Delany, Samuel R - The Fall Of The Towers 1 - Out of the Dead City by Delany Samuel R

Author:Delany, Samuel R.
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf

CHAPTER VII

THE news service of Toromon in the city of Toron was both a public address system and video threads that could be replayed by the families well enough off to own a re-video.

Among the mainland villages it was a fairly accurate brigade of men and women who transported news orally from settlement to settlement. All announced that morning: PRINCE KIDNAPPED!

KING DECLARES WAR!

In the military ministry, directives were issued in duplicate, returned in triplicate. At eight-forty, the 27B communications sector became hopelessly snarled. This resulted in the shipment of a boatload of prefabricated barracks foundations to a port on the mainland sixty-two miles from the intended destination.

Let, Jon, and Arkor were just mounting the private yacht of the Duchess of Petra which was waiting for them at the end of the harbour. Later, as the island of Toron slipped across the water, Let mentioned to Jon who was leaning with his back against the railing, that there was an awful lot of commotion on the docks.

'It's not always like that,' Jon told him, remembering the times he'd gone with his father in the morning to the pier. 'They're inspecting cargoes. But I don't know why it's so much busier than usual.'

One group of military directives which had been quite speedily and accurately delivered were the offers of contracts, primarily for food for the army. Two distributors of imported fish who had no chance of receiving the contracts sent in a bid accompanied by a letter which explained (with fraudulent statistics) how much cheaper it would be to use imported fish rather than those from the aquariums. Then they comman-deered a group of ruffians who broke into the house of old Koshar's personal secretary, who was still sleeping late after the previous night's party which he had organized. (So far he has appeared in this story only as a hand at the edge of a storage cabinet door, wearing a wide, brass ring set with an irregular shape of blue glass.) They tied him to a chair, punched him in the stomach, in the head, and in the mouth until there was blood in his trimmed beard; and he had given the information they wanted—information that enabled them to sink three of the Koshar Kargo Fleet that was just coming into dock.

The Duchess' private yacht made contact with a tetron-tramp returning to the mainland and Let, Jon, and Arkor changed ships. Coming from the yacht in bare feet and rags gave them an incongruous appearance. But on the new ship, among those passengers who were returning for their families, they were quickly lost.

In Toron, the pilot of the shuttle boat that took workers from the city to the aquariums found a clumsily put together, but nevertheless unmistakable, bomb in the lavatory. It was dismantled. There was no accident. But an authority, Vice-Supervisor T'jones of

Koshar Synthetic Food Concerns (one name you do not need to remember; he was killed three days later in a street riot) clenched his jaw (unshaven; he had

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