Recursion Read Online Free PDF Page B

just so your competitors didn’t try and muscle in on your plans.”
    “Why should we do that? The dam is a nonprofit-making project.”
    Eva grinned at him.
    “…and we don’t have any stealth planes, anyway,” he added smoothly.
    “Too slow.” She laughed and raised her arms to acknowledge imaginary applause. “Thank you! Thank you, people. I was right and DeForest was wrong!”
    “No, you weren’t.” DeForest grinned and pinched her backside.
    “OW!!!” squealed Eva, pinching him back. They began to pinch at each other some more and then to kiss and then…
    And then, later on, DeForest had flown back to his other home and had never contacted Eva again. When she attempted to reach him, her calls were intercepted by the company. First she was told that he had been relocated to Korea, then that his wife had had a baby and he had decided to concentrate on his real family. Finally she had been told to stop contacting the company, and a block had been placed on her comm lines.
    Eva reached the hawthorn tree. Crataegus monogyna . The Latin name rose in her mind unbidden, and she wondered where she had once read it. The hawthorn was one of the trees that lined the road on both sides, its brown trunk twisted out of a dusty grey square of earth and gravel at the edge of the pavement. Its roots had forced up the old paving slabs bordering it to form a mound. She walked around the tree to see three feathered darts stuck in its trunk. She pulled them out and looked around. A fourth dart was buried in a nearby gate; she pulled that out too. Eva felt as if the two rows of terraced houses that bordered the road were watching her with their blank windows. Her phone vibrated and she jumped.
    “What is it?” she said.
    “There are two more darts. Can you see them?”
    “No. Where should I be looking?”
    “Try behind the wall next to the gate that had the dart stuck in it.”
    “What if I’m seen?”
    “Don’t worry. We’re distracting people in the immediate vicinity. Phone calls, overheating frying pans, malfunctioning electrical appliances…They’ll all be looking the other way.”
    Eva sucked at her bottom lip nervously. She glanced up and down the street and then pushed open the gate. There was a narrow gap between the wall and the bay-fronted house, mainly filled with old gravel and weeds. A tortoiseshell cat slept in a corner, partially sheltered behind a stack of window glass that leaned against the wall. Eva saw one of the darts straight away, lying at the foot of the rain-streaked panes. She picked it up and looked frantically around. The last dart could be hidden anywhere in the weeds that sprang from the old gravel. She needed to find it quickly: she had a train to miss.
    She glanced around the empty street again. Cracked red bricks and grey pebbledash, blind windows reflecting the April sky. Nobody was coming, but she still felt incredibly exposed. She bent down and began to run her hands through the weeds, parting the stalks to search the gravel beneath. Nothing.
    She paused, her arms folded tight against her chest. Her phone vibrated again.
    “Hurry up. We can’t keep this street clear forever.”
    “I’m looking,” Eva snapped. “Are you sure the last dart didn’t get stuck higher in the tree?”
    “Positive. We’re detecting its signature at ground level. About half a meter from your left foot.”
    Eva looked around again and realization dawned. The cat behind the glass wasn’t asleep: it was dead.
    “It’s in the cat,” she said.
    “Where?”
    “I don’t know. I’m not looking. Get someone else to do your dirty work.”
    There was a moment’s pause and then the voice spoke again.
    “Fine, fine. Get out of there quickly. Your payment will be reduced to four hundred credits. Go to Mehta’s Information Shop.”
    “I’m going.”
    Eva pushed her way through the gate and walked quickly down the street. Across the road a curtain twitched and, out of the corner of her eye, Eva caught