Green Monkey Dreams Read Online Free PDF

of lands beyond the wastes where there are a few isolated settlements. There might be no truth in it, but we need the gene pool so I am taking a boat out. It’s likely to be a one-way trip. All I have to do is let them know there are others. They’ll come when they can and if they want.’ Jack Rose hesitates. ‘You could come with me, Rian.’
    Survive and go on, I think, for accepting, too, is part of surviving.
    â€˜I could . . .’ I say.

R OACHES
    T he day was bright and cold, casting sharp-edged shadows over the crumbling city. Framed in a sagging doorway, the boy stood motionless and pale, wary eyes skimming along slabbed grey surfaces, alert for movement.
    But that alone was not enough to be sure.
    He listened with ears so attuned to the noises of the dead city that he did not register the gritty hiss of the wind, or the rustle it caused at the fringe of great sodden banks of debris on the cracked footpath.
    His eyes rested on a spiral dance of leaves, a voice inside his thoughts warning of the danger that lay in moving around in the daylight: Gordy’s voice speaking to him out of the past, stiff with warning.
    â€˜Day is dangerous because you might be seen, and night is dangerous because you can’t see who might be watching.’
    But the scrapers fell when they willed. The boy sniffed at the air, ripe with the rain smell, knowing anything exposed would be destroyed. But he noticed the way the sun shone fair on the ruins. You could be seen for miles out in the open like that.
    He chewed his knuckle, trying to decide.
    The Carnies living in that part of the city had passed by that morning as he watched unseen from his high window. Usually they stayed away all day. But you had to act as if they might be back at any moment.
    â€˜Don’t expect the Carnies to be like us,’ the Gordy voice said. ‘Their brains are scrambled. They are not like us. Don’t try to out-think them. If you let them see you or guess you are there, they will hunt until they find you, and they will eat you.’
    As they had eaten Gordy.
    â€˜Be careful . . .’ the boy whispered to himself in Gordy’s voice.
    He swallowed a sudden dryness at the back of his tongue. Gordy would call it too much of a risk, but if there were books . . .
    He took a deep breath and stepped out. The sun felt delicious and dangerous on his skin. His bare feet made no sound and he walked as Gordy had shown him: very slowly, ready to freeze at any moment, always staying close to the edges of buildings and shadows. The fall of the scraper had covered the road in a fine white dust, and the boy flapped a cloth automatically behind him, erasing foot marks as he picked his way through the rubble.
    Excitement clawed at his gut as he spied the edge of a book. A quick glance around, then he knelt and reached into the narrow gap between two slabs. He groped and felt the book move fractionally, sliding just out of reach.
    Sweat beaded his chest and face as he struggled to make his arm longer, his fingers more certain. The cracked stone gnawed at his armpit.
    â€˜Book . . .’ he muttered, the word as fierce as an oath.
    Again the book shifted tantalisingly. But this time he managed to get the edge of it between thumb and forefinger. ‘Be careful, be slow, be patient. To be too quick is to die quickly.’ Gordy’s words were a litany as he inched the book out.
    Gordy had told him about books.
    â€˜That’s all there is left of the old world,’ he had said. ‘The days of books are gone for good.’
    He had explained how the black scratchings that filled the pages hid words. Only those who knew the secret of the scratchings could know what the words said.
    Gordy had told him the messages of many pages, and had begun to teach him the magic of understanding the scratchings. He still remembered how to make his own name.
    The wind breathed its cold breath and the dust stirred unnoticed as the boy