High Bloods Read Online Free PDF Page A

be alone right now.”
    She shook her head then looked away, at the bright corona of the Privilege: a blitz of casino lights, gold-leafed towers of the world’s major financial institutions. The Privilege glittered 24/7 like perpetual Christmas beneath the powerful, sordid smog of the Los Angeles basin, surrounded by its Great Wall. The security the wall provided was enhanced by technology such as acoustic bouncers and heat rays: electromagnetic radiation that caused wall-scaling werewolves to suffer from intense burning sensations. If that didn’t discourage them, there wereplenty of Zippos at intervals atop the wall capable of throwing hundred-foot gushers of flame.
    A few decades ago the sure method of dealing with the plague of werewolves—or almost anything else wearing fur during an Observance—was wholesale slaughter. Flamethrowers were popular. Spike guns, corrosive acids, chain saws. Then it became obvious that the world’s population was declining drastically. Innocent people as well as Hairballs were being killed indiscriminately by the overanxious or trigger-happy. Neighbors were wiping out neighbors and, not infrequently, members of their own families.
    But it occurred to those who had any common sense left after the initial years of hysteria that human beings afflicted with LC disease were indisposed or unproductive only for brief spells. Just a small percentage were hopelessly addicted to their monthly changes, which, as in the case of binge drinkers, amounted to a two-or three-day blackout.
    So billions were poured into Lycanthropy research. Drugs that suppressed the triggering mechanism in the brain at the onset of the full moon were discovered and synthesized from rare specimens of jungle plants. My mom and her colleagues found some of those, and as a result Pym had a Nobel for her work. With the drugs cheaply available, International Lycan Control was established and financed by a consortium of the richest city-states around the world, including the one we were driving through.
    ILC had roughly eighty percent of the Lycan population identified and Snitched. Snitches are surgically implanted, satellite-monitored transponders. Active life three years, then they must be replaced. They come with a microcomputer that controls a flow of drugs collectively known as TQs into the bloodstreams of Lycans for the forty-eight-hour period centered around the full moon each month. TQs put all Lycans into a state of twilight sleep after switching off the hairing-up impulse.
    There was maintenance involved along with monitoring. The failure rate of Snitchers was less than two percent. The reservoirs had to be refilled six times a year at ILC clinics. Woe to the careless or forgetful Lycan, and the occasional smartass who deliberately ignores his responsibility. But there are always those people who just don’t like being told what to do.
    Harsher methods exist to deal with that triggering mechanism, but they leave the individual in a permanent vegetative state. Another expense the rest of us don’t need. What we do need is the Lycans’ cooperation. Because, for one instance, the North American population continues to shrink. It’s illegal for Lycans to breed. High Blood women are continually encouraged, through financial incentives and massive doses of PR dupe, to have more children. Booty for High Blood babies. The various programs had all been failures. Women just didn’t want to make babies anymore, and who could blame them?
    “My mother is about your height,” I said to Beatrice. “She’s partial to old jeans and colorful native kit, but we’ll find something for you to change into.”
    “Oh, I’m meeting your mother?”
    “Not this visit. Last I heard from Pym, she was crossing the Plains of Bah in Sarawak, heading for her favorite rain forest.”
    “Ah.” Beatrice exhaled softly. “Borneo. Where it began. As the legend has it.”
    “That’s what Mom and her team would like to find out for