John Ringo Alldenata 09 Sister Time (with Julie Cochrane)

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.It wasn't a real mission, but she was fidgetyto get going."You do." The kid squinted, scrunching her glasses back up her nose."That's not an answer.Answer the question.""Because our whole family, just about, lives on an island hiding from peoplewho want to kill us.Because I know our family.We're not monsters.We argue,we squabble, we gossip behind each other's backs, we have a fair dose ofhypocrites and liars, a couple of drunks, and a few serious assholes but we'renot monsters.So the people who are trying to kill us must be the monsters."The words sounded like a pre-prepared little speech."And what if they're not?""What?" Her forehead wrinkled a little, like a worried puppy's."What if the people we're fighting against, that you're sent out to kill,aren't monsters.""I.um.I I don't know.""That's the first sensible thing you've said.One in your favor."Page 94ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html"Look, the Posties wanted to eat us.I'm not dumb.I know a lot of you werealive back then.You're juvs.You're sick of fighting, right? So anybody whothe whole family, basically, is working so hard to fight must not be planningto hug us and give us a cookie.""So what if you get deep enough to get more information and decide we'rewrong?" Cally crossed her arms on the chair back, propping her chin on them."Nothing's perfect.I don't think my whole family is stupid, and I don'tthink they're evil.I'll throw in my lot with y'all.I'm not stupid.Therewill be a lot I don't need to know.Keeping that in mind, if I saw anythingtoo bad, I'd talk about it to my boss.""What if you were in the field when that happened?""Then I'd have to do my job and wait until I got back to talk about it,wouldn't I? Nothing's perfect.I'll throw in my lot with you.""What do you think this job is like, anyway? What do you think your averageday would be?""I don't know.""Speculate," the assassin ordered."Averageday? Probably buffing my skills or doing mission prep.Maybe travelingto or from a mission.Maybe under cover in some mission or other.Maybewatching people or scoping out situations before going in.It's like dance,isn't it? A lot of hard work preparing, for just a couple of recitals a year.""Like dance.I wouldn't have put it like that, but we'll let it go.Especially since I dance, too.But you knew that.I think you were in mybeginning jazz class one year on the island, weren't you?""Yes, ma'am." The young girl hesitated."Ma'am, excuse me, but you're prettygood, right? So why did you leave work to be with your kids? I mean, why wouldthey let you? Wouldn't the Bane Sidhe want you to keep working?""Tsk.You're not really supposed to know much about who you're interviewingwith." Cally turned the chair and sat, crossed her legs, lit a cigarette."Look, just between us girls, if you take this job you're going to spend a lotof time in a shrink's office.You'll need it.But being a chick, you're goingto spend more time in there than one of the guys would.It may not be fair, itmay or may not be necessary.This job isn't about fair.The bosses just aboutpushed me into taking a long sabbatical." She shrugged."In my case, yeah, Ineeded it.I'd been active a long time you don't need to know how long.Youcan't do this job forever, presuming you live that long, and not have it getto you.Itwill dehumanize you.Itwill fuck you up." The assassin grimaced asthe girl's eyes widened at the profanity.What the hell am I doing letting aPage 95ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.htmllittle girl no, I was just thirteen myself.She'll get several chances to optout.An honest little voice insisted at the back of her mind,Yeah, but therewill be subtle pressures on her to measure up.Pressures on her teachers notto lose candidates.Inevitably.What the hell am I doing?Cally leaned forward, propping her hands on her knees."You shouldn't takethis job.It will fuck up your relationships.You will find yourself fuckingabout a bazillion strangers off the job because after you've fucked a bunch onthe job, who the hell would you be saving yourself for? You will see thingsyou absolutely do not want in your head, and the pictures won't go away.Youwill do things that literally make you puke.The price is too high.Go home.Get a legit ID, move to Indianapolis, get a husband, a white picket fence, adog, two or three kids.Don't look back.It's a happier life.That's God's owntruth.Go the hell home," she said.The girl's jaw tightened."Are you declining my job application, ma'am?"Suddenly feeling every one of her fifty-eight years, Cally pressed her palmsinto her eyes and sat back up, sighing.She absently flicked the growing ashtail off the end of her cigarette."No, I'm not doing that.Not yet, anyway.Okay.You want it, then it's time for your next test."The tall blond walked out of the room and returned in under a minute with twoarmfuls of clothes.One set she threw to the kid."Get changed," she said."Your sneakers are fine.They'll be covered by the boots, anyway."Both sets of clothing were average to the point of boring.A set of longjohns implied they'd be going outside.The jeans to go over them were fadedand somehow a bit grayed out, as if they'd been washed too often in unsortedloads with all the other clothes.The sweaters were some kind of blend, hers afaded navy blue, the other a rusty brown, with the random little fluff ballssweaters get when they've been around a couple of years.The older womandidn't look up, just started changing her clothes as if she was alone."What the hell are you waiting for? Get dressed," she told the girl, who washesitating.The kid jumped to comply, startled.Chapter EightThey got off the train at a station in the south of Chicago, trudging downthe path of crumbled gray asphalt and sand that wobbled between jumbledstretches of gray and white snow, leading into Bronzeville.Once, theirO'Neal-fair skin would have been cause for comment in the historically blackcommunity.Not now.Time and migrations to and from the Nat King Cole SubUrb,along with the shuffling effect of the semi-random sweeps for shippers as theinvoluntary off-world colonists were called had shuffled the population into aspectrum from SubUrban spectral white Caucasians to dark brown, old-timeMetropolitans, with a vast middle of cafe au l'asian.Page 96ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.htmlThe landscape was a mixture of buildings.Bricks with early 20th centuryarched windows.Buildings with squared off pre-war windows.Crumbling brick,crumbling cinder block.Tattered strips of old stores.Boarded windows, andwindows like haunted, vacant eyes.Row houses like shark teeth and blocky oldfour-story tenements.In front of one of the old strips of had-been neon andsteel, a cart of fresh vegetables from a black-market hydroponics set-up satupwind of a burnt-out sedan, whose trunk served as a shelf for piles of baggedtortillas, dimebags of cornmeal, the same of textured soy, and a large pile ofslump cakes [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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