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Show XII "Love can do much, but money can do everything." -remark by D'Raphael Rice-Needlesmith to his daughter, the young Anya "'Tis the Mechanism, child, the Mechanism. . .thou mustn't mention this to a soul. . ." "But my father, I know not what thou speakest of." "'Twill mean the difference of a decent life on this thrice bedamned planet and being ruled by the thrice bedamned Bauercrats with a continuation of pandemonium." The man speaking, D'Raphael Rice-Needlesmith, was Dr'Anya's father, stooped and elderly looking and yet only in his sixty-fifth TwelveMonth. He brandished his cane at the terminal squatting balefully in the corner of the room. "We must rid ourselves of the Network!" he cried, his prematurely whitened hair swirling about his head and giving him the likeness of some madman. And mayhap he was mad, though the BauerNetwork was the one that made him thus, for that great insensate body had killed his partner, the young Anya's kind and gentle mother, just after his daughter's birth. How happened it that Arbutal had been poured into the vitamin capsules prescribed by the MedTechs for her mother? How happened it that she received the urgent warning not to take the medication fully a TwelveMonth after her death from an overdose of barbituates? For Arbutal was a concentrated and powerful sedative, given regularly by the VetTechs to 99 |
