A World Too Near by Kay Kenyon Read Free Book Online Page A

over.
    The carbon nitride casing was reassuringly heavy. Quinn put his left foot on the chair seat and linked the two ends, fitting them with a click. Active nan, military grade, riding his body. Give me something I can’t lose , he’d told them. Something I don’t have to carry. And here it was.
    “Test it,” Stefan said. “That it comes off.”
    Quinn examined the chain, noting again the three indentations on the loop. He pressed down the sequence: four, five, and one. Nothing happened. For a moment he thought, They mean for me to go down with Ahnenhoon.
    “Pull it open.”
    Quinn did, and the chain detached, coming away in his hands.
    Lowering his voice, Stefan said, “From now on we don’t talk about the cirque, and we don’t look at it. There’ll be no physical exams. No baths, either, by the way.”
    “It’s okay in water, though?”
    “Yes, but let’s not chance it.”
    “Not very reassuring.”
    “Okay, take a bath.”
    Looking at the cirque, Quinn thought he could do without.
    “You don’t have to do this, you know,” Stefan said. “We could send someone else. You could brief somebody, train them. I’m not saying you have to go.”
    “How sure are you about this thing?”
    Stefan looked him straight in the eyes. “We’re not one hundred percent. But it’s the best we’ve got.”
    Quinn liked that bit of honesty. “Do I really have an hour to get away?”
    Stefan smiled. “So we’re still trying to kill you?”
    “Do I have an hour?”
    “Don’t wait an hour.”
    Stefan glanced at the cirque in Quinn’s hand. “You know the value of that thing? Ounce for ounce, the most expensive artifact in the world. We’re giving it to you to do what needs to be done. If you’re not up to it, tell me now.”
    “Who else is there?”
    “That’s no answer.”
    “I thought it was.” He looked at Stefan Polich, reminding himself that he wasn’t doing this for Stefan or for Minerva. It was for the Rose. For the people he loved, for Mateo and Emily, and for everyone else, as well. He would have done it even if Johanna, in her message to him, hadn’t begged him to act. She had reached out to him in a recorded warning, one she’d sent to him when he had first been imprisoned in the Entire. He hadn’t found it then, and never knew what she took to her grave knowing: that the Tarig meant to destroy us. Last time back, he’d finally heard her warning. But even without her urging, he would have tried to stop the gracious lords, as they termed themselves. At close quarters with them for so long, he’d had time to grow familiar with their ways. No one else had a ghost of a chance of stopping them.
    Stefan was waiting for Quinn to answer.
    Quinn took the cirque in both hands and, leaning over the chair, clicked it into place around his ankle.
    They left the morgue, entering the corridor where their respective security staffs waited. The chain traced a cold circle around his ankle. He’d have to practice taking it off, so he could do it in a hurry.
    He didn’t for a moment believe he’d have an hour to get away.

CHAPTER FOUR
    I N ZERO-G, Lamar Gelde felt like his stomach was floating free. The shuttle between ship and space platform had no rotation, so for these interminable minutes of approach to the dock, he was getting a good dose of weightlessness. He was strapped in and all loose objects were secure—the intercom kept reminding them not to take out anything that might escape and become a projectile—but he couldn’t do anything about his stomach.
    “I’m too old for this nonsense,” he grumbled.
    Next to him, Quinn smiled indulgently. Fine for him, thirty-four years old and accustomed to the topsy-turvy from his starship days. He resented Quinn at the moment, and it flooded him with relief to discover hard feelings against a man he’d wronged.
    The forward screen showed their slow crawl approach to the Ceres platform, toward the dock mast. Rivets, handholds, grappling arms, and solar