The Slanted Worlds Read Online Free PDF

gasping, then brushed his hair back and walked firmly along the corridor into a first-class compartment, sat down, and smiled breathlessly out of the window.
    The train shuddered, shunted, stopped. A whistle blew.
    Trying to appear calm, Jake craned his neck to see out. Only steam swirled on the platform.
    Then with a crash, the compartment door slammed open.
    A red-faced sergeant burst in, grabbed him, and forced him up. “You’re a bleedin’ tricky little beggar, and no mistake.”
    â€œLet go of me. You can’t do this!” Jake struggled fiercely, but the man’s grip was iron. He was swung quickly around.
    Standing in the compartment doorway, the man from Scotland Yard looked hardly out of breath. His glare, though, was steely.
    â€œMy name is Inspector Allenby. I think you’ll be coming to the station to answer a few questions, Mr. Jake Wilde.”
    â€œFor what? What have I done?”
    Allenby shrugged. “Attempting to travel without due and proper identity, obtaining goods under false pretenses, resisting arrest, and very possibly, high treason. Take your pick. You’re in a heap of trouble, son.”
    He stepped up to Jake and he held the luggage room ticket in his face, the number 615 clear. “I’ve been waiting weeks for someone to come for this. It seems the old lady was running a bigger network than we thought.”
    â€œI don’t know what you’re talking about.” Furious, Jake held himself still.
    â€œSave it. Take him to the van, Joe.”
    The red-faced sergeant twisted Jake’s arm expertly behind his back. “With pleasure. You are going to bleedin’ regret making me get all hot and bothered.” He jerked and Jake gasped.
    â€œYou can’t do that! I have rights!” he yelled.
    â€œOh really,” the sergeant growled. “You can tell me all about them. At the Yard.”

4
    Five men were in the final ascent party on Katra Simba.
    There are many rumors about what happened on those terrible slopes, but as only Venn returned, only he knows the truth. He has never discussed it publicly, though he did meet with the families of each of the dead climbers.
    If, as is thought, Morris and James plummeted into the crevasse, Venn would have tried anything to save them.
    His courage is not in doubt.
    Jean Lamartine,

The Strange Life of Oberon Venn
    S ARAH SPENT THE long drive to Devon gazing out at the green woods and the moors.
    It was April, and she realized with surprise that the spring was well under way. Hidden in London, she had missed its coming; now she stared with delight at the lambs skittishly running from the motorway’s roar, and the white umbels of cow-parsley in the hedges. Every wood had its swathe of bluebells, every tree its small unfolding leaves. Small black horses nibbled the corners of fields.
    She knew this country. As the twilight gathered, Dartmoor began to loom on the horizon, purple-gray receding folds of moorland under the darkening sky. Sleepily she felt the old desire to climb up there, breathe that wild air again, as she used to do with her father and the three dogs. Before Janus came, and unmade the world.
    Wharton let her dream. He drove carefully with only the swiftest of glances at her. By Exeter, darkness was closing in. If Sarah hadn’t opened her eyes by chance and glimpsed the road sign to Princeton,
they would have sped on unknowing into the night. Wharton slammed on the brakes, shunted back, and turned into the lanes, grateful there was no one behind. “Nice one, Sarah. Of course, I was just checking you were awake.”
    â€œRight.” She wrapped her coat around her, shivering.
    â€œDo you want to stop? Or there’s some water and fruit in the back.”
    â€œKeep going.” She squirmed around to find it. “We need to get there before he does anything stupid.”
    Urgency seemed to grow in the car as darkness fell. She bit into an apple, gazing out