Book 1 - Shadowline by Glen Cook

man try something impossible in the first place.
I’ve studied everything known about Brightside and the
Shadowline. There’s no way you could have known that
you’d find anything out there.”
    What
does
make a man throw himself into something for which
there is neither a reasonable nor rational justification? Frog had
done a lot of thinking during his ran. Not once, even remotely, had
he been able to make his motives add up. Most of the time he had
told himself that he was doing it for Moira, but there had been
times whan he had suspected that he was doing it for Frog, to salve
a scarred ego by showing humanity it was wrong about his being a
clown. Yet that had not taken into account the probability of
failure, which would have done nothing but underscore his
foolishness.
    Why, then? A badfinger for Blake? Because he had had some crazy,
deep-down conviction that he would find something? No. Not one of
those reasons was good enough in itself.
    All that time alone and still he had not figured himself
out.
    Thr man who hides from himself hides best of all.
    “What did you find?”
    Frog strove to focus on Plainfield. And realized that his
earlier assessments were incorrect. The man was neither vulture,
fox, nor wolf. He was a snake. Cold-blooded, emotionless, deadly.
Predatory, and unacquainted with mercy. Nor was he owned. This news
business was cover. He was a dagger in his own hand.
    Plainfield moved toward him. A slap hypo appeared in his palm.
Frog struggled weakly. The hypo hit his arm.
    Wrong again
, he thought.
He’s worse than a snake.
He’s a human
.
    “What did you find?”
    Frog knew he would not make it this time. This man, this
thing
that called itself August Plainfield and pretended to be a newsman,
was going to strip him of his victory, then kill him. Even God in
heaven could not stop him from talking once the drug took hold, and
then what value would he have alive?
    Frog talked. And talked. And, as he knew he must, he died. But
before he did, and while he was still sufficiently in possession of
his senses to understand, another man entered the dark door before
him.
    Smythe burst into the room, alerted by his monitors. Moira
trailed him as if attached by a short chain. The doctor charged
Plainfield, opening his mouth to shout.
    A small, silent palm weapon ruined Smythe’s heart before
any sound left his lips. Moira, as if on a puppeteer’s
strings, jerked back out of the room. Plainfield cursed but did not
pursue her.
    A sadness overwhelmed Frog, both for himself and for Smythe.
    On Blackworld, as on all but a few worlds, the dead never saw
resurrection. Even the Blakes remained dead when they died.
Resurrection was too expensive, too difficult, and too complex in
social implication. And why bother? Human numbers made life a cheap
commodity.
    Plainfield finished with Frog, then disappeared. The murders
went on record as unsolved. Corporation police hunted the newsman,
but no trace turned up.
    They wanted him for theft. They wanted him for destruction of
municipal and Corporate property. They wanted him for suborning
municipal and Corporate employees. They wanted him for a list of
crimes. But most of all they wanted him because of Frog and
Smythe.
    Blake had a long, long memory.
    Stimpson-Hrabosky News denied ever having heard of Plainfield.
How, then, Blake’s cops demanded, had the man reached
Blackworld in a Stimpson-Hrabosky charter? How, if he was an
unknown, had he managed to get himself elected pool man?
    Stimpson-Hrabosky responded with almost contemptuous
silence.
    Their reticence was itself informative. Plainfield obviously
carried a lot of weight outside.
    In the furor of pursuit the killer’s motives became
obscured. Only a handful of men knew about Frog’s claim and
will, and they were the men Plainfield had bribed. They were on
trial and no one was listening to them. They were sent into exile,
which meant that they were given outsuits and put out of the city
locks to survive as best they