Origin of the Body by H.R. Moore Read Free Book Online Page A

agree not to run to Tobias, although they drew the line at letting me run their business in Kingdom - it would have always been a long shot, even if Jeff wasn’t in the equation.  So they left me in Kingdom when they returned to Empire, and I haven’t seen them since.  I know they’ve been in Kingdom, trading and lecturing, but they have never once tried to seek me out, so neither have I tried to speak with them.
    I moved in with Jeff and joined the Institution, which, to be honest is more of a social club than anything else.  Yes, it has ideological undertones, and yes, we get together to discuss them, and yes, we try to gather support from powerful people, but other than that, all there is, is great deal of drinking and dancing and playing cards.  I’ve never met the leadership, so I have no idea who they are, or if they’re really as dangerous as people make out, but they let us get on with what we want and don’t interfere with our affairs.  There’s quite a large group of us now; me and Jeffrey, Alistair (a friend of Jeff’s from his time studying), Rose (a promising Mind from an influential Mind family), Helena, Celia (Helena’s cousin), Olivia (Rose’s cousin), and the two most surprising members, Peter (son of Christiana, the ruling Body Descendant) and Anthony (son of Philip, the ruling Sprit Descendant).  Everyone knows the only reason they joined was because of their respective relationships with Olivia and Celia, and Helena has been working on Austin for as long as anyone can remember.  He’s infatuated with her and she boasts she has him wrapped around her little finger, but he won’t join us for fear of what his father would do if he did.  In truth, this is all we can be accused of, nothing illegal or dangerous as my parents made out, but instead, involving high profile people in conversations where we speak of the merits of more progressive ideologies.  We talk of democracy, elections, true free trade, but we take no direct action to try and progress in that direction; we’re a debaucherous, ideological, drinking club, that is all.
    And I write, oh useless diary, because of late it’s got more debaucherous than ever before.  Last night, we were in Monty’s back room, drinking and smoking and playing poker after dinner, when, as I was returning along the panelled corridor from the bathroom, I saw Jeffrey and Milly (Amelia’s new nickname) going into one of the bedrooms Monty’s keeps for when the owners come and stay.  She had her back against the door, looking up at him suggestively, and Jeff had one hand on her stomach and one on the handle as he swung the door open and pushed her through.  I didn’t say anything, nor did I do anything.  It felt like an out of body experience, like a bad dream, so I floated numbly back to the room with everyone else and sat quietly trying to work out what I should do.  Jeff can be like this, I’ve always known him to be an outrageous flirt, so I suppose it was only a matter of time before something like this happened…and for all I know, this isn’t the first time...
    Anyway, a few minutes later, the door flew open and one of the barmen told us some of Tobias’ men had just demanded entry to Monty’s to search the place.  We fled out of the back exit and scattered, each of us taking a different route through Kingdom’s maze of streets to lose them.  Peter and I ran together, he knows the streets far better than me, so I grabbed his hand and followed his weaves through this archway and that turning.  We could hear boots behind us; some of the guards had been sent round the back, chasing after us when they saw us leave, so when he was sure we weren’t in view, he pulled me into a tiny passage between two streets and hid us behind a lip in the wall, pressing himself against me to make sure we were both fully out of view.  The guards passed but we stayed where we were, just in case they came back the same way.  The echoes of the guards’