The Long Run | Page 7

with Bones, talk about Hemingway or something. A man named
Jerry Jackson just tried to hire me to boost CalleyTronics--"
"But we're already boosting Calley!"
"--and, the Peaceforcers have some kind of dancer in the Plaza's
Security Board. It's a drop."
Bones was looking back and forth between them, and Trent said softly
to Jimmy, "Go." One of the gendarmes was pointing out the scene to
the others; still Trent did not see anyone in the Plaza who might
reasonably have been a Peaceforcer. The girl in the green dress was
walking away with her friends, and Trent started after her, Jimmy
falling in beside him for just a second. Out of the corner of his eye
Trent saw a pair of the gendarmes coming out onto the Plaza floor.
"What are you doing?" Jimmy demanded, glancing over at the
gendarmes watching them.
"Creating a diversion. Go, damn it." Trent never so much as looked
around; he was simply aware that Jimmy had faded back into the crowd.
He threaded his way smoothly through the surging crowds on Eight's
walkways, gaining on the three girls; the girl in the green leather dress
still held her purse by its clasped top. An adholo flared and he swerved
slightly to pass through it; under the cover of scarlet laser light he
pulled the emblade from its waterproofed hiding place behind his belt

buckle and turned it on. The emblade was only three molecules wide at
its edge; it would cut through ferrocrete as though it were paper, and
with some muscle behind it would cut even sheet monocrystal. It was
completely safe; the blade itself dissolved instantly into a fine dust at
the first touch of liquid--say, blood.
The cops were only thirty meters or so away; Trent increased his pace
slightly, came alongside the three girls and did the thing in one
movement, with the ease of long years of practice: jostled the girl
roughly enough to make sure the gendarmes saw it, muttered a brief
apology and smiled at the girl in what might be taken for slight
embarrassment, flicked the emblade up to touch the side of the purse,
cut, reached through the open flap and with two fingers pulled the
wallet free, switched the emblade off, dropped the haft to the ground
and gave it a good kick and was turning away with the stolen wallet,
the exercise done flawlessly, back toward the gendarmes, when a
delicate feminine hand closed around his forearm with amazing
strength.
The girl said softly, in a voice pitched to go no further than Trent's ears,
"I'd like my wallet returned."
Trent turned back to her and for the first time actually looked at the
girl's face. The crowd was clearing away around them, a small open
space with Trent and the girl at the center. She was fifteen or so, with
clean simple features framed by long, straight black hair, with green
eyes that were even brighter than the dyed leather dress she wore. Trent
said, "Sure," and gave the wallet back. The girl looked at him curiously,
head tilted slightly to one side, a puzzled look taking hold upon her
features.
Trent said softly, "How did you know I took it?"
A deep baritone voice ten meters behind Trent, off to his left, said
"Ma'am, stand away, please."
"Really," said Trent. "I did that perfectly."

The baritone voice boomed, "Stand away!"
The girl had not answered Trent. Trent said, as the seconds ticked by,
"If you're not going to answer me, you'd better do what he says. He'll
stun you too if you don't, and it's not pleasant. Believe me."
The girl nodded slowly, and took a single step backward, wallet in her
hand. Her eyes never left Trent, and the puzzled look did not waver.
Her eyes.
"Oh," said Trent. The girl took another step backward, and another.
Bright green eyes, like Carl Castanaveras', or Jany McConnell's--
Emerald eyes.
Trent said, "Denice?"
Her eyes widened in shock.
The cops shot him.

3.
"I don't understand," she said to Trent, that February day in 2062, "why
you work so hard at it."
The three of them lay in the grass in the center of the park across the
street from the Chandler Complex: the dark-haired green-eyed twins,
and one blonde boy with pale blue eyes. David lay beneath one of the
trees, hiding from the hazy noontime sun with a book; Denice and
Trent sat beneath the tree next to David's, dancing in the InfoNet.
"Because I'm a Player," Trent replied.
Denice Castanaveras sighed in frustration. It frustrated her to know that
most of the telepaths in the Complex could have touched Trent's

thoughts easily, to know that two years from now, when the Change
came for her, she would be able to