Steel Sky by Andrew C. Murphy Read Free Book Online

They wouldn’t dare!”
    They squeeze their way out of the gap. “That breach didn’t look as if it was made by someone breaking out. It looked like someone forced his way in .”
    They stand in the darkness for a moment. “Let’s get out of here,” Orel says finally. “We can comm a clop to investigate. Then, if it’s safe, we can get some equipment and repair the breach.”
    “Good idea.”
    They walk back past the tanks considerably faster than they came in.
    “You know,” Bernie says, “there’s a glitch in your argument about Almost Zero somewhere. I can’t pinpoint it yet, but it’s there.”
    “The glitch is the concept of infinity itself,” Orel replies. “It’s self-contradictory. When you use the word ‘infinity,’ you’re implicitly putting boundaries around something that is by your own definition boundless. In the real world, there are no infinite values, just very large or very small . . .”
    They are almost to the door when a piercing squeal erupts behind them. Orel barely has time to turn before the thing is on him, its limbs flailing, its long teeth bared.
     
    FIRSTS AND SECONDS
    Second Son walks through the Center for Indagation, self-consciously keeping his head high and his back straight. The Scrutators watch him out of the corners of their eyes, not lifting their faces from the monitor screens. He knows they do not respect him; they think he is much less a man than his deceased brother. The pressure of their scrutiny makes a chill run up his spine.
    The unpleasant irony of the situation is not lost on him.
    He walks up the shallow carpeted steps that radiate from the center of the hall. Two supervisors greet him and tell him whatever useful information they’ve recently learned. They flutter around him, simpering and flattering. Second Son nods perfunctorily and moves on.
    His hand rests gently on the handle of his dirk, the long dagger traditionally worn by the men of the Orcus family. The gesture is ostentatious, he knows, but it makes him feel better. The silver zeros on his shoulders sparkle in the columns of light. The Scrutators are pretending to be too hard at work to notice he is there. Second Son makes a point of staring over a few shoulders, adjusting displays and giving orders.
    “You there!” he says to one of them. “Stop staring at that one image! Keep rotating views. When you concentrate too much on one detail, you lose the big picture.”
    The Scrutator turns to look at him. Second Son slams his palm down on top of one of the monitors. “Don’t make faces at me! Do your job!”
    Second Son thinks he sees a rebellious tilt to the man’s eyebrows as he turns back to the monitor. The Scrutators despise him, he knows, but they fear his father more.
    Depressed, he leaves the hall. The Center for Indagation is hidden in the approximate center of the Hypogeum, beneath the industrial sector. It consists of five round halls linked in a circle by a single curved walkway. The individual monitor stations radiate from the middle of the walkway in the center of each hall. The stations are arranged so that whatever one Scrutator learns is irrelevant to the Scrutator next to him. It is their job to gather information, not to interpret it. Only Orcus sees how it all links together.
    Second Son passes into the hub of the five circles, to the entrance of the private gallery. He presses his ident to the copper panel, and the first light turns green. He punches in his personal code, and a second light turns green. He presses his eyes to the goggle-shaped receptor and is briefly blinded as lasers scan his retinas. The third light shines, and a door hisses open. As it shuts behind him, he begins the procedure again at a second door. The architect of this place, Orcus the First, Master Scrutator for the great Koba, was as paranoid as the dictator he served.
    An elevator takes Second Son to his family’s gallery. The door swings down behind him as he enters the Second Sensorium. It