Brightsuit MacBear Read Online Free PDF Page A

Grandfather.”
    But all the time, the boy was thinking to himself , Just like you, Grandfather?
    Attempting to escape the public outrage that had followed these events, Dalmeon Geanar had fled his post aboard another great ship of the fleet. Taking his son, Berdan’s father, MacDougall, with him, he’d arrived at the Tom Edison Maru . The story had traveled with them, however. The son, who according to the stories had gotten along no better with his father than Berdan did now, had published notice of legal separation from his surviving parent.
    With all his heart, Berdan wished for some part of MacDougall Bear’s courage. He even wondered if some truth mightn’t be discovered, lurking in this theory of hereditary cowardice. That his father, according to all accounts, hadn’t suffered any such affliction was something he failed to consider, along with a possibility that his grandfather, having learned from a son independent enough to run away, had brought the grandson up fearful and helpless.
    In any case, when he hadn’t been much older than Berdan, MacDougall had left home, struck out on his own, found work, and began to educate himself. He’d even rejected his father’s name, adopting the one his mother had been born with: Bear.
    But tragedy is a relentless hunter. Little more than a decade later, MacDougall and his beautiful wife Erissa had come to their own untimely end, repeating family history. Both accomplished scientists, they’d shared busy, productive lives, full of physical and intellectual adventure, leaving less time, perhaps, than they should have allotted their only child.
    Berdan had always believed that the facts of his life weren’t tragic or even unusual in particular. Those who disagreed with his grandfather about rejuvenation (which was most people) tended to die abrupt deaths, by accident or otherwise. The ancient enemies, old age and disease, had been done away with. Violence was the single real danger remaining, something medical science could do nothing about. The rugged individualists of the Confederacy (which also meant most people), jealous of their privacy and freedom, didn’t want it to try.
    During their final, fatal experiment, MacDougall and Erissa Bear had entrusted Berdan to the care of an individual whose shortcomings, in their generosity, they’d learned to overlook: MacDougall’s father, Dalmeon Geanar.
    “ Berdan Geanar! ”
    Still standing, his mind murky with remembrance, the boy blinked up at his grandfather.
    “Yes, I’m talking to you! Do you think I called you home for the sake of my health?”
    Having come to the end of his string of well-worn thoughts about his father and his mother, as he had so many times before, Berdan took a deep breath. “No, Grandfather. Why did you call me?”
    Before Geanar could reply, a sudden ping! sounded inside both their heads.
    Geanar nodded.
    The door dilated around the husky forms of a pair of beings, one human, one gorilla, wearing smartsuits whose surfaces had been adjusted to look like workman’s overalls.
    “In there.” Geanar inclined his head, indicating his own bedroom door. The workers entered without the old man and, seconds later, emerged into the jungle of the living room, straining beneath a large, upright crate Berdan had never seen before. Three separate implant-activated padlocks connected a series of stout cables wound around it. Squeezing out through the front door, it bumped against the sill.
    “Be careful with that thing!” Dalmeon Geanar ordered. “Can’t you see it’s fragile? And watch out for my pseudophilodendron! Hurry up, or it’ll be late!”
    “Take it easy, doc,” the gorilla answered. “There’s a shuttle leavin’ every hour on the—”
    Geanar purpled, and only in part, Berdan knew, at mention of the small ships which the old man, as a former Broach technician, trusted less than the instantaneous transport they were built to establish between the planet and Tom Edison Maru . Whatever