Voice of the Whirlwind by Walter Jon Williams Read Free Book Online Page A

eyes.
    “Steward,” he muttered, apparently to himself. He put the cup down without moving his glance. His voice was harsh, grating. Steward remembered him singing, a baritone voice that rang from the metal walls of Steward’s apartment in the Coherent Light Mars Orbital Complex. Half the songs were in Welsh and sounded like hymns, the other half were filthy rugby songs. The voice was different now.
    “Jesus,” Griffith said. A grin began moving across his face, moving in an odd way, not all at once but jerkily, invading Griffith’s face zone by zone. “You caught me by surprise. You look good, Captain. Sit down.”
    Captain? Steward thought.
    Griffith’s smile faded. His face clouded over at the cold touch of memory. “I haven’t seen you since the Icehawks,” he said. “Not since we came back from Sheol.”

CHAPTER FOUR

    Griffith didn’t so much eat breakfast as tear it apart, nervously shredding eggs and ham, ripping up his toast, now and then eating a bite, otherwise just pushing the food around his plate. Steward understood how he’d grown so thin. While watching Griffith mutilate his breakfast, Steward explained that he was a clone, that he had his Alpha’s training but not his memories of Sheol or anything since.
    Griffith looked at him. “He didn’t update the memories at all? Didn’t give you anything?” Steward shook his head. Griffith leaned back in his booth with surprise on his face. “Why?” Griffith asked.
    “He didn’t say.”
    “Shit.” He rubbed his mustache. Then his puzzlement turned to wary concern.
    “He’s dead then, right? You wouldn’t be here otherwise.”
    “That’s right.”
    Griffith was silent for a moment. His watery eyes seemed turned inward, watching a memory landscape printed inside his mind. “How’d it happen?” he asked. “Did they tell you?”
    “He was killed on Ricot, or maybe Vesta. Hunting Colonel de Prey.”
    Griffith was silent again for a long moment. “Yeah,” he said. The voice wasn’t disapproving, or approving either. “That sounds like the Captain.” And then he went back to ripping up his food, slowly, not even looking at what his hands were doing. Steward watched him, not wanting to break into Griffith’s reverie, his mourning for someone he hadn’t known he’d lost.
    The Captain. That was the Alpha personality’s name, now. It symbolized a rank, an authority, that Steward did not remember possessing. He hadn’t even been an officer. The Captain had come into being on Sheol.
    Griffith put down his knife and fork and took a breath. He seemed suddenly pale. He excused himself and went to the men’s room. When he returned, his color was back. He lit a cigarette and inhaled.
    “I’ve got some kind of stomach thing,” he said. “It’s been following me for days.”
    “What are you doing in Arizona?”
    “I’m staying in a condo suite my company keeps here. I’m working as kind of a salesman,” he said. “For an outfit called Lightsource, Limited. We provide various kinds of communication services for businesses. Software aimed at solving particular problems, communication equipment built to specific configurations, that kind of thing. Are you working?”
    “Not at the moment. I’ve got some things lined up. I’m going to try to get into Starbright.”
    Griffith’s face grew wistful. “Getting back into space, huh?” he asked. “Wish I was.”
    “I want to travel. I think I’d be restless if I stayed in one place.”
    Griffith nodded, puffed smoke. “I’d like to see the Powers again. Live with them in a real Power environment. That’s what I miss most about space. The Powers turned out to be the only thing up there worth the trip.”
    “You think so?”
    Griffith gave him a glance. “The Captain was that way, too. Wasn’t impressed by them. Kind of a blindness in him.” He shook his head. “But when you meet them, you realize how centered they are. How real they are. And you see by comparison how humans