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with a screen over each, and shook his head.
"Nope. I doubt there's a setup like this in any of the knee enclaves except
maybe Detroit, and if there's one there it's probably used for defense and
budgeting, not for propaganda. Frankly, I
been wondering what it's all for."
"Show you, then," Flamen said, rising. "We don't have too much time to put our
day's show together, but I did once comp a ten-minute show in level time, so
if I have to hurry I can& Let's see now!" He crossed the room to stand before
the board closest to the doorthis one was the most heavily used, as could be
seen from the deep nail-marks in the tops of its keys.
"We'll start with the one that got away," he said, half-mockingly,
half-angrily. "The Morton
Lenigo thing. Backfacts first" he tapped a code on the board with practiced
fingers. "Now that they're set up, let's take a starting point from which we
can dig deeper. For inlet's ask what the
Detroit city government threatto do in order to secure Lenigo's admission."
Diablo had come over to stand beside him and watch. Flamen was pleased to hear
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his very faint hiss of inbreath as he voiced the idea which had struck him in
the skimmer.
"It was Detroit, then? You of all people ought to know. Don't worry, though.
I'm not going to force inout of you. Our equipment isn't the best in the
world, but it's well primed with data, and anyway I didn't have to comp that
one out I just deduced it." At the back of his mind he was aware that he was
adopting this patronizing tone in order to get back at the knee for that
dismaying fit of insight he'd suffered a minute earlier, and was unable to
prevent himself continuing, and was
file:///D|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry/D...runner,%20John%20-%20The%20Jag
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file:///D|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry/Desktop/John%20Brunner/Brunner,%20
John%20-%20The%20Jagged%20Orbit.txt dismayed all over again at that too.
Christ, he thought: I'm beginning to wonder why I still have any friends left
if this is me now.
Worse yet& do I have any friends?
But aloud, in response to the appearance on the screen over the computer board
of a short list of key subjects each followed by a probability rating in
perterms: "See here, it says the most sensitive point for them to apply
pressure at is their annual tax-assessment. They've nearly satched the market
for skimcommercial transport vehicles and their other main products, and they
didn't quite compute their obsolesprogram as cleverly as they intended. We
could take at least a three-month blockade before we ran out of replacements,
and if we had to we could welsh on the contract the Federal government made
with them and start producing our own spares. Whereas they'd have starvation
riots in about a month and a half; we deliberately keep down their stocks of
food.
However, their purchases of power and water bring in so big a slice of the
Federal budget, in hard
African and Middle Eastern currencies, that threatening to set up oh, pera
condensation plant& Is something wrong?"
Diablo swallowed hard. "Yes," he said in a defiant tone. "I think you're
conning me. You got that in the Federal package, didn't you? It was part of
the price you paid for agreeing to slot me in."
"Cross my heart it wasn't," Flamen said with a thin smile. "But I assume it's
the truth, hm?"
"Well& Oh, all right. I believe you. And it is right. Clear down to the
atmospheric condensation plant We were going to break that info around the
weekend sometime. I guess I don't have to explain the slant."
"Once again the knees get even with the blanks for terming a nasty antisocial
act 'blackmail'?"
"We call 'em 'petards,' " Diablo said at length. "You know "hoist with his
own.' Sorry, I didn't mean to hold you up when you're short of time. But what
I don't get is this." He fingered his beard, staring at the computer screen.
"When you have analytical equipment like this, which can dig the background
out of something as well masked as the Lenigo blackmail deal, why's there any
need for a specialized spoolpigeon show? You'd think the regular news coverage
would be full-depth anyway."
"I've made my living for years out of the fact that it isn't," Flamen said
curtly. Then, relenting: "It's differhere on the outside, Diablo. It's a big
psychological thing. We look at what you can see, and we stop there. I guess
we got into the habit some time in the last censame as we well same as we
might look at you and think 'kneeblank,' full stop. We think of news as the
detached record of what took place, regardless of why: there was an earthquake
yesterday, there's a riot today, there's going to be a tornado tomorrow. You
catch me?"
"It fits," Diablo said, nodding. "So go ahead."
"All right. Where was I? Oh yes. Well, I'll just have all the stories comped
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