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located the Zorken group without much difficulty, all on tickets charged to
the corporation: Justin Banks; Gertrude Heissen; Tran Xedeidang;
Clarence Porter. Whoever else was with the Mule crew, more employees, agents
and consultants
must have been brought in locally. That was all that the spaceline records
could tell him. Building meaty bodies around such scanty bones was part of the
magic that June excelled at. In any case, it gave Kieran a reason to call her.
She answered from her apartment in Nineveh.
 Well, hi! A face from the wilderness. I was beginning to wonder if you d
decided to take up a life as an ascetic recluse out there.
 Oh, there are times when it sounds tempting, but fortunately they don t
last, Kieran replied.
 How are things in the vast metropolis?
 Metropolitan. Sarda s been retired from the limelight at Quantonix the story
is, to rest up and concentrate on getting straightened out.
 At Doctor Balmer s spa and cure-all.
 Exactly. More likely it s to concentrate on finding where the money went
before the money people s patience runs out.
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 They ve been covering the territory. I got a call from Mahom a few days back,
saying that some unworthies had been out at the lot asking about me. I don t
think it was because of concern over my health and happiness.
June s eyebrows rose.  Really? Then maybe my concern for it, and getting you
out of sight wasn t such a bad thing after all.
 Seems like it.
 How did they get a lead on you at Mahom s? June asked.
 I m not sure. Sometimes my popularity just runs ahead of me.
June dismissed it with a toss of her head as one of those facts of existence
surrounding Kieran that would never be explained.  So how s the budding
archeologist? Have you decided yet that your
whole life so far has been misguided, and discovered your true calling to be a
search for solitude, serenity, and peace of the soul?
 Not quite. But we ve run into some complications.
 Now why doesn t that surprise me?
 What they ve found here as far as the scientific side goes is staggering:
constructions from some long-lost culture. No question about it. But even more
astounding is that they show every sign of being related to the Technolithic
structures on Earth. I can see now why Walter rushed out here.
The frivolity vanished from June s face.  You re serious? The question was
reflexive. Even with all Kieran s quirks and convolutions, she knew when he
was and was not joking.  So what s the complication?
 A big construction and mining outfit from the Belt, called Zorken
Consolidated, has first dibs on the site, and they re not letting a few rocks
and ideas of dead aliens get in the way of the holy flow of dollars. Some of
their people showed up here and are waving an eviction notice with threats.
June nodded in a way that called for no elaboration.  What are they staking it
out for? she asked curiously.
 That s the funny part. The original plan was for another spaceport. But I ve
just checked with the registries in Lowell, and that plan has already been
shelved. So who are these people from Zorken and what do they want? I ve got
four names who arrived from off-planet out of the spaceline lists.
Will you get what you can on them for me?
 Sure. Shoot them through.
Kieran clicked a button to send off the list.  And how is the new lord of your
manor making out?
 Guinness? Oh, he s out somewhere with Patti from the Oasis and her friend. I
think you might be lucky if you get him back. Kieran was about to respond,
and then a distant look came over his face suddenly. June waited.  What is
it? she asked.
 Guinness . . . That could be it. He was with us when we intercepted Sarda-One
on his way to the bank. Balmer has probably restored his memories by now.
Guinness would have given something different for people going around asking
questions to latch on to.
 So how would they connect from there to Mahom s place? June asked.
Kieran thought for a moment longer, then shook his head.  I don t know.
Anyhow, it doesn t make any difference now. I ve got some more things I want
to check. Get back to me with whatever you come up with on these four as soon
as you can, would you, Lovely Lady?
 Flattery will get you most places you want to go. Okay, Kieran, I ll get on
to it right away.
Like celebrities and political leaders, high executives in business tended to
be driven by egos whose sense of importance was served by having their success
stories, views on life, pearls of wisdom, and whatever other contributions
they felt might be valuable to posterity, widely circulated for worldly
consumption. In short, they were hardly publicity shy, and since they suffered
from no shortage of the wherewithal and influence to gain visibility, were
always happy to oblige media foragers looking for some fill or another angle
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on a story. This made it not especially difficult to put together surprisingly
detailed pictures from interviews, gossip columns, profile pieces, and other
sources available across the General Net. This, Kieran proceeded to do,
garnishing the result with a few extra inside details gleaned through calls to
contacts he had acquired in media research departments and elsewhere.
Zorken s chief executive and president was one Hamilton Horatio Gilder, who at
58 had held the position for eight years after promotion from vice president
of the Legal Division it was interesting that Zorken needed a full legal
division
, whereas most of even the larger-scale operations were able to
make do with a department. Before that, he had climbed through the ranks from
a background of finance, law, and business administration in a demonstration
of loyalty and treachery surgically applied in appropriate directions in a way
that would have earned a no-fault rating from Machiavelli. He had carved his
way to the top at least, so the adulatory testimonials said without benefit of
family connections or the impetus of previously entrenched wealth, but now
presided over a dynasty of interlocking marriages and other forms of
individual contract that owned the lion s bite of Zorken-
controlled assets across the Central Solar System. The clan disported
themselves in residences scattered through the Belt and the Jovian moons, and
had been featured in articles depicting life among the fashionable on the
beaches of western Florida, mountain resorts in Bavaria, and the pleasure city
of Durban, South Africa.
Gilder himself had three offspring, none of them from the brief marriage he
had attempted at an early age, declining to repeat the experience since. In
this he represented a departure from the staid conformity still generally
expected of senior executives, but far from offering contrition, he apparently
reveled in the image of rebelliousness and untamed individualism that it gave
him.  Moral high ground is just a refuge for the mediocre, he had told a
journalist when the subject came up in an interview. The oldest daughter, [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]