Multiverse: Exploring the Worlds of Poul Anderson Read Online Free PDF Page A

she was in the infirmary with flu, Luke was in bed at his hotel with chest pains, and Shadow-of-a-Dream had vanished.

    “She could not have left Christmas Landing,” Chief Halford said. “I’ve reviewed the surveillance data on every penetration of the perimeter shield. All authorized.”
    “I thought,” Luke said, “that you’d assigned her a twenty-four-hour guard.”
    “We did. A dog, of course; we can’t afford personnel for wayward girls!”
    “What happened to the dog?” Luke sat in his hotel room, as utilitarian as everything else in Christmas Landing, and tried to appear healthier than he was. He had doubled his medication, but if he went to the infirmary, he would never come out. That was not how he wanted to die.
    Chief Halford—it suddenly occurred to him that he’d never heard her first name—said, “The dog was drugged.”
    Luke was impressed. “Where did Shadow-of-a-Dream get drugs?”
    “Her name is Carolyn and I haven’t yet found out where she got the drugs. You know Carolyn better than anyone—where do you think she might be in Christmas Landing? Dr. Cardiff and his team are very anxious to have her back.”
    I’ll bet they are , Luke thought. And so was the chief, whose reputation would not be helped by this. Luke looked at her as steadily as he could manage.
    “Chief Halford, the human brain is more plastic than we once thought, especially the brains of children. Children damaged in freak accidents have shown the ability to modify neural connections in ways completely impossible for adults. I’m sure Dr. Cardiff told you this after he examined the brain scans of Hal DiSilvio and Laura Simmons.” Fire-Born and Cloud, that were.
    “He did, but it isn’t very relevant to what I’m dealing with here, is it? Do you have any idea where Carolyn might be?”
    “No.”
    “Thank you.” She left, scowling, a competent woman only trying to do her job, and faced with forces she could not comprehend.
    But we all do that every day, Luke thought. Life itself is too complex for us to fully comprehend, let alone death.
    In fact, humanity had gone backwards in its ability to deal with death. Once death was carried around as a constant companion, a silent shadow that might at any moment choose to speak. People died so much younger, and so much more frequently. In childbirth, as infants, of untamed diseases, of harsh environments. There was no choice but to live with the shadow, acknowledge it, and from that had grown death’s opposite: stories of heroism and transcendence, of Valhalla and Paradise and the Elysian Fields, of beauty so strong it diminished one’s inevitable fate. From the acknowledged shadow had come the once-and-yet-to-be Arthur asleep in Avalon, had come Apollo blinding in his beauty, had come the Queen of Air and Darkness. Illusions, and yet more than illusions.
    It hurt to move. Luke did so slowly, gathering only what was necessary: a warm jacket, strong boots. In the hotel lobby, a mastiff eyed him. He ignored it and went out into the street. The night was clear and moonless, the stars dimmed by the lights of the city. He caught a robo-taxi and it took him to the transition dorm.
    Only on the way did he realize it was Saturday night. Onto the streets near the hotel, outwayers spilled out of the bars, into the bars. They called to each other raucously, young people who lived with hardship but not usually, thanks to modern technology, with death. In the bright holos of Christmas Landing, under the dim stars, there were no shadows. Even the northern auroras seemed faint.
    It was quieter close to the transition dorm, located near the city perimeter to make outgoing expeditions more efficient. Most of the transients were partying in the quarter he had just left. Luke made his slow way through the lobby, then up in the elevator to the room listed for A. Halford.
    “Yes?” Anne’s wary response through the closed door. Ready to be angry, but with another note