The Curiosity Killers Read Online Free PDF

swung open and both men hurried inside.
    Claudio busied himself with the explosives, using the clay adhesive to stick them to the beam Ambrose’s blueprints indicated, but a low whistle from across the room distracted him.
    “Lord almighty, but this is a thing o’ beauty, Mister Florence, sir.”
    Claudio turned to see Ambrose standing in awe, staring at a contraption that seemed to Claudio nothing more than a meaningless set of connected bars, metal plates, and satellite dishes. “Boy, get over here. Help me set the timer,” Claudio stage-whispered. “Quit gawking at things you don’t understand and do something productive.”
    “Oh, but I do understand it, sir.” Ambrose whirled around, a shit-eating grin plastered across his rubbery cheeks. “Do you know what this fellow’s done?”
    Claudio’s eyes fluttered shut. “Do I care?”
    “ You ought to. And we oughtn’t explode this place ’fore he finishes.” Ambrose turned back to the contraption and withdrew his mobile phone. He snapped pictures of the thing. “Since it’s dead easy breakin’ in ’ere, we could come back, steal all his research, and use the tech ourselves.” Ambrose paused between photographs to pull a crumpled sheet of paper from his pocket, on which he scribbled hasty notes.
    Claudio strode over to the young man. “Why would we care about doing that? This technology is tainted. It’s theirs . They don’t invent important things. They don’t let us use what they design, just as we don’t let them use what we design.”
    Ambrose looked at Claudio. “We design things?”
    Claudio felt his face grow hot. “We hire people who can. And even though we don’t now , we could.” He stamped his foot. “We hamper the NBE’s ability to use existing technology. We stop their trade routes. We intercept their packages. We—”
    “We need to pay attention to this one,” Ambrose interrupted. He narrowed his eyes, and his upper lip quivered. “Sir, I’m sorry, but God’s honest truth, this bloke is on the verge o’ sussin’ out one of the most impenetrable mysteries o’ science, and I don’t feature you stoppin’ me from studyin’ it.”
    Claudio blinked, feeling as if he’d been slapped.
    “Don’t care if I work for you,” Ambrose went on, his voice rising in his excitement. “I’m a bloody physicist, not your errand boy, and I’ll thank you to start listenin’ to things I tell you.”
    Friday, July 4, 2070, Flussville, South Carolina, Rénartian Alliance of America (RAA)
    To Ambrose Richards, the machine—stolen though its conception may have been—was his crowning glory, proof of all his years of studying physics. Claudio may have thought him a simple man with simple tastes and affectations, but that was mostly due to his intense focus on those things that mattered to him: the space-time continuum and creating political anarchy. If he could use one to help the other, well then, that was a bright-blessed thing, wasn’t it?
    He spent weeks breaking into the lab at night, studying the changes Vere brought to the machine, poring over his notes, and replicating the clockworks and steam valves back at his own lab on the Rénartian border. The travel was a grind, the places he had to secret himself in between jaunts were filthy backwaters and roach-infested flops, but Ambrose presented his achievement to Claudio at last, his dingy teeth flashing in a giddy grin.
    “But why the hell should I even bother?” Claudio droned as he walked around the machine in lazy half-circles. “I care about now. I care about the future.”
    “Right you are, sir, but just imagine for half a mo’. What if you could fix up the present into the future by futzing about with the past ?” Ambrose asked.
    Claudio pursed his lips and tapped a scrawny index finger against them. “Get what I want now by…” He waved his free hand in the air in the vague manner of a magician aiming at misdirection. “Accelerating some attitudes, as it