Learning to Swear in America by Katie Kennedy Read Free Book Online

body limp as the earth convulsed.
    Did that make him a bad person?
    He lay back down, lying on his side so he could see the ice bucket covering his small friend. He wanted to cry. It was okay to cry, he told himself. It was work-related, and men could cry because of job stress. But his cheeks were dry as he fell asleep.

CHAPTER 6
SPAGHETTIFICATION
    The next day Karl Fletcher was civil. There was no public calling out, no remonstrance for Yuri’s trespass of the previous day. Okay, he shouldn’t have gone into the director’s office, shouldn’t have looked at the weapons specs. Fletcher had been right—it didn’t tell him anything new, but he hadn’t known that until he’d seen the printout. And the jerk had kept his phone.
    He’d given the mouse food and water and let it run in the bathtub in the morning, then put it in a dresser drawer, covered by the ice bucket. He calculated the air volume and oxygen concentration first. The mouse would be fine.
    But Yuri wasn’t sure that he was fine. The day passed like the others, consumed by work until evening, but his thoughts were derailed by a gnawing unease that perhaps Fletcher had a reason for keeping him from the weapons list.
    Finally Yuri sighed. He rolled his neck, let his chin hang amoment against his chest, then pushed away from the desk. He walked to the director’s office, hands thrust in his pockets, hesitated a moment at the closed door, and knocked. There was no answer. He raised a hand to rap again when a woman stepped out of an open office down the hall.
    “Looking for Karl?”
    “Um, yeah.”
    “He went downstairs a couple of minutes ago,” she said, tipping her head toward the end of the hall, toward the west stairwell.
    “Thanks.”
    Yuri slipped past her, aware suddenly of his bare feet. Maybe some people could do complex mathematics with their socks on, but he wasn’t one of them. He hurried to the west stairwell and paused a moment, looking out the huge glass panes at the scrubby California vegetation and creviced hills beyond. The railing was cool under his wrists. He had eaten early with Simons and Pirkola, and the scientists working at NEO wouldn’t gather here to watch the sunset for another hour. Palms fringing the parking lot sent spiked shadows toward him, and quiet voices rose in the stairwell from people talking on the floor below. He recognized Fletcher’s voice and had one foot on the first step, the other hanging in the air, when he heard what the director was saying.
    “No, he doesn’t know. Christ, no.”
    “He seems on edge.” It was Simons. “I thought maybe you’d told him.”
    Yuri took a silent step backward onto the landing.
    “Why would I?” Fletcher said. “It would only distract him. We need him working right now.”
    There was silence for a moment, a shuffling, then the rattling of an empty soda can tossed in a recycling bin.
    “Did anyone tell the Russians that we’re keeping him?” Simons asked.
    Yuri felt like he was falling into a black hole, being pulled by a gravitational tidal force into a strand of his component parts, each atom in his body extruded one at a time. Spaghettification, they called it. It started with being snapped in two. And that’s exactly what had just happened to him.
    “No. They’d probably try to extract him, even with that thing bearing down on us. They’re incredibly territorial. And it’s not aimed at them.”
    “You could make the argument that we’re being territorial, worrying about him knowing too much. You know, given the situation.”
    “It’s national security,” Fletcher said. “First we save the continent, then the kid defects, whether he likes it or not.” Another soda can rattled into the bin. “After he’s seen that list, with our hardware laid out like that? Trying to photograph it? No way he’s going home. That’s from higher up.”
    Yuri took another step backward and his spine pressed against the stairwell wall.
    “The Russians insisted he not