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Dallas switched cubes and Eric's face appeared on the small screen, with a
bushy red beard. "I've been thinking about your problem," he said.
"Good," Dallas said. "Come up with anything?"
"Yes, but you won't like it. Follow this train of logic. First, you have to
assume, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, that Briskin's committee
people have access to all of the Stileman Foundation resources."
"We had been assuming that," Dallas said.
"On top of that, though, they evidently recognize no legal constraints on
their use of these resources. So we have to assume, as you said earlier,
they're actually more powerful than the Stileman Foundation.
What we must do, then, is assemble a list, a set of places where you could be
certain that the Stileman
Foundation couldn't get hold of you. Then discard from that list the places
where the constraints on the foundation are merely legal, matters of treaty or
contract."
"Such as here," Maria said.
"Conch Republic, yes, and Alaska, for the same reason. They can't legally
extradite you, but neither can they be prosecuted for gunning you down, as
long as they follow the local customs." The image of Eric held up two fingers.
"The two large places where you could go are, obviously, the Soviet Union and
Khomeini."
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"An armed camp and a radioactive desert. Wonderful."
"Khomeini's impractical because half the population would kill you out of hand
for being obvious infidels. The Soviet Union would be possible, but only if
you were willing to drop completely out of sight, becoming peasants. People
who live comfortably are too conspicuous, and the police are easily
corrupted."
"Well keep it as a possibility," Dallas said. "We both speak some Russian."
"There are a few small places where the Stileman Foundation is forbidden. The
Seychelles and Vatican
City are the only ones where your lives wouldn't be in constant peril from the
natives. I'd say neither of them is large enough for you to become anonymous,
though with Maria's Italian and her convent background, she might be able to
fade into the woodwork in Vatican City."
"It would be too open, though," Maria said. "Like trying to hide out in a
museum."
"But it's mostly indoors," Dallas said. "That would protect you from satellite
observation."
"Which is the reason I reluctantly disqualified the Australian outback and the
American wilderness.
People wandering out in the bush are routinely scanned and identified by
various government agencies.
It's done automatically, and their identities go into artificial intelligence
routines, like yours truly, who decide whether a merely human official ought
to be notified."
"That might be all right, though, with Dallas and me having new identities."
"The problem with that is the only way to test it is to go wandering out into
the world and see whether anybody shows up to kill you."
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"Which makes a good argument for staying here awhile," Dallas said. "If they
don't come after us here, they won't do it in the States. Here, we can shoot
back."
The image smiled, spookily accurate. "In most of the States you can shoot
back, too. But twice they've sent single assassins after you, and twice you've
killed them. I think they'll try something else next time.
Floater bomb, poison gas. Maybe fry you from orbit with a laser."
"You always were a cheerful son of a bitch, Eric."
"Always. But you see what I'm building up to?"
"Space," Maria said. "No place to hide on Earth."
"Specifically, Novysibirsk. Cislunar space is just a suburb of Earth. Downside
is practically a Stileman colony, and all roads on Luna lead to Downside.
Mars, anyone who's not part of an expedition would
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BUYING TIME - Joe Haldeman have to bring his own food, water, and oxygen. The
outer planets are even worse, if you could get to them. So it has to be the
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