【正文】 s sle ep then and tried one more time in the morning. Again, nothing. O kay, no sense waiting any longer. I cleaned up my blade, ate a big meal, and got into some rugged clothes. I also pic ked up a pair of dark, polaroid goggles. D idn39。t talking. I tried to figure every angle. He was smart, damn smart. Possibly the best mind in the family. He was in trouble and he had called me. Eric and Gerard were more the heroic types and would probably have weled the adventure. Caine w ould have gone out of curiosity, I think. Julian, to look better than the rest of us and to score points w ith Dad. Or, easiest of all, Brand could have called Dad himself. Dad would have done something about it. But he had called me. Why? It occurred to me then that maybe one or more of the others had been responsible for his circumstances. If, say, Dad was beginning to favor him . . . Well. You know. Eliminate the positive. And if he did call Dad, he would look like a weakling. So I suppressed my impulse to yell for reinforcements. He had called me, and it was quite possible that I would be cutting his throat by letting anyone back in Amber in on the fact that he had gotten the message out. Okay. What was in it for me? If it involved the succession and he had truly bee fairhaired, I figured that I could do a lot w orse than give him this to remember me by. And if it did not . . . There were all sorts of other possibilities. Perhaps he had stumbled onto something going on back home, something it would be useful to know about. I was even curious as to the means he had employed for bypassing the Trumps. So it was curiosity, I39。t be sure. It was far from Amber, somewhere where the shadows go mad. Farther than I like to go. Star k, w ith shifting colors. Fiery. Day without a sun in the sky. Rocks that glided like sailboats across the land. Brand there in some sort of to wera small point of stability in that f lowing scene. I remembered it, all right. A nd I remembered the presence coiled about the base of tha t tower. Br illiant. Prismatic. Some sort of watchthing, it seemedtoo bright for me to make out its outline, to guess its proper size. Then it all just went away. Instant off. And there I was, staring at the Jac k of Diamonds again, with the guy across from me not knowing w hether to be mad at my long distraction or concerned that I might be having some sort of sick spell. I closed up shop with that hand and went home. I lay stretched out on my bed, smoking and thinking. Brand had still been in Amber when I had departed. Later, though, w hen I had asked after him, no one had any idea as to his whereabouts. He had been having one of his melancholy spells, had snapped out of it one day and ridden off. And that was that. No messages eithereither way. He wasn39。t make out. Where? I a sked. He shook his head at that. Can39。m here, I said. What39。s gliding and not much sleep the night before. I decided later that it must be our mental quir k associated w ith the Trumps that made me see it that way when someone was trying to reach me and I had cards in my handany cards. Ordinarily, of course, we get the message empty handed, unless we are doing the calling. It could have been that my subconsciouswhich was kind of footloose at the timejust seized on the available props out of habit Later, though, I had cause to wonder. Really, I just don39。m also luc ky. Eric was neither. The trouble with him was that he was good at so many things he woul dn39。t cheat at. I ta ke my card playing seriously. I39。d go find some action, women, or cards, usually. A nd that w as it for the rest of the night. Damn Eric, anywayl That reminds me again . . . He once accused me of cheating at cards, did you know that? And that39。 權(quán)限 管理內(nèi)容 高級(jí)管理員 負(fù) 責(zé)整個(gè)系統(tǒng)的日常維護(hù) 部門(mén)管理員 負(fù)責(zé)本部門(mén)的數(shù)據(jù)更新和 普通用戶 對(duì)系統(tǒng)的信息查詢和個(gè)人信息查詢 代碼是用來(lái)表征客觀事物的一個(gè)或一組有序的符號(hào)，它應(yīng)易于計(jì)算機(jī)和人的識(shí)別和處理，本系統(tǒng)的是根據(jù)實(shí)際情況設(shè)計(jì)而成的，具體規(guī)則如下： 員工部門(mén)設(shè)計(jì)：一位有效數(shù)字 員工子部門(mén)代碼由順序碼（ 4位），方便管理員的維護(hù)管理 員工代碼設(shè)計(jì)：采用層次碼，國(guó)際統(tǒng)一的條型碼編碼規(guī)則 數(shù)據(jù)庫(kù)邏輯設(shè)計(jì) 職員基礎(chǔ)表 EmployeeBasicTable 名 稱 字段名稱 字段類(lèi)型 字段大小 必填字段 允許空串 其 他 編號(hào) Employee_ID 文本 20 是 否 主鍵 姓名 Employee_NAME 數(shù)字 整型 否 政治面貌 Employee_Political 數(shù)字 整型 否 民 族 Employee_Nation 數(shù)字 整型 否 婚姻狀況 Employee_Married 數(shù)字 整型 否 身份證號(hào) Employee_IDcard 文本 20 否 出生地 Employee_Naplace 文本 20 否 出生日期 Employee_Birth 日期 /時(shí)間 照片 Employee_Pic 文本 20 家庭號(hào)碼 Employee_Tell 文本 20 移動(dòng)號(hào)碼 Employee_Mobile 文本 15 郵箱地址 Employee_Address 文本 50 郵編 Employee_Zip 文本 10 培訓(xùn)記錄 EmployeeTrainTable 名 稱 字段名稱 字段類(lèi)型 字 段 大小 必填字段 允許空串 自動(dòng)編號(hào) SResume_ID 自動(dòng)編號(hào) 長(zhǎng)整型 是 否 職員編號(hào) Employee_ID 文本 20 否 開(kāi)始時(shí)間 Training_Begin 日期 結(jié)束時(shí)間 Training_End 日期 培新類(lèi)型 Training_Type 文本 20 否 單位領(lǐng)導(dǎo) Training_Major 文本 20 否 培訓(xùn)單位 Training_Unit 文本 20 否 備注 Training_NoteS 文本 20 Anyway, I was here in Amber some years ago. Not doing much of anything. Just visiting and being a nuisance. Dad was still around, and when I noticed that he was getting into one of his grumpy moods, I decided it was time to take a walk. A long one. I had often noticed that his fondness for me tended to increase as an inverse function of my proximity. He gave me a fancy riding crop for a goingaway presentto hasten the process of affection, I suppose. Stil l, it was a very nice cropsilverchased, beautifully tooledand I made good use of it. I had decided to go looking for an assemblage of all my simple pleasures in one small nook of Shadow. It was a long rideI will not bore you with the detailsand it was pretty far from Amber, as such things go. This time, I was not looking for a place where I would be especially important. That can get either boring or difficult fairly quickly, depending on how responsible you want to be.