Forgotten Suns Read Online Free PDF Page A

charging,” Khalida said from the upper floor of the
house, where she had been trying to put together fragments into something
resembling a statue.
    “Like a solar panel,” Vikram agreed.
    “Have you ever seen anything like it?”
    He shot her a glance. “You’re MI, and you’re asking me?”
    “You were Spaceforce,” she said. “If there’s anything to
hear, Spaceforce hears it. MI gets the leavings.”
    He grunted. “Somebody somewhere has to have come up with the
mod, or he wouldn’t have it. Unless . . .”
    “What?” Khalida demanded when he did not go on.
    “Unless he was born that way.”
    “What, gengineered?”
    “Do you have any other ideas?”
    “Not offhand,” she said. “I’ve sent inquiries on the
subspace feed. There’s no telling how long it will take to get anything back.”
    “I sent a few myself,” said Vikram. “So far all I’ve got is
nothing. If he’s one of ours, he’s so classified even he probably doesn’t know
what he is. If he’s one of yours...”
    “I suppose we’ll find out eventually,” she said. “Are you
going to report him to Psycorps?”
    “Are you?”
    She shrugged. It was more of a shiver. “I’m thinking about
it. If he’s theirs, I’m not sure I want to be anywhere near him when they find
him.”
    “I’d worry more about them,” Vikram said.
    That, Khalida had to agree with. There were rumors about
what happened when a psi went rogue. A psi of the level of this one would have
the whole Corps out after him.
    Which would explain why he had turned up here, at the back
end of nowhere, on a planet with effectively no inhabitants. Either he was
hiding, or someone had been hiding him.
    Her inquiries would trigger searchbots, if there were any.
So would Vikram’s. It was small comfort that he had failed as badly as she had
at thinking things through.
    Too late now. It would take a while in any case. In the
meantime Rama or whatever his name was was as safe as she or Vikram could make
him.
    He certainly seemed happy. When the sun vanished behind
clouds and the thunder began its daily walk, he came in to be fed. He was
walking steadily, and he looked orders of magnitude better.
    The implications of that for MI were enough to tie her
stomach in knots. She was here on psych leave. She could not be thinking what
she was thinking. Because if she did, she would start remembering. And memory
was deadly.
    She put on a smile and showed him how to make his own lunch.
“We don’t do room service here,” she said, “unless you’re on your deathbed.
Breakfast and lunch, you’re on your own. Dinner, we take turns. Be warned: when
it’s the Brats’ turn, the menu can get creative.”
    He smiled at that. “Do I get to be creative, too?”
    “Not too much,” she said. “I’ll show you how to work the
cooker. It’s not that hard.”
    “Everything is easy here,” he said.
    “Like magic,” said Khalida.
    All the lightness drained out of him. “Oh, no,” he said. “There
is nothing easy about magic.”

5
    Vikram called the wild man Rama. That was not his real
name, but he liked it. He wanted to keep it.
    He was not so wild now, with his face open to the world.
Aunt Khalida had dug clothes and shoes and even a pair of boots out of the
storage room for him, raiding the boxes of castoffs and extras and I-forgots.
He could never look ordinary, but at least now he looked civilized.
    Aisha had looked up his new name on the house computer. She
had guessed right about what Vikram had really wanted to call him. He looked
just like Lord Krishna.
    Maybe he was an avatar. She had looked that up, too.
    “That’s just mods,” Jamal said. “He must be a Ramayanist.
They all want to be Krishna. Or Kali or Lakshmi Bai or Vishnu.”
    “You’ve been hacking the schoolbot again,” Aisha said. “Why
didn’t you tell me?”
    “I was going to,” he said. “You were busy cleaning stalls
with Lord Krishna.”
    “Don’t call him that,” Aisha said. “It’s