The Long Run | Page 9

Devlin's
office. Her parents had been telepaths; amazingly, frighteningly
powerful telepaths.
The girl did not even glance at him.
In a chair just outside of Mac Devlin's office, glaring at Trent, sat a
stiff-faced man in a black and silver uniform.
Trent categorized the man immediately, with a cold chill.

PKF Elite.
Cyborg.
They would have taken him while he was still young; not past
thirty-five. Taken to Spacebase One at L-5, Peaceforcer Heaven where
the Peaceforcer Elite were created. Surgery that was impossible under
the crushing 980 centimeters per second squared acceleration of Earth
was just barely feasible when performed in the free fall of L-5.
Peaceforcer genegineers and surgeons had taken him and changed him;
injected him with transform viruses designed to strengthen his muscles,
to speed his neural reactions by better than forty percent. Changed by
the transform viruses, doubly changed by surgery and cyborging; his
eyes were not real, nor his skin. He would see in infra-red and
ultra-violet as easily as a normal human distinguished between blue and
green. Beneath his right shoulder blade was a power source good for
six months. A secondary nerve network laced itself through the first,
fused itself to that which a human was born with; the network and all of
the Elite hardware it controlled was controlled in turn by a combat
computer implanted at the base of his skull. Carbon-ceramic filaments
wound themselves through and around his muscles, joints, and
ligaments, reinforcing the bones; this, the direct work of the transform
viruses, enabled the Elite to withstand acceleration that would have
quickly killed any normal human. Threads of room temperature
superconductor were woven into his skin; he would barely notice most
lasers. His skin would turn a knife, and his hair would not burn.
There was an inskin at the Peaceforcer's left temple.
Trent stood motionless under the weight of the Peaceforcer Elite's
frozen glare.
"Come on," said one of the gendarmes contemptuously, and shoved
Trent forward into Mac Devlin's office.
"I like to dance," Trent tried to explain to the man.
Police Chief Maxwell Devlin was responsible for overseeing the

precincts that policed much of the Fringe and a considerable fraction of
the Peaceforcer Patrol Sectors.
Devlin's office was an odd mixture of gray leather and chrome. There
was a huge sheet of opaqued glassite immediately behind Trent; cleared,
it would look out on the waiting area. A single painting, done
fashionably in electrolytes, hung immediately to Mac Devlin's left: a
glowing violet Easter egg in the midst of a scarlet desert, sitting exactly
on the divider line of a laser-straight two-lane highway.
The sunpaint was turned off. A small bright reading lamp sat at
Devlin's right elbow, providing the only illumination in Devlin's office;
it seemed to Trent that he and Devlin hung suspended in dimness, two
images at the edges of the light.
Aside from Devlin's desk, the chair he sat in and the chair Trent was
seated in, there were only two pieces of furniture in the room: a coat
rack with two identical overcoats hung on it, and a small credenza
immediately behind and to the right of Mac Devlin. The credenza had a
miniature antique cannon on it.
The cannon pointed directly at Trent.
Devlin said, "What were your people doing down on Eight tonight?"
Devlin could not possibly have expected an honest answer from Trent.
Trent said, "We were going to boost CalleyTronics and then go dancing
and drink coffee over at The Emerald Illusion, in the basement of the
Red Line Hotel." His left hand was snaked to the chair he sat in.
"Actually, Jimmy was probably going to get drunk and fight somebody,
but then he would have drunk coffee with us." Trent's right hand was
still twitching, but he could sit upright without help and so far had not
spilled any of the coffee he was drinking with his free hand. "Jimmy's
been reading Hemingway again. I don't know what to do about it."
Mac Devlin was middle-aged, which, with modern geriatrics, might
have meant anywhere from forty to seventy. His brown hair was

streaked with dusty silver and his features were comfortably wrinkled.
He was a big man, two hundred and five centimeters; a hundred and ten
kilos of solid muscle.
His complexion was tinged with the faintest trace of pallor, a
suggestion of gray.
Devlin gazed at Trent. "You're either a lot smarter than I ever thought,"
he said at last, "or I've been giving you way too much credit, these last
couple of years. I don't know which." With the windows darkened
Trent could not see the Peaceforcer sitting out in Devlin's waiting room,
but Trent had no doubt he had not left. Devlin continued. "I either have
to give you to the Peaceforcers or charge you with