Westlake, Donald E - Novel 51 by Humans (v1.1) Read Free Book Online Page B

away?”
                He laughed, self-mockingly. “Oh, I
have money,” he said. “And the doctors would let me go, if a good thing could
come of it. But there is no good thing, Susan. Not for me. The switch is down.
It is already down.”
                cc Well, you don’t have to
give up” she told him, reminding him
of the positive news announcers on CNN, “you certainly shouldn’t give up. I’ll call my cousin. Before he was
on this AIDS research he was—” She broke off, frowned, leaned closer over the
table toward him, gazing into his eyes as she said, “Grigor, do they have AIDS
in Russia ?”
                “Oh, yes,” he said, nodding
solemnly. “A very great problem, you know, in the hospitals.”
                “Hospitals?”
                “The needles. We do not have enough
needles in Soviet,” he explained. “So they get used, what do you say, many
times.”
                “Over and over.”
                “Yes, over and over. Many mothers
and babies are... oh ... infected. Over and over.” His eyes looked more
deep-set and stricken than ever. “Many deaths,” he said. “Death all around us.
Oh, Susan. Everything is dying, you know, Susan. Everything is dying.”

          Ananayel
     
     
                Vodka is no longer made anywhere
from potatoes. I know that. I know whatever I need to know to complete His
plan. But would Mikhail know it? Very well, but would Mikhail think that Susan
knew it? Well, it doesn’t matter.
                What matters is to recruit the
actors—as in doers, those who will
perform the necessary actions—and bring them together. And to do so with a
certain degree of haste, which is why I had to hurry the Grigor-Susan meeting,
appearing to each of them as the person appropriate to that moment; for her,
someone to be comfortable with, and for him, someone to believe. I would have
brought them together in a way much more elegant, more subde, if it weren’t
that this task must be completed as rapidly as possible.
                Rapidly. Why rapidly? I wondered
that myself. When first I was shown His plan, when I had absorbed it, I
expressed surprise at such haste. After all, when He had created this world
He’d spent millions of Earth years to do it, step by careful step, until every
element was perfect. And when, during His most recent irritation with this
corner of His universe, He had chosen to save the world rather than destroy it,
He had taken, from conception to crucifixion, thirty-four of their years. So
why such hurry now?
                The reason, I was given to
understand, was that He hadn’t been bored the other two times.
     
                 

5
     
                 
     
                Kwan borrowed a bicycle from Tan Sun
for his trip across the city to the neighborhood of the big hotels. She wheeled
it out from the cool shady storage area under the house and handed it over to
him, along with the chain to lock it up while he was with the reporter. Her
expression was fretful and worried. “Be sure to look for police,” she said,
“before you go into the hotel. You know what their unmarked cars look like.”
                Kwan laughed, because he’d been
through much worse than this, an
interview with a reporter. “Everyone knows what their cars look like,” he said.
“Clean, for one thing, and with no toys hanging from the inside mirror. And
everyone knows what they look like,
too. They all go to the same tailor, and he gives them the material the British
won’t buy, the shiny grays and light blues. And then he cuts their jackets a
little too short in the back.”
                “Don’t act as though it’s a
holiday,” she snapped, getting angry with him because she had no way to release
her tension.
                Why did girls always have to become
so possessive?