Nawashi Read Online Free PDF

to be quelled and eliminated wherever
possible. They are not nice people. In fact, they are ugly in so
many ways… ” His voice trailed off, and he looked sadly at the
floor, seeming lost in some internal memories.
    Brian tried to simply wait
patiently, but as the silence grew longer, the need to break it
with some bit of humor, some lighthearted remark
( Well, I’ll bite… How ugly ARE
they? ) grew within him. Finally his mouth
opened, but Sullivan’s head snapped up and the eyes that drilled
into him were glistening with tears. Suddenly Brian was very glad
he’d held his tongue.
    “ Look, bucko, I don’t have
time—we don’t have time—to turn this into a metaphysical
discussion. So I’ll give you the cliff’s notes. Those that have
have been controlling the have-nots for a helluva long time, ever
since the men—and some women, chauvinism is not biological—threw
Astarte out of her own temple. They figured out that a population
ignorant about its own sexuality would be easy to scare, easy to
corrupt with promises of forbidden pleasure, and best of all would
continue to procreate and replenish the work force with wild
abandon, reinforcing the cycle and keeping things in their
place.”
Brian nodded. “Sure, I’ve read that sort of
economic theory before. What does that have to do with this… power
thing?”
Sullivan groaned. “Oh, you poor babe in the
woods. It’s not about economics, it’s about Power. The Power you
and Vash were fooling about with. The ‘pressors don’t want anyone
mucking about with it except them, and they use it with great
success to keep themselves in control of things.”
    “’ Pressers?”
Sulllivan looked startled at the question.
“Eh? Oh. ‘Pressors, with an oh-are. Repressors. As in those who
repress. Those who work to keep you ‘ignant’, as Dear Saint Cho
would say. But again, I’m digressing, and it’s going to get you
killed and me annoyed. So listen.”
    “ They, like me, will have
seen your firestorm of power tonight. And make no mistake, boy, you
are one helluva Mage to have been able to wrest that kind of juice
from Vash. Pun intended. Problem is, you’ve got the power of a
nuclear plant combined with the training and self-control of a
rabid jackrabbit, which gives you the life expectancy of a horny
mayfly in an electrical plant. They won’t know where.you are yet,
since I got to you pretty quickly… but they’ll be a-huntin’ now,
for sure.”
    “ Hunting?” Brian was
having no trouble understanding the words, it was the concept that
gave him trouble. Sure, things were swinging a bit to the
conservative side right now, but this talk about hunting and vast
conspiracies was a little hard for him to accept. It’s one thing to
be a fan of fantasy, he’d been reading this kind of stuff forever.
But trying to actually work it into reality…
Then he saw them.
    Walking past the front
window of the coffee shop, he saw two young men, looking like
Mormon missionaries. In fact… he squinted, and saw that they had
the typical rectangular black nametags. They were Mormons.
    But something about them
looked different. These two didn’t have the gawky awkwardness that
Brian associated with the eighteen year old proselytizers he’d
known growing up. These two moved with sure athletic smoothness,
their eyes alert as one peered into the coffeeshop, the other with
his back to the window, taking in the street. Covering all avenues of attack, Brian realized. Or
flight. . Their haircuts went beyond Beaver
Cleaver conservatism and into the shaved precision of the military.
In fact, they reminded Brian disconcertingly of some Navy Seals
he’d worked with in his Marine days. Scary men.
    “ Yeah, I see them,”
Sullivan said quietly. Brian started and looked at the man
nonchalantly sipping his coffee. “They’re sniffing around. Don’t
worry about staring at them; this kind of place always has people
staring at anyone who looks as out of place as they do, and for