The Goliath Stone Read Online Free PDF

The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress ? Toby, are you guessing? Do you even know ?”
    “Some.”

 
    VI
What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?
—JOHN KEATS

 
JUNE 2052
    May stared as Toby dressed at high speed. “Where are you going?”
    “To my clinic. Both of us. We need to be scanned for nanos. Wyoming Knott, from The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress . ‘Wye Knott’? I think the crazy sonofabitch put a genetic cleanup nano into us. It was one of his ideas. Fix damaged DNA, make you young again, copy over bad genes with good ones from the other chromosome, except a Y chromosome would look like a really damaged X chromosome, so it turns it into an X. Not ‘Why not,’ Y ,” he drew the letter in the air, “ not . Without it everybody turns into a teenage girl!”
    “The messenger!”
    “Bingo!” He checked his bag.
    May had seldom dressed quickly after sex, and never after good sex. First time for everything.
    In the elevator, he said, “It can’t have kicked in yet. We’d be feverish, like a really bad flu.”
    “And I already had this year’s flu early. —Toby, is there a chance we’re overreacting?”
    “Yes. Want to go back to bed?”
    “No. —Well, eventually.” She smiled, but she was being brave.
    There were four men in anonymous gray suits getting out of cars as they came out the door. One said, “Tobias Glyer?”
    “Who are you?”
    The initial answer was the four men grabbing them both. “U.S. Marshals. We have a warrant for your extradition, Glyer,” the leader went on, flashing something that might have been a badge. He reached inside Toby’s jacket and pulled out a comfortably shabby billfold.
    It wasn’t Toby’s. He’d never seen it before.
    As the marshal went through it, he said, “Plane tickets to Ecuador? Making a run for it? Little late, aren’t you?” Neither Toby nor May spoke. They’d both grown up knowing the Stewart Lesson: Never speak to Feds about anything . “Quite a bankroll here— Aw, crap. Sorry, Doctor. We’re looking for a dangerous fugitive. Are you all right?” The one with Toby’s bag returned it.
    “I’ve been better,” May said.
    “I do apologize, ma’am. This is a desperate man we’re after. A companion might have been a hostage, or an accomplice.”
    “What’d he do?” Toby said, in character. Some character, anyway. He’d have felt better knowing who he was supposed to be.
    “Terrorist. Good evening.” The four went inside.
    Toby waited until they were in a cab before going through his pockets to find out who the hell he was now. “Passport says, ‘Bernard Fox, MD.’ She swapped the wallet. And my phone. I never even noticed.”
    “You might not have noticed a toe being amputated,” she observed.
    “Well—”
    “Where you headed?” said the driver. Cab drivers spoke English everywhere Toby had been except America.
    At this point they’d be insane to go to his clinic. Toby was looking at the plane tickets, and the documents clipped to them. “The Olympics.”
    “I only go as far as Bern-Belp. Licensing rules.”
    He was unprepared for the hysterical laughter his little joke got.
    *   *   *
    Neither of them expected paperwork trouble at the airport, in the circumstances, and they were right. Naturally May had her passport with her at all times. It was still the same one. Nobody was looking for October Kroft.
    Not yet, anyway.
    Their flight was in another two hours. They were brought to the VIP lounge, and taken from there to a private room that not just any common VIP was allowed into. “I wonder who Bernard Fox is supposed to be?” May said as the room’s servant departed, after fetching them slippers.
    “ I wonder why the Soylents are coming after me after waiting so long,” Toby said. He looked uneasily at the room’s screen. “If I ran an airport, I’d monitor that.”
    “Does the phone work?”
    “I’d also— Oh, the new one. Good idea.” He opened it. “No messages. Huh.”
    “He may think you figured it