The Red Queen Read Online Free PDF

learn more about me. But what was the ‘God’ he referred to? If I was right that the Tumen were not the original inhabitants of Pellmar Quadrants – Jacob’s ‘shining people’ – they had obviously dwelt here long enough to learn how to use the Beforetimers’ machines. Why they would trouble to learn to use them to try to fulfil the instructions of a long-dead people I could not guess, but as far as my quest was concerned, it mattered not. Given my attendant’s talk of the need to stimulate my muscles, it seemed safe to assume I was soon to join my companions, which would have reassured me, except for the fact that the Tumen had spoken of specimens dying in Habitat.
    Needles began to prick the tender flesh on the underside of my arms and I gritted my teeth, telling myself grimly that pain was the price for restoring control over my body. Blinking tears away, I asked, ‘Do all . . . who go to Habitat die there?’
    ‘All specimens placed in Habitat remain there until death,’ answered the Tumen.
    This was an ambiguous answer. It meant either that Habitat was so inimical that people did not long survive there, or that anyone put there would remain captive until their natural death. Neither prospect appealed but it was the pleasant ruthlessness of the Tumen’s tone that chilled me more than the content of his words.
    Before Misfits joined with rebels to free the Land from the Herders and the Council, unTalented people had spoken in the same calm unfeeling way of killing beasts. They had not felt anything about what they did because they had not regarded beasts as thinking, feeling creatures, only as a resource to be used, perhaps because unTalents were unable to communicate with them. The Tumen could speak to me and understand my words, yet it seemed that the indifferent gentleness with which he tended me and answered my questions was no more or less than the care exerted by a man tending a cow he meant to slaughter for her meat or hide. All he wanted from me was information, and his gentleness merely made his task easier. If so, it seemed unlikely the Tumen would simply agree to free me, no matter how eloquently I pleaded.
    A needle driven into the base of my neck caused excruciating pain and I was on the verge of willing myself to sleep to escape it when it struck me that my muscles could not possible have withered so badly from the inactivity of only a few days. With a chill, I remembered Doktaruth telling Cassy of animals being induced to sleep in cryopods for years on end.
    ‘How long have I been asleep?’ I asked, and heard the trepidation in my voice.
    ‘You have slept three cycles since the last waking,’ the Tumen answered.
    I gritted my teeth in frustration at the incomprehensible terms, and asked, ‘How many hours are there in a cycle?’
    ‘One cycle is divided into seven hundred and twenty hours,’ the Tumen said.
    Pain was momentarily submerged in icy shock. ‘That means I have been asleep for . . . three months!’
    ‘Your heart rate is unacceptably high,’ the Tumen observed. ‘Specimens showing signs of stress must be subjected to a renewed cycle of deepsleep. Given your resistance to sedation, an airborne nerve agent will be administered.’
    ‘What? Wait!’ I cried unsteadily, as a soft snake-like hiss filled the air.
    Catching a whiff of something sharp and unpleasant, I held my breath, but the potion fell like light rain on my exposed skin, and my flesh grew numb, the numbness deepening and spreading inward. After a moment of panic, I realised it did not matter if I was drugged, since my mind was still encased in the coercive armour I had woven, which would protect me from the cryopod mechanism if the Tumen tried to use it on me again. I forced myself to breathe naturally, taking in the peppery dampness in the air; the relief of relinquishing control was indescribable.
    I sank through the levels of my mind without resistance, passing swiftly and easily through the layer