Circuit Of Heaven by Dennis Danvers Read Free Book Online Page A

steady, friendly gaze.
    Mom raised her head from Nemo’s chest and stared at this strange young woman in her garden, then up at Nemo, a stunned look in her eyes. “I’m sorry, Mom,” he said quietly, and for a moment there was silence.
    “Let’s go into dinner, shall we?” Uncle Winston announced, taking his sister by the shoulders, pulling her out of Nemo’s arms, and guiding her back toward the house as if she were on wheels.
    “Perhaps I misunderstood you,” Dad said, and followed them toward the house, each foot landing precisely on the flagstones. Unaccountably, Lawrence followed after him without a word, leaving Justine and Nemo standing in the empty garden.
    “I’m sorry for butting in,” she said.
    “You weren’t,” he said, and shrugged. “Well, maybe you were, but I didn’t mind.”
    He knew they should go into the house, but he just wanted to stand there with her a little longer. Listen to the fountain. Smell the cherry blossoms. Look at her. But he didn’t know what to say. She looked at him as if she knew what he was thinking anyway. It probably wasn’t too hard to figure out the way he kept staring at her. Her dress was cut low in front, the wind still tossed her hair around, her green eyes were clear and bright. He wanted to run his hands up and down her bare arms and shoulders, hold her in his arms, kiss her where the fabric stopped, just above her breasts. He stuck his hands in his back pockets.
    “You ever meet a Construct like Lawrence before?” he asked abruptly, as if he were accusing her of something.
    “No,” she said. “He seems nice.”
    “He is. Most people won’t touch him, treat him like he’s not human, but he is. The scales are just a gene splice. He’s cloned from an athlete, his personalities are human—all of them better than most people I know. It’s him who should be treating us like we’ve got the plague instead of the other way around. He’s the best friend I’ve ever had.”
    “You’re lucky to have such a good friend,” she said. He sensed in her tone that she had no such friends.
    A bird started singing close by, and they both looked off toward the sound, trying to catch sight of it. Everything had been uploaded. Nemo wondered what it was like to be a bird or a rat or a butterfly and find yourself living forever. He wondered if any of them ever killed themselves. “Your folks live in Dallas?” he asked her.
    She listened to the bird singing, her mouth turned up at the corners in a sad smile. “I guess they did once,” she said. “I don’t really know.” She looked back to him. “I never knew them. They didn’t keep me. They dumped me in an orphanage when I was born. It wasn’t so bad really.”
    “You’re an orphan?”
    She shook her head. “That’s what people will call you, but I looked it up when I was little. An orphan’s parents are dead. My parents didn’t die. They just didn’t want me.”
    “They go in the Bin?”
    “I guess so.”
    “You never tried to find them?”
    “It’s them who should be trying to find me.” She spoke quietly. He knew the tone. It was old, quiet anger, like a block of stone, a cornerstone, something to build on.
    He nodded sympathetically. “I’m sorry.”
    She shrugged her shoulders. “That was twenty years ago.”
    They stood there for a moment. The bird had moved on. “Do you mind if I ask you something?”
    She shook her head.
    “What’s somebody like you doing being Senator Bozo’s…uh…dinner companion?”
    He thought she might be mad, but the question seemed to amuse her. “What do you mean ‘somebody like me’? You don’t even know me.”
    “I can tell you’re smarter than he is. He wouldn’t like that.”
    She laughed. “Thanks, I think.”
    “And you’re nice, too. You didn’t have to say anything when my parents and I got into it, but you were paying attention, you cared about what was going on, and you don’t even know us.”
    “Maybe I’m just nosy.”
    “Most