A Few Good Men Read Online Free PDF Page B

You have to face civilization sometime, Ben said, and he was right, of course, but sometimes a man needs time and space to deal with things.
    All right, he said,as though it were a great concession. This night then. At any rate if people are looking for you, this is safer. No one who knew you will imagine you just veered off to sleep on a crag in the sea.
    I found a spot where a piece of rock kind of overhung me, anyway, on the reasoning that I didn’t want anyone overflying the islet to see me lying there and come down to investigate. But the true reason—it being nighttime and the islet having no lights, and travelers in flyers not being likely to look too closely below—was that I couldn’t face the idea of sleeping uncovered and open to the sky above. I was afraid I’d wake up dreaming of floating away into the blue.
    As I was half asleep, a smothered laugh shook me. I’d dreamed of sleeping in warm, living arms, and here I was, wedged in rock, cold, alone.
    But in that space between awaking and sleep, I heard Ben’s voice, You always have me. And I fell asleep to the feeling that he was right there, with me, under that rock.

Don’t Look Now

    I woke up cramped and shivering. Light was shining in my eyes, and I was shaking. My head felt achy and my eyes gritty, as I blinked dumbly at the rock and sand in front of my eyes, pelted by a steady fall of rain. I was wedged sideways into a narrow crevice in black rock, with more of the rock about a foot above my head. And my nose was full of sea and sand, my ears full of the seagull screams that filled the air.
    Moving brought protesting aches from joints and muscles and my body felt like it would never be warm enough again. Despite the insulating qualities of the Scrubber suit, it had been thoroughly soaked in saltwater by the time I crawled in here, which meant it had leeched the cold from the rock and right into my flesh and bones.
    Now it had dried, in sea-salt patches, though as far as I could tell at least the blood and brains of the last occupant had been thoroughly washed away. I wondered if the kid I’d freed had made it somewhere safe, or if he’d got himself recaptured and imprisoned again. But I’d done what I could for him, and hanging out with me wouldn’t have made him any safer.
    If I knew Father, and I did from my escapades when I was much younger, right about now he would have figured out I’d escaped Never-Never and he’d be screaming bloody murder, wouldn’t he? And when Father screamed, things got set in motion, starting with his henchmen, who would be looking for me high and low. There was only one of me, and Father had a lot of henchmen. Sooner or later, they’d find me. Unless I was very careful. It would have been harder to be as careful and as ruthless as I needed to be while protecting a hapless kid, who was little better than an infant when it came to saving himself. Hopefully he’d found shelter with other Usaians, who indeed existed in every land and seacity, though the religion had been illegal for at least a hundred years and I suspected for longer than that.
    And besides, you couldn’t wait to get rid of human company, Ben said in my head.
    I shrugged. I would have to brave human company this morning, at any rate, because I was starving, and I wasn’t willing to live on fresh killed uncooked seagull or even seaweed—all this isle was likely to offer in the way of breakfast.
    Crawling out cautiously into the pelting rain, I was surprised to find it only a little cold, though that made sense, since it had been early winter when I was captured, and it was fifteen years later, just about. I breathed the sea air for a while, feeling the rain caress me and washing away the salt from my suit and hair. I tried not to think of what I looked like. A hand run casually across my cheeks informed me my beard had come in, as it usually did over twenty-four hours, forming a sand-papery texture and probably—hard to tell without mirrors—a