Prisons Read Online Free PDF Page A

stands without moving as several other prisoners shout and come running toward him.
    * * *
    Inside her office, the Praesidentrix has chosen a honey-colored sky with a brilliant white sun overhead. She finds it soothing. For the first time in ages, she feels like smiling.
    The First Secretary stands at the doorway, interrupting her reverie. “You asked to see me, Madame?”
    She turns to him. For a moment he wears a fearful expression, as if he thinks she has caught him at something. She nods to make him feel at ease. “I’ve just received word from the Warden on Bastille. We have two gunships in orbit and all prisoners are now subdued. Amu and Theowane are both dead.”
    The First Secretary takes a step backward in astonishment. He looks for someplace to sit down, but the Praesidentrix has no other chairs in her office. “But how?” He raises his voice. “How!”
    “I placed an operative on Bastille. A. . .young man.”
    “An operative? But I thought Amu had equipment to detect any training alterations.”
    The Praesidentrix pulls her lips tight. “The young man’s father died from ubermindist withdrawal after the prison takeover. I believed he had sufficient motivation to kill Amu. He was free to act.”
    The First Secretary sputters and keeps looking for a place to sit. “But how did you know? What did you do?”
    “He acted as a catalyst to spur the Warden into taking a more drastic action than he was likely to take on his own, with nothing else at stake. Remember, we built the Warden’s Artificial Personality. I knew exactly how he would react to certain pressures.” She waves a hand, anxious to get rid of the First Secretary so she can use the subspace radio again. “I just thought you’d like to know. You’re dismissed.”
    He stumbles backward, unable to find words. He stops and turns back to the Praesidentrix, but she closes the door on him. The subspace projection chimes, announcing an incoming transmission. She sighs with a pride and contentedness she has not felt in quite some time. He has called her even before she could contact him.
    The Warden’s image appears in front of her like a painful memory. It is as she remembers her consort when he was a dashing and brave commander, streaking through hyperspace nodes and knitting the Federation together with his strength.
    The Warden is only a simulation, though, intangible and far away. But that would not be much different from their original romance, with her consort flitting off through the Galaxy for three-quarters of the year while she held the reins of government at home. She had rarely held him anyway; but they had spoken often through the private subspace link.
    They greet each other in the same breath and then the widowed Praesidentrix begins catching up on all the things she has wanted to say to him, repeating all the things she did tell him while he writhed in delirium from his withdrawal, while she had concocted a false story about his fatal “accident” in order to avert a scandal.
    But first she must say how proud she is of their son.

    The End

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

    Kevin J. Anderson is the author of nearly 100 novels, 48 of which have appeared on national or international bestseller lists; he has over 22 million books in print in thirty languages. He has won or been nominated for the Nebula Award, Bram Stoker Award, the SFX Reader’s Choice Award, and New York Times Notable Book.
    Anderson has co-authored eleven books in the D UNE saga with Brian Herbert. After writing ten D UNE -universe novels with Herbert, the coauthors created their own series, H ELLHOLE . Anderson’s popular epic SF series, T HE S AGA OF S EVEN S UNS , is his most ambitious work, and he is recently finished a sweeping fantasy trilogy, T ERRA I NCOGNITA , about sailing ships, sea monsters, and the crusades. As an innovative companion project to T ERRA I NCOGNITA , Anderson co-wrote (with wife Rebecca Moesta) the lyrics for two ambitious rock CDs based on the novels.