On a Clear Day Read Online Free PDF

tablet and watched the morning news. A man went berserk in Iowa. The New Jersey Devils won a hockey game in overtime. A starlet claimed to be pregnant by a man she had never met. Sweet.
    Ten minutes to nine. There was a knock on the door, and when I answered it, I saw Javier in his wheelchair. He was going to show me to the room.
    In the conference room. There were several young people sitting around a long table, some talking to each other, none of them looking my way for the moment. It was a micro version of Leonardo da Vinci’s
Last Supper
. Michaelwasn’t there. I didn’t want to look at the others, and so I drew triangles on the blank yellow pad on the table in front of me. The quietness of the group freaked me out. I wasn’t liking this.
    After a long while, maybe ten minutes in which nobody said a word to me, the door opened and Michael came in. He was dressed all in black. Tight pants, tight jacket, a pale-blue shirt that might have been silk, silver bangles. He was taller than I’d thought he was. Maybe six feet, maybe an inch or so more. Nice package.
    “Some of you have already met,” he said. “Others haven’t. Let’s go around the table and give our names. Then I’ll do a short talk and we can go from there. Nobody has to do anything, even give your name. Everything is voluntary here. I hope we can pull off something good. I’m Michael Gullickson.”
    “Javier Gregory.” Javier lifted a pale white hand in greeting.
    “Tristan Braun.” White; low guttural voice.
    “Anja Marlena!” Round face, friendly.
    “Drego Small.” Black. Street.
    “Mei-Mei. Mei-Mei Lum.” She looked like a porcelain doll.
    “Dahlia Grillo,” I said, surprised at how loud my voice came out.
    “As I’ve said before, we all know what is going on in the world.” Michael sat as he spoke. “The C-8 companies are capturing, or at least controlling, all the major resources. In effect, they control everything we do, everything we eat, every place we go. Nobody thinks it’s good.Nobody thinks it’s fair, nobody thinks it’s going to get better.
    “There are small groups all over the world willing to try to bring back a sense of normalcy to life. In Russia they call themselves the October Crew—something like that; in France they call themselves the Musketeers. In Britain it’s the Eton Group, and they’re the ones who are calling the conference in London to see what can be done to change things. I want to put together a group of people—you’re sitting around the table now—that I think about—vaguely—as the Resistance.
    “I don’t know if we’ll make a difference. But I know somebody has to try. So what I want to do is to go to London and listen in on the conference the Brits are having and see if we fit into their plans to resist C-8, and if we can make a plan to help our own cause. I think we should go and listen to the Brits, and then determine what we want to do.”
    “Working with the British group?” the black guy asked.
    “Or without them,” Michael said.
    “We have our own problems to deal with.” The white guy with the deep voice. “Why are we checking out Europe?”
    “We’re dealing with a number of factions with their own interests and problems,” Michael said, “including C-8. The way I see it, they can all be against us or we can hook up with other groups when we think that’ll work. We gotta play it by ear until we figure out our best moves.”
    “So when are we going to England?” Tristan.
    “Tomorrow night,” Javier said. “And there’s anotherthing. The C-8 group thinks of itself as neutral, not hostile. But that doesn’t stop them from buying information, and it doesn’t stop anybody from trying to get information to sell them. So we can expect spies in London. We can expect to be watched.”
    “I can’t see any physical danger,” Michael said. “They’ll just be nosing around. Trying to figure out what we’re up to.”
    “They won’t get much if we don’t know