The Einstein Intersection Read Online Free PDF

loose. The blade pulled free, my flute filled with his blood, and I hurled into the wall and rolled down.
    His right shoulder struck the right wall. He lurched. His left shoulder struck the left wall. And his shadow flickering on the dripping ceiling was huge.
    He came down towards me, as I dragged my knees over a lot of wrought stone, beneath me, rocked back to my feet (something was sprained too) and tried to look at him, while he kept going out between steps.
    Beside me in the wall was a grating about three feet high, with the bars set askew. It was probably a drain. I fell through. And dropped about four feet to a sloping floor.
    It was pitch-black above me and there was a hand grasping and grasping in the dark. I could hear it scrabbling against the wall. I took a swipe overhead, and my blade struck something moving.
    Roaaaaaa ...
    The sound was blunted behind stone. But from my side came the sharp retort of his palm as he started slapping.
    I dived forward. The slope increased, and suddenly I slid down a long way, very fast, getting even more scraped up. I came up sharply against pipes.
    Eyes closed, I lay there, the tip of the crossbow uncomfortable under my shoulder, the blade handle biting between the bars and my hip. Then the places that were uncomfortable got numb.
    If you really relax with your eyes closed, the lids pull slowly open. When I finally relaxed, light filled my eyes from the bottoms up like milk poured in bowls.
    Light? I blinked.
    Gray light beyond the grating, the gray that sunlight gets when it comes from around many corners. Only I was at least another two levels down. I lay behind the entrance to another drain like the one I had leaped through.
    Then somewhere, the roar of a bull, still echoing through these deep stones.
    I pulled myself up on the bars, elbows smarting, shoulders bruised, and something pulled sore in the bulk of my thigh. I gazed into the room below.
    At one time there was a floor level with the bottom of this grating, but most of it had fallen in a long and longer time ago. Now the room was double height and the grate was at least fifteen feet above the present floor.
    Seventy, eighty meters across, the room was round. The walls were dressed stone, or bare rock, and rose in gray towards the far light. There were many vaulted entrances into dark tunnels.
    In the center was a machine.
    While I watched it began to hum wistfully to itself and several banks of lights glittered into a pattern, froze, glittered into another. It was a computer from the old time (when you owned this Earth, you wraiths and memories), a few of which chuckled and chattered throughout the source-cave. I’d had them described to me, but this was the first I’d seen.
    What had wakened me-
    ( and had I been asleep? And had I dreamed, remembering now with the throbbing image clinging to the back of my eyes, Friza?)
    -was the wail of the beast.
    Head down, hide bristling over the hunks of his shoulders, gemmed with water from the ceiling, he hunched into the room, dragging the knuckles of one hand, the other- the one I had wounded twice-hugged to his belly.
    And on three legs, a four legged animal (even one with hands) limps.
    He blinked about the room, and wailed again, his voice leaving pathos quickly and striking against rage. He stopped the sound with a sniff, then looked around and knew that I was there.
    And I wanted very much not to be.
    I squatted now behind the grating and looked back and up and down and couldn’t see any way out. Hunt, Lo Hawk had said.
    The hunter can be a pretty pathetic creature.
    He swung his head again, tasting the air for me, his injured hand twitching high on his belly.
    (The hunted’s not so hot either.)
    The computer whistled a few notes of one of the ancient tunes, some chorus from Carmen. The bull-beast glanced at it uncomprehending.
    How was I to hunt him?
    I brought the crossbow down and aimed through the grate. It wouldn’t mean anything unless I got him in the eye. And