready
to load, and a third was found nearby, but thanks to you only the first was
run."
"Any idea of the nature of the information destroyed? Or is that a ridiculous
question?" Anne
Marie asked him.
"No, it is not altogether ridiculous. We can deduce a little of it, although
we have barely scratched the surface of the thing. It will be months before
we get everything we can out of that data base, and we need to make certain
that no one who does not have the most impeccable honesty gets in there in
the meantime. I do not like it that the colonel is still at large in there,
but we do not believe he could actually operate the computer. Rather, he knew
how to run the tapeworms and where they were stored. In a sense, merely losing
what we did is a fair trade for having the security system opened up. We
might have learned far less over a much longer period had we had to attempt
to crack it." "And the erasures?"
"Oh, sorry. As I say, by deduction. Political names, big regional names, that
sort of thing. We won't get a payoff or politician's listing from that, I'm
afraid."
"It's bigger than you know," Gus told him. "You wouldn't believe how big. I
got it straight from the colonel."
Kurdon gave a weary nod. "I believe I know how far this had to have gone just
by looking at its scale and by the sheer number of hexes where deletions were
made. Do not worry, Gus. It wouldn't matter if the entire council was
corrupt, as they probably are in one way or another. This complex and the
computer are in Agon. Agon alone has authority here. And I know who is who in
Agon." "What about Lori and Mavra? Any word on them?" Tony asked, concerned
over Julian's report.
"It is the first minute of the new information age," the inspector said. "Give
us a little time.
This is of the highest priority. Get some sleep, all of you! Even 7 am going
to attempt it. By the time we awaken, they will have news, perhaps very exact
news. Then. I believe, we will be on our way on a journey to the northwest."
"Clopta!" Gus breathed. "And Campos." Kurdon nodded. "Also by that time I
expect that I will have so many high Cloptan officials terrified of me that I
will be carried to this Campos person on a litter with politicians as
bearers." He smiled, the first time any of them could remember seeing such an
expression on an Agonite. "It was a very good night."
By late afternoon, when they struggled back to the command center, most still
half-asleep but unable to go any further toward resolving the problem, the
trusted technicians inside the computer room had some answers. "A bird and a
unicorn," Inspector Kurdon told them. "Neither are monsters in the sense of
the ones we discovered down in the cells. They are in their own ways
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works of art-if, of course, the results proved equal to the computer
estimation. Your friend Lori was something of a compromise, it appears. The
original order was for a grotesque, like what we saw. But when they saw the
genetic potential and also discovered that Campos was just going to make him [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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