Brightsuit MacBear Read Online Free PDF Page B

Having refused for what seemed to be forever, not only had the old man permitted his grandson to get a job (Berdan made a mental note—a literal possibility with an implant—to call Mr. Meep to make sure the job was still his), but he seemed to have gotten one himself.
    Something which involved sudden business planetside and a massive, coffin-sized shipping crate.
    Not altogether conscious of it, Berdan rose to his feet, at the same time struggling with his conscience. He’d like to know more—what was in that crate?—but, being a child of his culture, he was reluctant to invade his grandfather’s privacy. Although it was fair to say the old man had never shown much respect for his—Berdan’s—privacy, the boy recognized this to be the rationalization it was. He also understood two wrongs don’t make a right.
    Humanity, however, would never have made any progress if curiosity weren’t a stronger force, in particular in fifteen-year-old boys, than culture. His congealing lunch ignored now on the temporary coffee table which wouldn’t go away again unless its load were removed, Berdan swallowed his conscience and stepped through the still-dilated door membrane into Dalmeon Geanar’s bedroom.
    The die, as someone had once observed in somewhat similar circumstances, was cast.
    At first Berdan stood motionless in the precise center of the small room, both hands thrust into his smartsuit pockets in a final, futile gesture to his ruptured scruples. The place was just as filled with hanging and potted plants as the area outside, and it was difficult to take it in with a single glance.
    The bed had made itself, of course. The closet had retrieved and hung up whatever clothes his grandfather hadn’t taken with him and seemed to be busy cleaning them—Berdan could hear a faint ionic hum from that direction. The windows on all four walls and the ceiling were blank, unprogrammed, the place devoid of any clues he might have hoped to find. Curious or not, the boy couldn’t bring himself to open any of the dresser drawers—it didn’t occur to him this was a strange place to draw the line, having once violated someone else’s privacy—but he wondered where the big crate had stood. In the daytime, his grandfather almost never closed his bedroom door, but Berdan hadn’t noticed it before this.
    Maybe it had just arrived today.
    Casting aside everything he regarded as decent behavior, Berdan opened the closet. On first inspection, as the cleaning hum died, no trace remained of the crate, although room enough was left for it. Everything was as it should be, neat, spotless. Overhead, coiled tight against the ceiling, the closet’s retrieval tentacle gleamed in the dim light. Whatever their other failings, the housemice, golfball-sized cyberdevices similar to the tentacle, had done a commendable job wiping out their natural prey, the dustbunny, along with every other trace of dirt the carpet peristalsis didn’t take care of. An empty space remained at the right, toward the back, where the crate might have stood on its end.
    With his head deep in his grandfather’s closet, Berdan frowned. What was that in the corner? In the dark recess he couldn’t make it out. A mental nudge from his implant caused the walls to emit a soft, illuminating glow. Toward the floor, caught in an upper edge of the base molding—cheap to begin with and starting now to separate from the wall it had been glued to—he saw a scrap of plastic. Berdan squatted down, reached around, and retrieved it.
    About the size of a business card, it seemed to be a label—half of a label, anyway; Berdan could see two brittle strips of amber glue along the back—which had somehow been torn from the crate:
    Spoonbender’s Museum of Scientific Curiosit
—And Friendly Finance Compa
A. Hamilton Spoonbe
           22-24 Ponsie Stree
N .
    The boy wasn’t stupid; his memory, even without the help of an implant, was good; and in most instances he was unafraid to