The Reaper Plague Read Online Free PDF Page B

fingers furled to
fists. “I’m…” Taking a deep breath, he said, “I’m sorry. I think…I
think both my mind and body wanted you, but I just don’t know why.”
Plaintive. “This really isn’t like me.” Skull looked down at his
right hand, opening and closing it convulsively. “I have no problem
killing those that need killing, but I feel…” Refused to articulate
the rest: ashamed .
    Raphaela laughed, ironic. “Very selective,
your conscience.”
    “ Stop that!”
    “ What?”
    “ Stabbing me when I try to
say something real!” He felt cracks creeping through his emotional
walls.
    She stared at him incredulously. “What kind
of conversation do you think this is? Is this a date ? Did we
just have make-up sex in the wrong order, so the fight is now?”
    Skull glared at her. “I think you’re just
feeling guilty and angry it happened and you want to blame me for
it. Women never want to take responsibility for doing something
improper. They want the man to do it so they’re free of guilt. Ooh,
mom, he made me do it!”
    “ Wow, that’s some
projection you got going. I do want to blame you for it
because you’re to blame ! You kidnapped me from the lab at
gunpoint and forced me to pilot this ship off into space and then
you took – we had – whatever you call it, what we did, and how can
I help but be angry at you! And I feel guilty, yes, because I
wasn’t strong enough to say no!”
    Skull sat back, grasping the arms of the seat
in frustration. “You’re right. You are human. No alien would
be so damned…female!” He thrust upright, seizing his rifle and
stalked into the bedroom, throwing himself onto the bed-dais.
    Rolling over, he stared at the ceiling. What the hell is going on? Who the hell am I? This isn’t me.
Something is happening that’s messing with my head. Is it the nano?
Is this what it did to JT? And the others, Section Three that
suicided, I just figured they got too froggy and high on their
abilities. But Huff, all that stuff I could hear him saying over
the link, crazy stuff, I just figured it was for effect, to keep
control of the situation, but maybe not.
    His thoughts ran around in his skull like
rats trying to chew their way out. Eventually he slept, fitful.
     
     

 
     
-7-

    Brigadier Nguyen composed himself, resisting
the urge to stroke his thin goatee, to check his neat short hair.
In a normal, or even an Eden, “composing himself” would be
idiomatic, metaphorical. With an aberration like him, it was more
literal. He consciously changed minds, wrapping himself in his
earlier, warmer, pre-Psycho persona. Method acting, some might have
called it, to put himself so deep into a role that he believed it,
became that person.
    He pushed a button on his intercom phone, an ancient piece of technology – at least twenty years of age.
Spooky liked antiques, liked to keep others off balance by using
unusual approaches and devices, liked to impress people. “Send them
in please,” he ordered courteously into the device.
    Politeness has no cost , he thought. Like Pascal’s wager, it is always win-win. For my enemies I keep
them quiescent, guessing, underestimating. For my friends – those
who believe themselves my friends, those who serve me unknowingly –
it maintains our relationships and their esteem. And for those who
are not yet either, it smoothes their path to join the ranks of my
loyal subordinates. Win-win. He laughed to himself at the play
on words. Nguyen-Nguyen. Only a speaker of Vietnamese could hear
the difference.
    His head of nanotech research, a distant
Nguyen cousin called Erik, led his two senior subordinates in to
stand in front of Spooky’s enormous polished wooden desk. He bowed,
and though not Asian, the other two also bowed with reasonably
practiced motions.
    With his cousin the bow was customary. The
other two had learned that it seemed to please the Brigadier, had
told themselves that they were culturally sensitive.
    To Brigadier Nguyen, it