Queen of Angels Read Online Free PDF Page B

up. Each cube projected a tiny label in cold green into her eyes. The Progress of Moses, The Way of the New, Debit/Asset, the cubes informed her artlessly not concerned with who she might be. Doubtless Goldsmiths works in solid state. Not a man to crypto his data his work. One work per cube was surprising for pure word; perhaps they were LitVid adaTh tations for the half literate. LitVid sales would explain Goldsmiths place high on the third foot. She had heard of Emanuel Goldsmith before this case. An occasional guest on the allnight cable talkers celebrated more for his youthful output. Not currently productive. Mary Choy planned to remain productive well past a century but she allowed as her plans might be young and naive. A pd could not rest on laurels. Salary not royalties. There were real books on his shelves. She did not pull them down but with an uninformed eye guessed their age at eighty to a hundred years. Expensive, a luxury both in money and space for this information dense age. The World Reserve Library could be stacked in space held by Goldsmiths fifty or sixty paper volumes. What she specked was unorganized uncontemporary inefficient, what one might presume of a poet; but the scatter of cubes on desktop and floor pointed to a greater disorganization, a careless personal moonstrike. A closure. She held up her slate to read the inprog. Sloughed cell and fiber analysis and assay of the office area showed no entry but for Goldsmith. Whatever socials he had conducted, none had entered this sanctum. Goldsmiths frame of mind had been disturbed before the murders, she posited. He had not entered his office after the murders. Another possibility as yet not eliminated by the total radio assay: that Goldsmith did not occupy the apartment during the murders. Unlikely. Reaching out she shifted a skewed half inch pile of paper and saw an airline confirmation billet and a document of different color beneath. She picked out the billet. A roundtrip to Hispaniola dated two days beforethe day after the murder. Had the ticket been used? She marked a memo on her slate to check the airline: NordAmericAir. The other document was a letter real paper again beige stock gold stamping; stationery of the rich and eccentric as atavistic as real books. Marys eyes widened reading the engraved head and the signature. Colonel Sir John Yardley. Authentic? The inprog reported nothing. The papers had been disturbed only for chemical and bio clues; it was her task to make a context beyond that. She lifted the letter, three gloved fingers on each hand vising perpendicular the opposite edges of the stiff thick sheet. She read it up close. Typed on an oldfashioned electric impact printer perhaps even a typewriter. Dated and stamped Hispaniola, Yardleys name for his conquest, formerly Dominican Republic and Haiti. Dear Goldsmith, 28 November 2047 Whatever the circumntanoes, we will be most pleased to receive you. Ermiono charmed. Its rare to meet unbypoorittcaa agreement now. I particularly enjoyed our letters In book form and Moses and appreciate your signature dedicatory. I can only hope what we do here helps this old world lift itself by its bootstraps into sanity. Yours, as ever, Colonel Sir John Yardley Hispaniola Mary replaced the letter carefully as if it were a snake.
    I do not aspire. I be.
    7
    Martin hadnt eaten so well in six weeks, when he had seen the end of his savings. He refused to go on shade dole; his application for Municipal Assistance had not been processed perhaps because of official disfavor or ineptitude; civil service was the last well-paid refuge for the untherapied. Now in a cool dark booth with crushed velvet upholstery, holding a reservation card in one hand and a whiskey sour in the other, he felt less disdainful of civilization, closer to the human race. A note on the back of the card said, Go ahead and eat. Well be half an hour late. Regrets. Lascal. They were precisely half an hour late. Martin had no doubt he was seeing