The Last Page Read Online Free PDF Page B

clurichaun as it took two clicking steps and dispatched a black crawling shape with its tiny metal claw.
    “I’ve got two more years,” Caliph mentioned. “I suppose you’re going to start forgetting me tomorrow.”
    “Are you telling me what you want me to do?” She kept her smile lighthearted.
    “Maybe. Maybe I don’t want to think about you after you’re gone.”
    She laughed and looked into the rafters. She knew what he really meant—that the loneliness would be painful for him despite his best effort to keep these intimacies cordoned off.
    The attic was so old it could not keep all the wind out and low oscillating moans gave voice to drafts with origins impossible to trace.
    The clurichaun was stomping around, as much as a one-pound mechanism could stomp, casting weird blue halos from its power source. The light disturbed other creatures and somewhere below the rafters came the soft rustle of leathery shapes and the faint chitter of obscure winged things that posed no threat to humans or machines.
    “I don’t think you’ll be able to help it,” Sena said.
    “Sometimes . . .” Caliph paused. “I think you love me.”
    “It’s only two years.” She curled into him, pressing for warmth as the air chilled her back. “I’ll visit you, or you can visit me after you get your degree.”
    “Sounds too . . .”
    “Trust me,” she whispered. “You make truth, and I’m making it so.”
    Caliph sighed. “Eight years. Nothing seems simple anymore—”
    A spring moon glowed in the transom they had cleaned. Sky the color of exotic olives moiled Naobi’s halo while fragile whiplike branches scraped the glass. Wind coming under the shingles made the attic sound too familiar. The smell, the darkness, the soft sounds; these secret nights in the guano-besmirched loft had become part of them. Tomorrow everything would change.
    “Listen, Caliph. I’m going south. I’m headed for trouble.” She grinned and slid her finger over his mouth. “I’m looking for something special. Something Professor Gullows managed to leave out of his lessons.”
    Caliph turned his head. “What is it?”
    “It’s a book,” she whispered. “Every holomorph in the Hinterlands would die to get their hands on it . . . if they knew about it.”
    “Sounds like something made up.”
    “It’s real. I’m going to find it.”
    Caliph sat up. “Then it’s a sure candidate for the printing press—”
    “Listen, you fool. Stop joking. I need you. You have to find me after you graduate. It’s important. I love you Caliph.”
    His eyes narrowed. She had never said it before.
    “You love me?”
    She smiled and leaned in to kiss him.
    Caliph stopped her.
    “There’s something you’re not telling me.”
    “So single-minded—” She tousled his hair. “I love that about you.”She bent forward, plucked at his mouth with her lips; moved her leg slowly over his waist and brushed her warmth against him.
    “What aren’t you telling me?” He pushed her gently away.
    “Nothing,” she whispered. “But I’ll tell you this . . . I know a secret about you . . . something nobody else at Desdae knows.” She made the southern hand sign for yes. “You’re Hjolk-trull. Like me.”
    Caliph frowned. “What? What does that matter? How . . .” He raised his hand.
    “I’ve fallen in love with you,” she whispered. “You know I mean it. I wouldn’t have dragged you up here so often if it weren’t true. Think, Caliph. You and I—we don’t even belong to a country. We belong to the stars. We can make things right . . .”
    “Right? The only thing wrong is you just brought up—” He stopped, sighed. “I don’t belong to the stars.”
    Sena tried to regroup. “Caliph, I didn’t mean . . . look-abrupt, tomorrow I’m gone . . . don’t . . . you love me?”
    It was a mistake. She saw it in his eyes, black mirrors that reflected her lie.
He knows. He knows I wouldn’t have asked if it were true. Stupid.