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FLOW MY TEARS, THE POLICEMAN SAID |
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Chapter 17 "Mr. Taverner," Peggy was saying insistently. "Come along with me; put your clothes on and follow me to the outside office. I'll meet you there. Just go through the blue-and-white doors." Standing off to one side, General Buckman listened to the girl's voice; pretty and fresh, it sounded good to him, and he guessed that it sounded that way to Taverner, too. "One more thing," Buckman said, stopping the sloppily dressed, sleepy Taverner as he started to make his way toward the blue-and-white doors. "I can't renew your police pass if someone down the line voids it. Do you understand? What you've got to do is apply to us, exactly following legal lines, for a total set of ID cards. It'll mean intensive interrogation, but" - he thumped Jason Taverner on the arm - "a six can take it." "Okay," Jason Taverner said. He left the office, closing the blue-and-white doors behind him. Into his intercom Buckman said, "Herb, make sure they put both a microtrans and a heterostatic class eighty warhead on him. So we can follow him and if it's necessary at any time we can destroy him." "You want a voice tap, too?" Herb said. "Yes, if you can get it onto his throat without him noticing. "I'll have Peg do it," Herb said, and signed off. Could a Mutt and Jeff, say, between me and McNulty, have brought any more information out? he asked himself. No, he decided. Because the man himself simply doesn't know. What we must do is wait for him to figure it out ... and be there with him, either physically or electronically, when it happens. As in fact I pointed out to him. But it still strikes me, he realized, that we very well may have blundered onto something the sixes are doing as a group - despite their usual mutual animosity. Again pressing the button of his intercom he said, "Herb, have a twenty-four-hour surveillance put on that pop singer Heather Hart or whatever she calls herself. And get from Data Central the files of all what they call 'sixes.' You understand?" "Are the cards punched for that?" Herb said. "Probably not," Buckman said drearily. "Probably nobody thought to do it ten years ago when Dill Temko was alive, thinking up more and weirder life forms to shamble about." Like us sevens, he thought wryly. " And they certainly wouldn't think of it these days, now that the sixes have failed politically. Do you agree?" "I agree," Herb said, "but I'll try for it anyhow." Buckman said, "If the cards are punched for that, I want a twenty-four-hour surveillance on all sixes. And even if we can't roust them all out we can at least put tails on the ones we know." "Will do, Mr. Buckman." Herb clicked off. |