ery female

whose genetic fingerprint marked her out as a potential mother of this

troublesome sonofabitch.

Dumping Clearwater over the side now, while she still did not have two

good legs to stand on, would save medical resources that could be

better employed elsewhere and terminate her pregnancy in no uncertain

fashion. If she was carrying the Talisman, he would have to go back to

Square One and start his trip across the board all over again.

It was quick, simple and above all final, but Karlstrom knew he could

not sell this idea to anybody, least of all the President-General. The

only way out was to arrange her escape. But for that, he needed

someone he could confide in, someone he could trust absolutely, someone

who was prepared to betray his sacred oath of allegiance to the

President-General in the higher interests of the Federation which - in

this case - just happened to coincide with Karlstrom's.

In a society where informing on your errant comrades earned you the

secular equivalent of sainthood, such qualities were hard to find, but

Karlstrom thought he knew someone who might fit the bill. Steven

Roosevelt Brickman ....

The thought of turning to Steve for help made Karlstrom laugh out

loud.

He was always quick to appreciate the irony of a given situation and

this one was doubly ironic. His future was already in Brickman's

hands. Fran's new golden boy knew something which, if divulged to the

wrong party, could threaten Karlstrom's position as head of AMEXICO and

cause untold harm to the organisation itself.

From the operational summaries dealing with the loss of The Lady from

Louisiana and the subsequent annihilation of the M'Calls, the

President-General had assumed that the explosives used so effectively

by the Mutes in their surprise attack had come from the Iron Masters.

Or, to be more precise, from the plundered wreckage of the five

wheel-boats lost during the Battle of the Trading Post.

This was not, in fact, the case, but Karlstrom had decided not to set

the record straight. Through an administrative error, real explosives

had been supplied to a decoy unit made up of defaulters. As the

sacrificial goats in an elaborate plan of entrapment, they should have

been issued with dummy charges; AP mines filled with sand, foil wraps

of PX containing a slab of modelling clay, and blank detonators. Some

careless keyboarding lower down the line had resulted in them being

issued with the real thing and it had ended up in the hands of the Clan

m'call.

It was a potentially messy situation which reflected badly on AMEXICO,

but fortunately, an alert member of his personal staff spotted the

error when checking the requisitions. The computer records had

immediately been 'sanitised' using Track-Back - a top-secret programme

designed to cover AMEXICO's corporate ass.

Conceived by Karlstrom and developed by a trusted subordinate,

Track-Back could seek out sensitive blocks or trails of data stored

anywhere on the network like a pre-H bloodhound following a scent.

Once it located the rogue data, it deposited a virus which caused it

to self-destruct then re-sequenced the surrounding material to cover up

any blank spots left on the storage tape or disk.

In a world run by computers, it was his insurance policy, and

spring-board to the Oval Office. Track-Back did not only locate and

destroy potentially incriminating data, it could also insert it at any

point in the system without leaving any electronic fingerprints.

Jefferson the 31st could not live for ever, and when the time came to

arrange the succession, Karlstrom intended to use AMEXICO's electronic

expertise to help him eliminate his rivals.

There was now nothing held on the network controlled by COLOMBUS that

could lead back to the organisation, and no one on the stricken

wagon-train had survived.

The Lady from Louisiana had been completely gutted by further

explosions and fire, leaving the team of investigators with little to

poke through.

Brickman was the only person, outside his personal staff, who knew the

source of the explosives that had crippled The Lady. Had it been

anyone else, Karlstrom would have had them shafted, but young Mr

Brickman - the hero of the hour - had too high a profile. He had

become a credit to the organisation and for as long as he found favour

with Fran Jefferson he was fireproof.