Firebird Read Online Free PDF

physicist. Even one who disappeared. I mean, we have pilots who've disappeared, pharmacists, librarians, all kinds of people. So you've dug up responses from a few people who don't have enough to do. What's it prove?”
    “Chase,” he said, “you need to stop thinking about Robin as a physicist.”
    “Really? What would you suggest?”
    “Try 'celebrity.'“
    “It's been a pretty well-kept secret.”
    “You travel,” he said, in his locked-on imitation of Collier Ibsen, the actor who'd made a career of playing tough guys, “in the wrong circles, sweetheart.”

THREE
    A myth is occasionally a scientific explanation that hasn't been made yet.
    —Christopher Robin, Multiverse , 1387
    We got a few more calls from potential customers asking about Chris Robin, and Alex looked quite pleased. “If we play this correctly,” he said as we lifted off in the late afternoon for Sanova and the monthly meeting of the Christopher Robin Society, “we might have a serious winner here.”
    “You should consider a career as a sales consultant,” I said. He smiled and pretended to take it as a compliment.
    The meeting was being held at the Jubilee Country Club, which, in better times, had been a posh operation designed for people who enjoyed showing off their wealth. But they'd come under new management which, we heard, had lost the personal touch with their customers, the clientele had gone away, and the Jubilee fell into a state of general deterioration. When we walked through the front doors, I got a sense of a lost age, of a place whose time had passed.
    The meeting was being held in the main ballroom, with panels assigned to conference rooms. We signed in with a middle-aged woman sitting at a table just inside the door. She produced two badges, and we went inside.
    I'm not sure what I expected. A seance, maybe. A team of ghost hunters. Someone who'd encountered stalkers from another universe.
    Alex disapproved of my attitude. “They do trade ideas here,” he told me sternly. “Keep in mind this is primarily a social event. But it's also a place where people can talk about wild ideas, whatever they might be, without fear of getting laughed at. I should also mention that the tradition here is that comments made during the evening stay here. Nothing gets recorded. Nothing gets repeated, without permission.”
    There were about fifty attendees present when we arrived. Another ten or fifteen drifted in while we wandered around, introducing ourselves and engaging in small talk. Then the president called the meeting to order, made some business announcements, and introduced the keynote speaker, a trim woman with cinnamon-colored hair whom he described as an expert on the subject of disembodied consciousness. The woman thanked us for coming, said she hoped we would find the evening instructive, and expressed her appreciation that there were still open-minded people in the world. “The Latrill branch of the Society,” she said, “sends its warmest wishes.” She expressed regret that modern society had failed to recognize the scientific contributions of Chris Robin simply because they did not fit easily into the common misperceptions of how the universe worked. “It's hard not to wonder what he might have given us,” she said, “had his lifetime not been cut short.”
    That got some applause.
    She gazed around the room, nodded to a couple of people in back, and smiled. “Some of my colleagues,” she continued, “suspect he was spirited away by the forces of corporate greed. There might be something to that. If his work on dark energy had panned out, it would have delivered a body blow to some of the corporate powers, and I don't need to tell you who they are. Unfortunately, it looks as if dark energy has reached a dead end. I personally doubt there's any truth to this particular conspiracy theory. Though we all love conspiracies, this one is simply too mundane. But until we know for certain, assuming we ever do, the