A Sterkarm Kiss Read Online Free PDF Page B

she said. She felt like asking him why he was dressed in a light-gray suit with an embroidered yellow waistcoat and a lavender tie—but that would show more interest in him than he deserved.
    â€œYou’re looking well,” he said, and moved the car slowly forward. She was wearing makeup, he was sure of it—and he didn’t need three guesses to know whose benefit it was for. All to the good: If she was actually making an effort to catch young Sterkarm’s eye, he was all the more likely to notice her, and young Sterkarm was known to have a weakness for big room darkeners like Andrea.
    The truck was ahead of them on the ramp, the catering van behind them. Windsor switched the radio on. “Good old Handel.” He liked to know the exact moment when the Tube transferred him from the 21st century, and at that moment the radio would cut out. It gave him some slight feeling of control, and helped him overcome the unease that he felt now whenever he used the Tube. Deliberately he moved his mind from consideration of what might go wrong to the objectives be had to achieve.
    Oh God! Andrea thought as the MPV slowly crept forward. We’re going through! We’re going into the Tube. Her heart hammered. How could she have agreed to go back there? As if life wasn’t difficult enough in the 21st century. She wondered whether Windsor would listen to her if she demanded that he stop and let her out.
    He’ll have to stop at the top of the ramp, she thought. I’ll get out then. But he didn’t stop. The plastic strips slapped against the windshield as they drove straight through.
    Andrea couldn’t find her voice to say that she wanted to get out, and in any case she was afraid to get out now that they were in the Tube. She had no understanding of how it worked, and feared radiation, atom dismemberment, or possibly being whizzed back to the Age of Dinosaurs. Evil magic.
    The inside of the Tube looked like a section of an underground walkway. There was a road of some sort under the wheels—possibly made of rubber—and the walls were covered with white tiles, though with many inspection hatches. Terrified, she stared at the back of the truck ahead.
    The truck lifted up the plastic strips at the other end of the Tube, went through, and the strips fell back into place. Their car still moved forward slowly, and Andrea found herself sitting with every muscle braced hard. When the music from the radio stopped in mid note, replaced by static, she clenched her teeth, and her hands gripped the edge of the seat. I’m growing cowardly in my old age, she thought. I used to buzz backward and forward through the Tube without a care. True, the first time she’d ever used it, she’d been awestruck, but after that, she’d soon grown used to it, and had used it as casually as she might have used a lift or an escalator. But now she could remember all too well what had come of that casualness. Casualties.
    She looked at Windsor. He was staring ahead, drumming his fingers on the wheel, and making a hissing noise between his teeth in time to some tune in his head. Perhaps he’s telling the truth, she thought; and he really has recovered completely. Well, was it so surprising? The man always had been as sensitive as a brick.
    The plastic strips scratched over the car’s bonnet, windshield, and roof as the car proceeded. Whatever the Tube did, she realized, it had already done it. Somewhere about the midway mark, when the music had stopped, they’d been translated from the 21st to the 16th century. They’d left their own dimension, whatever that meant. Anyone looking at the Tube, back in the good old 21st, had seen their half of it vanish.
    The car nosed through the plastic strips and emerged on the platform beside the office, 16th side. In front of them was the 16th century.
    Space. That was her first impression. The world opened out. The wide hills, and the wider sky, spread out