Falling Read Online Free PDF Page B

effects upon every day of her life since.
    In fact, that was one of the best parts. Living a life that was constantly shifting, where the past was never quite the same twice. Learning to smile when your memories didn’t match someone else’s, because you’d been there twice, or more, and seen all the different permutations, all the possibilities.
    â€˜It should be fun,’ Warner was saying. ‘Someone of your Luddite leanings should feel right at home.’
    â€˜I’m not a Luddite.’
    â€˜If you say so. Though I hear some of those SoftGreen girlies are pretty free with their favours…’
    â€˜Just one problem, Mr Warner. I’m – not operational today.’
    Not operational. Polite departmental euphemism for, ‘Actually, sir, although I’m forbidden to give you the details, I’m already in mid-ReTrace and the me you’re speaking to is from some indeterminate point in the future.’
    Outside, a hawk dived into the pigeons on the adjoining roof, triggering an eruption of feathers and shrieking, flapping escapees.
    Warner tipped the chair back onto two legs, resting his shoulders against the wall, and looked at her.
    Wondering, she could be pretty sure, whether he could risk trying to break the Recommendation.
    It would be so easy, wouldn’t it? To ask for a stock market tip, a political scandal to sell to NewsTV. To ask if your sick grandmother was going to recover, or just whether you should buy that new suit now or wait for the sale.
    They’d catch you, of course. If it took them ten years, or a hundred, somewhere down the line they’d catch you. And someone would ReTrace back to warn a colleague who’d ReTrace back to warn another, until the knowledge caught up with you, backwards through time.
    Until one day, about 30 seconds before you would have asked the question, the ReTracer you were about to ask would pull a gun and blow your head off for no apparent reason at all.
    â€˜That’s fine,’ Warner murmured, studying Jude’s face as if he expected to find some kind of vital clue there. ‘I was going to send Schrader with you anyway. Speaks German. He can handle it on his own. Or you can tag along, have some fun. We’re not exactly overworked today.’
    Leaving her the choice. Because only she would know what she was here for, what she was searching for.
    And even then, she’d only know when she found it.
    â€˜Yeah.’ Jude watched the sun break through a smear of cloud above the shattered roof of St Pancras. ‘You know, I might just do that.’
    The Park was a single heaving mass of people.
    The official car dropped them across the road, where they were slightly less likely to attract attention – or the traditional bombardment of mud and rotten vegetables for squandering resources and polluting the atmosphere with a private vehicle – and they crossed the empty road to the Alexandra gate in silence.
    The two Germans, Hinke and Beck, hadn’t actually spoken since Warner introduced them in the GenoBond car park, twenty minutes ago. On his advice, they’d removed their suit jackets and grudgingly replaced them with shabby PlasMacs to hide exactly how expensive their hand-stitched silk shirts were. They didn’t look happy about it.
    Considering that this was supposed to be their idea of fun, they didn’t look happy at all.
    Jude looked sideways at Schrader. With his brutally cropped blond hair, a grey shirt buttoned to the neck, and that permanent scowl, he could quite easily pass as a third member of the negotiation team.
    Which left her, in a KENSAL PUNK BOYS T-shirt and old jeans, looking like a hanger-on, a streetbird, or simply a complete idiot.
    â€˜This is ridiculous,’ Schrader muttered. For the first time in a dozen or so glancing, ill-tempered encounters, Jude thought he looked nervous. ‘The entire city must be here.’
    The fence had been turned into a