Deadly Relations: Bester Ascendant Read Online Free PDF

voice.
    “I think they’re brain-wiped criminals.”
    “Huh?”
    “Rogues who couldn’t be reeducated. Students that asked too many of the wrong questions. They wipe their brains and program them to do what they do.” Julia shuddered
    “You really think so?”
    “What I think is that we shouldn’t be talking about it,” Al responded
    “It’s not our business. If the Corps wants us to know what they are, they’ll tell us.”
    “Maybe we’re supposed to figure out what they are. Maybe it’s another test did you ever consider that?”
    There had been a lot of tests lately, with Minor Academy admissions coming up.
    “I think I know a test when I see one. Unlike some of you.”
    Julia and Azmun paled They knew who he was talking about.
    “That wasn’t nice, Alfie,” Brett said.
    “You don’t have to be such an ass about things.”
    Like any of you are nice to me, Al thought. Like any of you care how I feel.
    But he kept it blocked and locked He wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of knowing that they could hurt him. After all, they were just jealous. Even Brett couldn’t outdo him on the tests - except in some of the normal stuff, like running, and then only just barely. He just shrugged, knowing that would annoy them more than any verbal response.
    The final tests started tomorrow. Those who passed would move to the Minor Academy. He would be one of them, and he would finally be where he ought to be. In the Minor Academy people would appreciate him. He wouldn’t let Brett and the rest distract him from that goal. From finally escaping them.

    “Take a few minutes to get ready, Alfred. Simon,” Teacher Roberts said, with an absent air.
    He made a few marks on his notepad.
    AI opened his envelope and glanced at the photograph inside. It depicted a brick-red ground-car, a Cortez Jump-Point. He closed his eyes, held the image for a moment to make sure he had it, then sealed the envelope and laid it on the desk in front of him.
    Ten meters away, across the room, Simon did the same. Al took a moment to size Simon up. He was the same age, twelve, but from a different cadre. Fox-faced, auburn hair to match.
    Al closed his eyes again and took deep, slow breaths as he shut the world down. The telepathic white noise was the first to go, that sort of distant ocean sound produced by the millions of minds in the Greater Geneva area. Layered above that were the hundreds of thoughts near enough to be half intelligible - a word here, a few brushstrokes from a landscape there, traces of mood like aromas, some sharp, some subtle.
    Gone. Leaving only the nearest thoughts, investing themselves in his brain almost with the ease of his own thoughts.
    He remembered himself as a child, wondering, am I really thinking that, or is it someone else? It was the most dangerous confusion a telepath could face.
    Deep slow breath in, deep slow breath out. The voices going out like stars at sunrise, till only one was left - Simon’s. You couldn’t really see a mind, of course, but to Al, Simon’s appeared for the moment as a hard black sphere, encased by larger, silver-translucent balls, nested within one another. Al had never really imagined this required any sort of explanation, but Teacher Roberts had talked about it often enough. He liked explaining things that didn’t seem to need explanations.
    “Basically, we’re just fancy monkeys,” he’d told them, the first day of class.
    “Our ancestors didn’t evolve like wolves, or horses, or whales, specializing their digits into claws or hooves or flippers. Nope, evolution left us with the same feeble five digits that our reptilian ancestors had. General, not specialized. All of the primates followed that pattern-never committing to specialization, always trying to stay the jacks-of-all-trades.
    “The only real change from the lizard hand to the monkey hand was opposability, the ability to grasp-and we needed that, running around in treetops. The other thing we needed were eyes