Ares Express Read Online Free PDF Page A

wondered would she have been had their lives been less mobile. She could be a whining cow.
    â€œYou go on back if you're cold,” Sweetness said, elbows hooked over the further ledge of the tank.
    â€œNah,” Psalli grunted.
    â€œDon't let me stop you, now.”
    The girl shrugged her meaty shoulders. Sweetness kicked off from the far end of the cistern. Two strokes brought her sliding in front of Psalli.
    â€œWhy not?”
    Psalli glanced beyond the stepped terraces of water tanks to the truck gardens.
    â€œThey won't bother you,” Sweetness said.
    â€œThey keep looking and waving.”
    â€œSo? Okay. Then we'll give them something to look and wave at.” A heave brought Sweetness out of the water in a cascade of fat drops. Balanced like a gymnast on the narrow lip, she drew herself up to her full one point seven five bare-ass metres. Honey-skin dewed with billion-year-old fossil water. She scraped her hair behind her ears, put her fingers in her mouth andwhistled. It pierced the indigo cool of Inatra like a stiletto. All the dark doll figures that had been clinging to the tall foliage at the edge of the irrigation canals turned as one.
    â€œHey! Boys! See this?” Sweetness wiggled her hips. “Well, you can never, ever have this.” She turned a slow cartwheel on the edge of the pool. The watching boys of Inatra were each and every one struck through the eyes so that ever after they could not love right because tattooed on their retinas was a vision of unattainable youth and loss with arcs of old, cold water flicking from its heels. Sweetness bounced upright. “Just thought you should know, right?” The figures slunk away into the greenery.
    Hands on hips, she surveyed her conquest. Inatra was a spring-line town, a place of wells and shafts and pumps, of water shivering silkily down mossy runnels from cistern to cistern, of gurgling irrigation canals and sagely nodding yawnagers , of aloof water-towers and lithe brown children who pranced in the rainbow spray from the leaking fill-hoses. Here the gradual tilt of the great Tanagyre plain cracked like a broken paschal biscuit into the kilometre uplift of the Praesoline Escarpment. Here the big fusion locos paused for a long drink of water before the toil up the ramps and switchovers of the Inatra Ascent. Here, while the trains drank, train people played in water.
    â€œSweetness Octave Glorious Honey-Bun Asiim Engineer, you have no shame,” Psalli said.
    â€œGreat, isn't it?”
    By now her piercing, two-finger whistle had penetrated Catherine of Tharsis 's Domiety Chamber and, though weak, it still had enough strength to climb into Marya Stuard's ear. She smiled. Everyone around the table had as good a guess as her as to its source. She laid her hand palm upright on the polished wood.
    â€œThree thousand, one point seven percent and three years thirty months. Stick stop stay.”
    She held Grandmother Taal's look. The old Engineer woman shrugged.
    â€œTinguoise.”
    â€œMajor's Gate.”
    â€œEthan Soul.”
    The formula was complete. No one living or undead knew its source, neither could they unsay anything it sealed.
    â€œI'll contact the Ninth Avata people and have the contract drawn up.”
    Marya Stuard rose from the table with her delegation. As she swept out, Child'a'grace muttered, “Too cheap.”
    Her husband roared.
    â€œTell that woman…” he commanded Grandmother Taal but she had departed in a rustle of many-layered skirts, so he signed, She is only a daughter! His fingers added, Half a daughter .
    Child'a'grace rose in a blossom of sudden fury.
    â€œNever…”
    Sorry sorry my mistake , Naon Engineer signed. He had committed a cardinal sin. He knew that he had handled the negotiations badly. His hands might be on the throttles but he was afraid of Marya Stuard. Afeared, and indebted: no one in any of Catherine of Tharsis 's Domieties was let forget that she