Elric to Rescue Tanelorn - Michael Moorcock [89]
If she could get her computer built and start her other project as well, she might be the person who could save something from the wreckage. She could consolidate everything left into one big programme—the final programme, she thought. Idea and reality, brought together, unified. The attempt had never succeeded in the past; but now she might have the opportunity to do it, for the time seemed ripe. She would need more power and more money, but with a bit of luck and intelligent exploitation of a shaky world situation she could get both.
Jerry was bringing the boat up alongside the bigger hoverlaunch. He watched as his passengers boarded the vessel, but he didn’t join them, preferring to have his own boat waiting for him when the expedition was over.
The hoverlaunch whispered away towards Normandy, and he began to follow behind it, positioning his boat slightly to one side to avoid the main disturbance of the launch’s wake. The launch belonged to Mr. Smiles, who, like Jerry, had invested his money in tangibles while it had still had some value.
Bit by bit the Normandy coastline became visible. Jerry cut his engine, and the hoverlaunch followed suit. Jerry went out on deck as a line was shot to him from the hoverlaunch. He made it fast. It was a cold night.
The hoverlaunch started up again, with Jerry in tow. It headed towards the cliff where the fake Le Corbusier château stood, a silhouette in the moonlight.
There was a slight chance that the bigger boat wouldn’t register on the mansion’s radar. Jerry’s boat didn’t, but it was much lower in the water. The hoverlaunch’s central control bridge, a squat tube rising above the passenger disc and power section, was what might just blip on the radar.
Old Cornelius’s microfilms were buried deep within the château, in a strongroom that would not resist a high-explosive blast but would, if attacked in this manner, automatically destroy the film.
The information the intrepid band required was probably there, but the only sure-fire means of getting the film was to open the strongroom in the conventional way, and that was why Frank, who knew the various codes and techniques necessary, had to be preserved and questioned and, with luck, made to open the strongroom himself.
The whole house was designed around the strongroom. It had been built to protect the microfilms. Very little in the house was what it seemed to be. It was armed with strange weapons.
As he looked up at it, Jerry thought how strongly the house resembled his father’s tricky skull.
Virtually every room, every passage, every alcove had booby traps, which was why Jerry was so valuable to the expedition. He didn’t know the strongroom combination, but he knew the rest of the house well, having been brought up there.
If he hadn’t gone off after that night when his father had found him with Catherine, he would have inherited the microfilms as his birthright, since he was the elder son, but Frank had got that honour.
The wind was up. It whistled through the trees, groaned among the towers of the château. The clouds ripped across the sky to reveal the moon.
The hoverlaunch rocked.
From the house, searchlights came on. The searchlights were focused mainly on the house itself, lighting it up like some historic monument—which, indeed, it was.
The lights blinked off, and another one came on, a powerful beam, moving across the water. It struck the hoverlaunch.
The other lights came on, concentrated on the house, particularly the roof.
Jerry shouted, “Keep your eyes off the roof! Don’t look at the towers! Remember what I told you!”
Water splashed against the sides of the hoverlaunch as they waited.
From the roof three circular towers had risen. They began to rotate in the blue beam of a