City Living by Will McIntosh Read Free Book Online Page B

pluck. Your minds are all laid out in front of me. No one on this vessel knows.
    “
No one
knows where we’re going?” It seemed an absurd notion, though it also made sense. If no one on board knew where they were going, or why, a Luyten who happened to be flying nearby—within their eight-or-so-mile telepathic zone—wouldn’t be able to find out, either. The mission must be important. “How are they navigating if they don’t know where we’re going?”
    They’re given a set of coordinates corresponding to a point in the ocean, and when they reach it, they’re given another.
    “So where are we?”
    Oliver jolted back in his chair as one of Five’s mouths opened, revealing a bobbing, twitching hole ringed with teeth that resembled the spines on cacti. Smacking, hissing air and background sounds like water draining came from the hole, the sounds so unearthly and repulsive that at first Oliver didn’t register that they were approximating words.
    “Find out where we’re going,” Five said aloud.
    The ubiquitous hum of the sub’s engine was the only sound in the room as Oliver composed himself. Ultimately it didn’t matter whether the Luyten communicated telepathically or using spoken words, but it was still profoundly disturbing to hear the thing speak.
    “You’re just full of surprises, aren’t you?” Oliver said.
    “Unlike you.” Somehow the creature managed to inject a note of irony, and perhaps contempt, into the awkwardly formed words.
    Oliver slid out of the chair, went right up to the nearly invisible net of carbon fiber that separated them. “Don’t assume you know my mind just because you can read my thoughts. We may not be as simple as you think.”
    “Yes, humanity is the pinnacle of evolution. The chosen ones, the purpose for the existence of the entire universe. How could I forget?” Aware that Oliver was having trouble understanding his strangely formed words, Five simultaneously broadcast his words directly into Oliver’s mind, giving him the uneasy sensation of hearing the words with an indescribable overlap. “I know your mind better than you.”
    Oliver grunted, folded his arms across his chest. “Right.”
    “You’re uneasy. You’re afraid I might try to prove my claim.”
    It was pointless to disagree. Oliver had quickly learned how absurd it was to deny what you were thinking or feeling to something who knew precisely what you were thinking and feeling.
    “You love your wife now—”
    “
Shut up.
I don’t want to hear about Vanessa.
Just leave it.
”
    Five waited patiently through Oliver’s outburst, then continued. “After her affair, her denials, the angry divorce… now you love her. Before, when you claimed to love her, you also despised her.”
    Oliver turned, went to the door, and thumped on it with the flat of his palm. “Hey, come on. Unlock this door.
I’m
not the POW.”
    “There’s an irony you’re not aware of, in your newfound feelings for your wife. Should I share it with you?”
    Oliver turned to face Five, who was running the fine cilia that served Luyten as fingers across the stump of the limb he’d lost. “No. Thanks for the offer, but, no.”
    “It’s something you’d be interested to hear.”
    When Oliver didn’t answer, Five continued. “All right, then why don’t I move on? What else can I tell you, to demonstrate you’re as simple to read as I think you are? How about your deepest sexual cravings? Some of these you would never admit to yourself. For example, you’d like to be tied up, gagged with your own dirty sock, and spanked by a woman twenty years older than you.”
    Oliver couldn’t care less about his repressed sexual desires. They were what they were; he couldn’t control them, only whether he acted on them. But Oliver knew Five was only playing with him now. It had already dropped the bait it knew Oliver couldn’t resist.
    Five grew quiet, waiting for the question it already knew was coming.
    “Fine. What’s the