The Machine's Child Read Online Free PDF Page B

he scarcely noticed, habituated to gales as he was. He merely felt with his toes for a floor-batten to brace himself against the roll of the ship. He did it purely out of habit, since Nicholas, in control of his body, was the only one actually experiencing any pitching just now.
    Edward sat across from them, drumming his fingers on the table.
    He didn’t particularly care for Alec, and he thoroughly despised Nicholas, but he found himself wishing that one of them would leave off reading so he’d have someone with whom he might talk. He would very much have preferred to have been talking to Mendoza, and only the thought that he might do so in the near future enabled him to tolerate the other two men.
    The storm made him uneasy, too; long-dormant instincts were insisting that there ought to be someone somewhere howling orders to take in sail, or bare feet pounding on the deck above his head, or an occasional freezing slop of white water flying down the companionway. And he ought to be anywhere but sitting still in this warm, dry, curiously scentless place doing
nothing.
    But after all, by the terms of the mutual agreement the three of them had worked out, it was Nicholas’s turn to use Alec’s body. Nicholas wanted to read the bloody Bible, and until his turn was up, there was nothing to do but sit here and watch Alec’s lips move as he tried to read it, too. It was at least amusing to imagine what Alec was making of it.
    Edward reached out experimentally and attempted to stop the swinging of the lamp on its gimbal. No use; it moved right through his virtual hand, a sensation—or lack thereof—he found unsettling. He tried harder. Nicholas moved his left arm involuntarily, and looked over at him with a frown.
    “Sorry,” he muttered.
    Commander Bell-Fairfax, sir? I wonder if I might have a word with you now.
    Edward started. The other two failed to notice. The voice had come from inside his head, instead of out of the ship’s intercom system.
    Well, yes, sir, seeing as how our Alec’s able to hear me this way—no reason why you can’t, too.
    Edward’s eyes narrowed. He watched the hanging lamp swing from its gimbal.
    And did I mention you can talk to me the same way, sir? No reason to disturb the other gentlemen with our little chat, is there, lad?
    I’m not your lad, Machine.
    Why, to be sure, sir, I’d forgot. Sorry about that, sir, it won’t happen again. But I thought you might be interested to know, sir, that I’ve got a location on Options Research at last.
    Well, bravo! How soon can we get there?
    Oh, more or less instantaneously. The generators is all charged up now. It’s what we’ll find, once we gets there, that’s got me looking out for squalls.
    Spare me the picturesque seaman’s lingo, if you please. I had my fill of that in the Royal Navy.
    So you had, sir, and how careless of me to forget. Must be a lot of painful memories there, what with you being court-martialed, I reckon. It’s just my natural admiration for anybody what was able to run afoul of Article Twenty-Two without getting hisself hanged at the yardarm. I do humbly beg yer pardon. But you see, Commander Bell-Fairfax, sir, if my information’s correct it’s going to be easier to get into Options Research than to get out of it again, if you take my meaning.
    Guarded, is it?
    I reckon you’d say so, sir, aye.
    I’d have expected that of a prison.
    It . . . ain’t exactly a prison, sir. It’s designated as a medical facility.
    A hospital, you mean?
    No, sir, I don’t, unless there be hospitals where folk go to get sick, instead of well. It’s a laboratory for experiments, d’ye see?
    Good God.
    Not a pretty thought to contemplate, sir, no, and it’s my good fortune yer a tough-minded bastard like me, because I don’t know how I’d ever break this to my little Alec. This place’ll make Cawnpore Well look like a church picnic.
    The Captain watched admiringly as Edward controlled his panic and replied:
    Don’t talk rot.