The Heretic Read Online Free PDF

sound like you agree with him! Raj practically shouted in Abel’s still spinning mind. Have we not seen this before? Have we not seen where it leads?
    Merely tactical, not strategic, Center replied without missing a beat. There is an enormous error at the heart of Zentrum’s calculations. Stasis is error.
    Abel pulled himself upright. He started to back away, to back out of the room, but something stopped him. He had another question. More to learn. Even after all this, after seeing the crazy-eyed man and his ripped apart back, Abel still felt—
    Curious.
    “H-how?” he said aloud.
    How what? said Raj brusquely.
    Abel experimented with keeping his thoughts to himself.
    Ask. Ask the question. Just because you want to know. Maybe they had heard. Were these his own thoughts, or Center’s, somehow beaten into his mind?
    No. No, they weren’t.
    Mamma liked it when I was curious. Mamma liked it that I wanted to know everything.
    “How is Stasis wrong?” Abel asked.
    For many reasons. On a mere physical level, consider: Duisberg has three moons. The gravitational tides created by their interactions have created an enormous debris field in a nearby orbit. The very rotation of the planet, opposite that of the rotational momentum of the system as a whole, speaks to this fact, as well. There have been cataclysmic strikes in the past, and a future meteor strike is a virtual certainty, geologically speaking.
    Each unfamiliar word lit up with a definition as Center spoke it. Didn’t help. This was the way all adults were, explaining things that had no earthly use right now.
    So what?
    I don’t understand your response.
    I said , so what?
    Rephrase, please.
    Am I going to get hit by a giant rock from space?
    Unlikely that you yourself will be hit.
    Is my father?
    Again, unlikely.
    You’re stupid, then. And I don’t care.
    Human cognitive integration error. Due to your limited experience, you will require time to process.
    Raj laughed heartily. It was not a pleasant laugh, either.
    There’s no error. He may be six, but he gets it well enough, don’t you, lad? Your mother—there’s the key. Was she not going to always be there for you? Where is she, Abel?
    Mamma.
    Not fair.
    It was one thing to fight, even to get beaten up. He was tough, and, even if he cried, he knew he didn’t really care. But to have a presence in your head that knew the places that really hurt—that wasn’t shy about touching those places if it served a purpose…
    Mamma. Sunken eyes. Gurgling breath that smelled like pus. Face twisted in pain at something inside that was eating her, killing her.
    That did kill her.
    It had only been a toothache.
    Only a stupid toothache the week before. And then she left me.
    Lad, I’m sorry.
    “Not fair,” he whispered. “It was just a bad tooth. She had it out. That was supposed to cure her.”
    Bacterial sepsis, no doubt.
    I know it’s not fair, lad. It’s not. But there’s your answer. Nothing stays the same.
    Zentrum has fallen into a logical trap of his own creation.
    “Not. Fair.”
    Something heavy in his hands. Abel glanced down. It was the rock, the door stop. He was still clutching it. He’d been clutching it all along.
    See there in the corner? See the cone-shaped thing?
    Abel looked around. He had to step past the upturned flyer to see what Raj was talking about. It was indeed a cone shape, white with black markings upon it, as if it had survived a terrible fire.
    “I see it,” Abel said. “What is it?”
    Another laugh, this one not so unsettling.
    Why, it’s the spaceship we came in, lad, Center and me.
    And Abel understood—because he was made to understand. The capsule speeding through hyperspace in a tunnel of stars, their light extended into lines about the spaceship. This capsule. Hundreds of others on their way to different worlds, other fallen human worlds.
    Like puffer-rod seeds, when you blew them, flying every which direction.
    “I don’t get it,” Abel said. “I mean, I know