The Resurrected Man by Sean Williams Read Free Book Online Page A

Plus, the unit shows every sign of having been abandoned until she arrived this morning.”
    â€œApart from McEwen.”
    â€œIncluding McEwen. Unless he's reprogrammed his housekeeperand does his own cleaning, the unit has been empty for up to a week. No one disturbed it. If anybody was in there, they weren't moving.”
    Trevaskis clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth. Marylin waited for him to say something, to voice the thought they were all thinking. But he didn't need to; the silence was eloquent enough. This wasn't quite the answer they'd been looking for.
    â€œOkay,” he eventually said. “That'll do for now.”
    â€œKill it?” Whitesmith asked.
    â€œYes.”
    Thank God for small mercies , Marylin breathed to herself, and opened her eyes on reality.
    The office used by the Director of MIU was situated on the outermost level of Artsutanov Station, with very little apart from radiation shielding between the floor and vacuum. It had no view; instead, a 3-D panel on one wall panned across a Nepalese mountainside to lend a feeling of spaciousness. The room's furnishings featured fabrics with a crimson theme that Marylin found faintly discomforting. Whatever the purpose of the decor, be it to conceal security devices or to muffle bugs, it radiated artifice and insecurity, as well as a hint of prurience.
    But that was Trevaskis in a nutshell, not just his office. He had the well-balanced features of a thirty-year-old, despite being at least sixty; his skin was lamp-tanned rather than the pallor of most white orbital citizens. His brown hair, kept long in defiance of habitat guidelines, dangled behind him like a horse's tail. Even the way he spoke, with his occasional and certainly cultivated use of argot, was probably nothing more than an act.
    Marylin had accompanied Whitesmith to many such debriefing sessions and had never once felt comfortable in Trevaskis' presence. Half the time she didn't even know why she was there. Not only was meeting in person unnecessary, but being grilled by the man who was her ultimate superior, and was himself just another lackey of KTI, had dubious attractions. Especially after the events of that morning.
    She stretched. Her muscles were stiff, exhausted from holding a rigid pose for almost half an hour. The only senses used during VTC were sight and sound, but that was enough to convince the mind that it had been dislocated from the body. Reorientation to the real world was always difficult.
    Whitesmith ground his knuckles into his thighs, making them crack. When he looked at her, his eyes were red-rimmed. They conveyed the impression of a man who'd banged his head against a wall until the wall had finally collapsed—only to reveal another wall standing beyond it.
    â€œSo,” Trevaskis said, guiding his wheelchair back to his desk with economical tugs of his hands. His uniform was hand-tailored from genuine black cotton, complete to a point midway along his thighs where leather pads hid the stumps of his legs from sight. “We have our suspect at last. That's one step forward, regardless how many we may take sideways in the next few hours.”
    â€œWhich could be more than we'd like.”
    â€œI know, Odi. But it begins to look like we're getting somewhere. What's your gut feeling on McEwen?”
    Whitesmith shrugged. “I think he's guilty of something. He admitted as much when we showed him the body. What, though, remains to be seen.”
    â€œThat could be said of all of us.” A smile hinted at levity—but it was only a hint. “Marylin?”
    â€œI think we were given him, sir,” she said without hesitating. “The Twinmaker tossed him to us like he'd throw a dog a rubber bone.”
    â€œHe's taunting us?”
    â€œYes. The boredom factor again. The Twinmaker knew we were looking for Jonah, so he tracked him down and led us right to him. The only reason he did that is because he knows Jonah