Queen of Angels by Greg Bear Read Free Book Online

leaning over him. I wouldnt put anybody through that. Better he were dead. Better still if he had never come near us. Richard nodded not in agreement but to wish them off. Dont forget the reading, Elayne Sandhurst said cheerily. Bring your best. I dont write anymore, Yermak said, sneering. Then read something from your dark past, Ultrima suggested. When Welsh and Yermak had left she turned to Richard. Honestly. Such children. Weve never really liked them here.. . they are so close, so weird. Like brothers or lovers yet they are neither, Elayne Sandhurst said. They need help, Sandra suggested and at that all but Richard laughed. Help was not something the untherapied sought. Help was a kind of death to those who cherished their flaws. + We should all live in shade not in the sun. Like insects.
    My first name means god is with us. My last name means worker in golti I choose words instead; they are muck more valuable for being so common, and so misused and misunderstood. As for having god with me; I dont think so somehow.
    9 Elevating alongside South Comb Two Mary Cboy watched the great mirrored arms rotate to focus the low sixteen sun on Pasadena. She took an external expressway, spending one of her municipal emergency transit credits to get a car to herself. Exploring the Colonel Sir John Yardley connection would be perilous. She knew enough of federal politics to see the Janus face the United States turned toward Yardley. Embraced by Raphkind, openly shunned now but in the closet perhaps still silky. Yardley might be federally useful and ultimately LAPD answered to the federals. The department was more than half funded by the National Public Defense. To go any further without departmental approval would not be politic. Mary wanted that approval before the day was over. Los Angeles Public Defense Command occupied a three tier block on the favored west side of South Comb Two. The long beanpole of the expressway, in proportion very like a taut stretched human hair, with no visible means of support but its own ten meter hexagonal cross section, carried three express elevators. These stopped at levels chosen only by their passengers, unlike most of the internal arteries of elevators and transports within the comb. She took her seat in the carefully cushioned chair and endured the rapid acceleration. In the moments before the door opened as the elevator slowed she felt as if she were floating. This was only slightly less unpleasant than the weight. The west side looked out across the old communities of Inglewood Culver City and Santa Monica, now covered with great reddish brown slashes as the old city was leveled and new combs encroached upon shadow. In the maxdense hills of Santa Monica layer upon layer of what some netwit thirty years before had called insulas grew like cave wall crystals, dazzling white at noon but now blue gray in the onset of evening. Here and in the stabilized deep sunk pads of Malibu was where the notyetchosen waited for vacancies within the combs. Vacancies were becoming more and more rare as rejuvenators plied their controversial trade, turning good citizens into multicentenarian dci. Mary Choy was too young to attract a rejuvenators pitch but she had gone on eloi busts and seen the interiors of many platinum comb domiciles. She withdrew from the elevator and walked purposefully into the lobby. From the acrophobic view of the city to this large inner directed self contained cavern, horizontal slit windows at hip-level affording little relief, was always a small shock to her. Mary felt it as an abrupt discontinuity like a change of key or even scale in music. Arbeiters moved purposefully on narrow paths near the walls leaving the center open for foot traffic. A central circular desk occupied by two young men in green office uniforms jutted from the floor. Overhead an apse sparkled with sheets and curling ribbons of peaceful light in the cathedral quiet. Pd investigator M Choy, said the young man on her side