Fallen Sparrow Read Online Free PDF Page A

homesickness.”
    “How do you tie him to Skaas?”
    “The old man might be in a spot.” Ab spoke softly. “Maybe they’re holding his family hostage and he has to play ball. There were young grand-daughters—”
    Kit felt cold run through him.
    Ab jerked his head. “They must have run out of gas.”
    Barby and young Skaas had just come through the revolving door. Her hair was starred with snow, her lovely face lifted to the man in joy.
    Kit shoved Ab forward. He called out, “Been waiting for you. Held up in traffic?”
    She didn’t allow the momentary annoyance to remain in her eyes. She took his arm. “How sweet of you to wait.”
    They crushed into the elevator. She shouldn’t have been annoyed. She shouldn’t want to be with Otto Skaas.
    The others of their party were already seated at one great table in the crowded ball room. The benefit for the refugees was a success. Everyone and everyone who knew anyone was there. Even a supercolossal movie wouldn’t have done it with more mocking detail, jewels and wine, terrapin and winter roses, privilege and decadent luxury. The elder Tavitons and Dr. Skaas had evidently arrived while he and Ab spoke below. The scientist sat between host and hostess, his lashless eyes downcast, as if the mockery were not to be borne, counterpoised by memory of hunger and cold and trembling death.
    Kit didn’t intend that Barby should escape him; he didn’t know how it happened that he was facing her across a glittering width of table, facing her and Blue Eyes’ insolence. Ab hadn’t run away. He was by Kit, in the next chair, and his face was in shadow. None but he and Christian Skaas seemed to realize the Masque of Death. Kit wanted to reassure them that he too could feel but that he didn’t dare. He had to keep that shoved down. When he felt, he was forced to do something; he couldn’t just talk about it, worry it like a bone. And he couldn’t take on any more now, not until he found out who’d done Louie in, and why. Particularly not until he knew if he were a part of it. He hadn’t considered that before meeting Otto Skaas; now, cold-spined, he wasn’t certain. Louie was the only one who had shared any part of his secret; maybe they hadn’t given up as easily as he’d thought. Unconsciously he found himself listening for footsteps, for lurching, limping steps. He shook his head with ferocity. He was over that.
    His eyes went around the room. He wasn’t surprised to see Tobin dressed up like a trained ape; that was why the police couldn’t find out what happened to their own; they were too busy helping society stage a refugee circus. He swerved his head suddenly to Ab. “Who is that girl?”
    Ab’s mouth turned wry. “Content. You haven’t forgotten Content?”
    He hadn’t meant the one who came now into the blue circle spotted on the silver platform. Of course he hadn’t forgotten Content Hamilton, cousin to Ab, and as unpredictable as Ab was stable. Content didn’t let herself be forgotten; he’d learned in sickbed last year that it was a poor week when some tab couldn’t use the standing head: Society’s Madcap Heiress does something or other. He hadn’t heard she’d taken up exhibitionism but it was no surprise.
    The other girl he couldn’t see, now that the ballroom lights had been dimmed the better to display Content’s figure. It was displayed; the crystalline glitter of her dress, blue in the light, wasn’t made to hide much. Her hair was blue too in this light and her cheeks were more gamine than ever. She sighed to the rapt faces, sighed with the cloying heartbreak of the words she sang. And then the lights came up and she was laughing at them, at their discomfited hearts dangling from their sleeves.
    He made another attempt to see the stranger before the lights faded down again but too many heads blocked the way. She had had a young girl’s grave profile, but it wasn’t that he had noticed. It was when her head turned and he saw the smoky