Steel Sky Read Online Free PDF Page B

the back of Edward’s hand. Edward feels a tingle travel through his body. As if watching from a distance, he sees his arm fall to his side, numb and lifeless. The Deathsman’s free hand lunges out, cold fingertips gripping Edward around the temples.
    Edward’s jaw drops. His eyes unfocus. The Deathsman be-comes two figures watching him impassively. The room rolls drunkenly as Edward’s knees buckle. Though he cannot feel it, he knows he must be falling. The room seems to bounce on his way down, and he realizes he has hit his head on something hard. Straining his faculties, he is aware of a sensation somewhere around him. It may or may not be pain. He cannot remember what it is like to feel things.
    His vision goes next. The green linoleum floor, tilted like a wall, shrinks to a bright pinprick as if the universe is traveling away from him at an astonishing rate of speed. His breath leaks from his lungs. A brief surge of fear for what must follow washes over him before he finally loses consciousness and the darkness envelops him.
     
    ALMOST ZERO
    “. . . but first I have to cross half that distance, right? And then I have to cross half the distance that’s left. And then I still have to cross half the distance that’s left. And so on and so on. No matter how far I go, I still have half the distance left to cross. And so I have proved that motion is impossible.”
    Orel Fortigan smiles. Bernie is always coming up with brainteasers like this. Maybe since they replaced his right frontal lobe with microchips, he feels a need to show what he can do with all that computing power.
    They stand close together at the bottom of a narrow shaft. Despite the chill, the concrete walls drip with condensation. A single globe on the wall provides the only illumination. The air vibrates from the roar of pressure outside.
    Bernie closes the access panel. His jumpsuit whispers around his gaunt body as he stands. He wipes his hands with a rag from his back pocket. “Well, am I right or am I wrong?” he asks. Bernie doesn’t open his mouth much when he speaks. The artificial voicebox they gave him when the cancer took his real one does all the work for him. Besides, if he opens his mouth too wide, you can see the inside of his face between his cheek and his carbon steel jaw.
    Orel doesn’t mind. He’s no joy to look at himself. He is overweight and suffers from cloracne, an immune disorder that has turned large portions of his face and upper torso into a mass of pustules and raw flesh. He wears a red scarf around his neck and chin to cover the worst of it. “I’m thinking,” he says.
    “Let’s do our job while you’re thinking. You said there was a problem in Gimmel Eight?”
    Orel pulls his tengig out of his pocket. He presses a button and looks at the screen. “Power outage,” he says.
    They climb the ancient rusting ladder and step into the deafening rumble of the main sluice tunnel. Beneath their feet thousands of cubic meters of water thunder by, raising a mist that beads on their jumpsuits. The rough concrete abutment that they have just exited is one of seven that part the river along the walkway. Under metal covers on each one are control panels containing the manual override controls for the locks. Here the water is diverted to the turbines, the sewers, and Hydroponics.
    When they reach the other side, Orel activates a thick metal door. It slides open slowly with a deep and drawn-out groan. These doors are designed to hold back all the waters of the sluice tunnel in case they should overflow. Three years ago, when the Levellers threatened to jam the gates shut, flooding the entire subsystem, Orel was standing behind one of these doors. His job was to do whatever was necessary to keep the door shut. He spent a long time alone in the dark that day, sweating despite the dank cold. Fortunately, the terrorists had been intercepted. Their threat was never carried out. When the other workers came and told him he was safe, he