The City Who Fought Read Online Free PDF Page B

someone's been looking out for him . . . minimally."
    I don't think saying " You're cute when you're angry " would be a very good idea right now, Simeon thought. He froze her image and scanned it for temperature variations and pupil dilation. She was angry on behalf of an abandoned child rather than at him. Which makes a nice change.
    Besides, he could use an ally with this problem.
    "He calls himself Joat," Simeon confessed with a sigh. "I don't know how long he's been here. I discovered him by accident myself. He's mechanically brilliant. The area he's staked out as his own just stopped needing repairs. That's probably the only reason I investigated. I mean, there are enough squeaky wheels around here. Why take notice of one that's quiet? Then I noticed that the last repair made in that section was two years ago. I got curious about nothing ever going wrong. So I went on a prowl, using mobile bugs, and kept, well, softpersons refer to it as seeing things out of the corner of their eyes. I always thought that had something to do with blinking, you know, eyelashes getting in your line of sight or something. But I kept seeing these flickers of movement and I don't blink. By turning up my sound reception I could sometimes hear little scrapes and movement, but there was a sort of 'white noise'
    masking it. It seemed unlikely that everything else in the area was running perfectly with the exception of my sensors, so I decided to do a stakeout. Eventually, he got careless and wandered into my line of sight.
    The first time I spoke to him, blip, he disappeared. It was a long time before I could get him to talk to me. You'll note I said talk, not trust. He's incredibly wary. I can't believe he was clumsy enough to let you see him."
    "Two years ?"
    Leave it to you, you bitchoid, to pick out the pertinent information. "I said the last logged repair was two years ago. It's been known to happen. What can I say? Somewhere from two years to two months, who knows?"
    "Who is he, Simeon?"
    "His story is that he ran away from a tramp freighter. Joat told me that the captain won him from his uncle in a card game. I know, I know, that sort of thing's illegal, but it does happen out here in the boonies. The tramp left abruptly and went somewhere not listed. Joat has never had it soft, but apparently, the captain he ran from was of a different order of brutality altogether."
    Channa wrinkled her nose. "Sounds like something out of Dickens."
    "Yeah, well, the more things change . . ." and he left the sentence dangling. "What are you going to do?"
    he asked warily. After his first, disastrously wrong, impression, Channa hadn't struck him as a bleeding heart. Would she suggest flooding the compartment to flush the poor kid out?
    "We've got to get him out of there. We can't leave a little boy in a dangerous and restricted area. It's illegal at best and irresponsible by any standard."
    "He's been badly hurt and frightened, Channa. He doesn't want to be with people. The little guy can barely tolerate me. He likes machinery better than people, and I qualify as a borderline case. Besides, even I can't find him if he really doesn't want to be found. Maybe we should leave him alone for the time being. He's where he wants to be."
    Channa looked up with her jaw set. "Simeon, no child wants to be alone in the dark and the cold of a power room, or wherever he's lodged himself. He needs and deserves to be taken care of! It's his right."
    "I agree in principle, but I think he needs more time. I'll take the responsibility."
    "What does that mean?"
    "I'll take full and complete responsibility for what happens to him."
    Channa brightened. "Really?"
    "Yeah, really."
    "Okay," she said, "I'll call up some information on adoption procedures and we can get doings underway."
    "What?" I'm always screaming what? at this woman. I'm beginning to feel like a demented parrot.
    "Well, what else did you mean when you said you would accept responsibility?"
    "That, if anything goes