Venus of Shadows Read Online Free PDF

shock of that loss was too great. Everything here only reminds me of that loss, and I need to forget."
    "So our choice," Alexei said, "the chance we've given up everything for, is only a punishment for you."
    Malik shook his head. "Being here isn't my punishment. I suffered my punishment earlier."
    He reached up and pushed his turban back a little, revealing the tiny scar on his forehead. "That was my punishment. I was a Linker, and my Link was taken from me. I could have borne the rest if they'd left me my Link, but I was to be a useful example to others. Other scholars will now be more cautious in their speculations, while Abdullah and his friends have shown my uncle that their power is growing."
    Yekaterina raised a hand to her mouth; he thought he saw sympathy in her dark eyes. Alexei frowned, looking even more suspicious than before, while the rest of the group was silent.
    Malik listened to the silence inside his head. A simple procedure, the physician had said. Malik would suffer a headache for only a day or two after the implant and its microscopic components were removed and the slight damage to his nerve endings repaired. A simple procedure, to remove the Link connecting him to Earth's cyberminds; the simple procedure had seemed more like an amputation. He had felt like a man suddenly blinded and deafened and made mute as well, cut off from certain senses and forced to communicate through other means. Even the band he could put on his head was not able to replace his lost Link. The band opened channels to the artificial intelligences only to block his path when he probed too far and reached a road open only to Linkers.
    "Now you know about me," Malik said. He wondered if he had dispelled some of their suspicions or had intensified them. "Losing my Link nearly destroyed me — I feel the loss still. I can't imagine what such a punishment would be like for one who had lived with a Link longer than I had." He drew his turban back over his scar.
    Alexei's mouth twisted. "You lost only what most never have."
    "It was as though I'd lost part of my soul. A world had suddenly been taken from me."
    "That isn't what you regret," Alexei said. "It's the jewel you once wore on your head, the jewel that marked what you were and made even strangers bow to you."
    Yekaterina touched Malik's sleeve. "Don't listen to my brother."
    Alexei stood up and walked on; the others began to follow him. Malik rose and helped the young woman to her feet. "Thank you for what you said."
    "I didn't say it just for your sake," she replied. "What good will it do to leave this world if we carry our resentments to the next?"
    "I wonder if we can avoid that," he said, feeling the burden of history.
    *  *  *
    The group trudged on in silence. Toward noon, a floater passed overhead, casting its elongated shadow on the broken road. The helium-filled dirigible was long and sausage-shaped, with a windowed cabin for its passengers; Malik thought of those carefree travelers and lowered his eyes. High-speed trains and tubeways connected most major cities, but travel on a floater was often the only way to get to smaller towns. Malik wondered where this one was bound, and what its passengers were thinking as they gazed at the group below.
    The sun had quickly burned away the chill in the air, and a sharp wind was dying down. Yekaterina pulled off her fur hat and let her hair fall over her shoulders. Malik, having noted her black eyes and olive-skinned face, had expected her to have dark hair, but she was nearly as blond as her brother. The wind had heightened the color on her broad cheeks while the blond curls softened her features.
    She glanced at him from the sides of her eyes and smiled a little; he had seen such glances many times. His beauty was a curse. Without it, he might have found a bondmate by now, a companion who could have eased his pain and loneliness. Instead, he had gone from one love to the next only to find, during his disgrace, that none of them