Wolf Time (Voice of the Whirlwind) by Walter Jon Williams Read Free Book Online Page A

thing’s last spasm. Instead she saw Steward, dying in his own silent bed, and felt a long grey wave of sadness. She opened her eyes and looked at Ken.
    “It’s also survival,” she said.
    “Yes. It is.”
    A cold tremor passed through Reese’s body. “I wasn’t talking about the clone.”
    While Ken’s assistants made it look as if she and the assassins had killed each other, Reese stepped through the hidden door into the next apartment. Her bag was already packed, her identity and passport ready. Credentials, she thought, her specialty. That and killing helpless people. Group rates available.
    She wanted to live by water again. New Zealand sounded right. It was getting to be spring there now.
    “You’ll come back?” Ken asked.
    “Maybe. But in the meantime, you’ll know where to send the royalties.” There was pain in Ken’s eyes, in Steward’s eyes. Attachments were weakness, always a danger. Reese had a vision of the Street, people parting, meeting, dying, in silence, alone. She wouldn’t be safe on Prince and couldn’t be a part of Ken’s revolution. She was afraid she knew what it was going to turn into, once it became the sole possessor of a radical new technology. And what that would turn Ken into.
    Reese shouldered her bag. Her hands were still trembling. Sadness beat slowly in her veins. She was thirty-seven now, she thought. Maybe there were sports she shouldn’t indulge in.
    Maybe she should just leave.
    “Enjoy your new architecture,” she said, and took off.

    The End

BOOKS BY WALTER JON WILLIAMS

    Novels
    Ambassador of Progress
    Angel Station
    Hardwired
    Knight Moves
    Voice of the Whirlwind
    Days of Atonement
    Aristoi
    Metropolitan
    City on Fire
    The Rift (originally as by Walter J Williams)

    Divertimenti
    The Crown Jewels
    House of Shards
    Rock of Ages

    Dread Empire’s Fall
    The Praxis
    The Sundering
    Conventions of War
    Investments (short novel)

    Dagmar Shaw Thrillers
    This Is Not a Game
    Deep State
    The Fourth Wall

    Collections
    Facets
    Frankensteins & Foreign Devils
    The Green Leopard Plague and Other Stories

    Privateers & Gentlemen (historical novels, originally as by Jon Williams)
    To Glory Arise (originally published as The Privateer )
    The Tern Schooner (originally published as The Yankee )
    Brig of War (originally published as The Raider )
    The Macedonian
    Cat Island