A Reasonable World by Knight Damon

Author:Knight, Damon [Knight, Damon]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction
ISBN: 9780812509786
Amazon: 0812509781
Goodreads: 7192816
Publisher: Tor Books
Published: 1991-02-01T08:00:00+00:00

“Let’s see,” Owen said, “the Pope will get here about three, but he’s sometimes unpunctual, so we’ll have to keep this a little loose. Whenever he does get here, I’ll meet him and take him around to the labs and whatever else he wants to see, and when I get the feeling he’s had enough, I’ll call the computer and have it broadcast the announcement about going up to the Sports Deck. It ought to take about half an hour to get everybody up there, Captain Trilling?”

“I’d say just about that.”

“You’ll have to leave a few people down here, of course.”

“I’ll pick the Protestants,” Trilling said. There was a little laughter.

“And I really don’t like leaving the lab and office sections absolutely empty, either. Jim has already said he will stay in the office and watch on holo. Is there a volunteer for the lab section?”

“I’ll stay,” Italiano said. “I’ve seen a pope.”

“All right, that’s decided, and thank you.”

His name was Arthur Bannerjee, and he had been an experimental subject in Dr. Italiano’s laboratory, an experience he thought of as interesting but which he had no desire to repeat. He remembered the laboratory and its location: it was right down at the bottom on the left side, frontward from the working section where the kitchens were: he had often smelled the aromas in the corridor.

The observer slipped out and into a passing young woman with a child. The woman held the boy’s hand in a protective grip; she had heard of the deaths of other children the same age, and she was worried. They entered the cafeteria, and when they went up to the service line, she slipped out again and into a food service person. She was tired, her hands were sweaty in the plastic gloves, and she hated the very smell of the food she was serving; but she smiled at each customer as she had been taught.

When she went back into the work area, she saw the big metal containers, cylindrical ones for soup and ice cream, square ones for entrees and bread. When lunch was over, she helped scrape the leavings into the garbage, then began closing the lids on the food containers and carrying them to the dumbwaiter. The observer watched carefully; it took about half a second to close a lid. There was great danger here, because if she failed to get into the container just as the lid closed, and then could not enter a nearby host again, she would die and her message would be lost.

She prepared herself like a diver about to go off the high board, feeling the nerve impulse in her shoulder that meant the motion was about to begin. Her host’s perception of time was too coarse to judge the interval precisely, and yet her timing had to be perfect. Wait, wait… Now! She leaped out and into the soup container. The lid closed, and that was all she knew until, as if it were in the same moment, the lid came off.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.