A World Too Near by Kay Kenyon Read Free Book Online

life.
    “What’s this about, anyway?” Quinn asked. “You didn’t need to come to the morgue.”
    “No one knew I was coming here. I needed some privacy.” Then, with disarming honesty: “I don’t trust everyone at Minerva.”
    “Really.”
    Quinn’s sarcasm killed the conversation for a minute as the two men sized each other up. They despised each other, and being on the same side hadn’t changed that. Quinn had once had a thriving career as a captain of an interstellar ship. It was a risky job and paid accordingly. But Quinn would have done it for nothing. When his ship broke up in the Kardashev tunnel, Stefan couldn’t get past the fact that Titus Quinn was apparently the only one who survived. Quinn couldn’t get past it either, but that didn’t mean he forgave Stefan for firing him or for putting him in a badly maintained ship in the first place.
    “The truth is,” Stefan continued, “someone talked. Someone in my group. That’s why Garvey came after your niece; that’s why there’s movement afoot to figure out what the Entire is. Where it is. Everything we’ve worked for and which will only be solely ours for a little while longer. We’d hoped for a few months. Anyway, it’s why you’re going early.”
    “You can’t keep the place secret for forever.”
    “No. But they’d stop you, Quinn. They wouldn’t trust a renegade pilot running loose with military nan in the other place. Why would they? They don’t have the background or the trust. They might accuse us of making up a threat. We have to act before the feds or the companies make an issue of it. Before fighting over the Entire obscures what needs doing. You see where it could go?”
    Quinn did. He thought the secret worth keeping to prevent public mayhem. There were no useful precautions, no shelter from the holocaust. The only refuge, the Entire itself. With humans decidedly unwelcome, an exodus in that direction was suicide.
    This wasn’t a decision Quinn would leave up to a summit of corporations. So once again, and against his instincts, he found himself aligning with Stefan Polich.
    Stefan looked around, scanning the scrubbed-down room, smelling of antiseptic and toxic fluids. But Quinn no longer had heightened capabilities of smell. Originally implanted so that he could avoid ingesting toxins in the new land, Quinn had found that some enhancements were impossible to live with. Millions of years of evolution hadn’t prepared humans to detect smells like a predator. He’d had the Jacobson’s organ removed from his mouth. Sometimes plain human was enough.
    Looking up, Quinn noticed that Stefan had taken something from his coat pocket and now held a small box covered in gray velvet.
    Quinn knew what it was. The weapon. The nano device.
    Stefan opened the case, revealing a silver chain. “A cirque. The designers call it a cirque. It goes on your ankle.” Pushing the box back into his pocket, Stefan held the cirque with exaggerated care. “It’s live. Loaded, you understand?”
    Quinn did. It was lethal now—its contents sequestered in three chambers, each one with only partial instructions of how to digest an industrial complex the size of New Hampshire. He gazed at the burnished metal chain. It was attractive, like an antique Rolex.
    “The code is four, five, one,” Stefan said. “A total of ten. You press the first indent four times, the second one five times, the last one, once. Each indentation is a different width, beginning large and ending small. Once the code goes in, the cirque opens, comes off your ankle. Then you press the links again, in reverse sequence: one, five, four. Active, good to go.” He eyed Quinn. “When you make the placement, hide it. The nan needs time to share information. Give it an hour. Once fully enlivened, it will spread as fast as a forest fire under a stiff wind.”
    Stefan dragged a chair away from the wall. “Put your foot up here. Either one. See how it fits.” He handed the cirque