Polly and the One and Only World by Don Bredes

Author:Don Bredes
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Green Writers Press
Published: 2014-08-26T04:00:00+00:00

17

THE ROOM WAS HOT. Filled with harsh light. He was gazing up into a ceiling of formed concrete, patterned like a giant waffle.

He sat up. The far wall looked like a vid panel with a line of strange, purple disks sliding slowly across the bottom. But the wall was glass, and the disks were oblong clouds.

His head and back and arms ached. He looked around for his clothes but didn’t see them. They had caught him and thrown him to the ground out by Candy’s stock tank. A few hours ago. Or less. He couldn’t remember anything between then and now.

The mattress was a thin, canvas-covered pallet. No pillow, no blanket, just a blue cotton sheet. On one side of the chamber, in a lit alcove, there was a waste vent. And a steel wash basin. On the opposite wall hung an ten-foot cross of gold-flecked timbers. It shimmered. The floor was polished stone.

Some monk’s cell, that was probably what this was. He couldn’t make out a door, but it had to be one of the panels in the wall opposite the window.

He went to the window with the sheet wrapped around him. That was Atlanta spread out below. Buildings, trees, criss-crossing roads. On the horizon, the cooling towers of a power plant. A high-voltage power corridor. Helicopters. He was higher than the helicopters.

They’d brought him to the capitol building. The Crozier. That’s where he was.

He heard a panel sliding open behind him and turned.

A stocky man stood silhouetted against the brilliant, featureless space outside. “May I?”

He stepped in.

The aide to the Secretary—with the gray ponytail. Same wide cheekbones, same deep slots for eyes. White blouse with buttoned cuffs, loose tan trousers, black pistol-butt in a hand-tooled flap holster.

“I saw you at the bazaar,” Leon said. “You drive that Atomic.”

He gave a little laugh. “That Atomic drives itself.”

“You work for the Dominion Secretary. Your name’s Yuri.”

“Very good!” He bowed. “Yuri Vasilevsky. Chief aide to His Excellency, Clyde Morton Trumble.”

“So I’ve been kidnapped by a Dominion Secretary.”

“Not at all. You’ve been rescued, Leon.”

“From what?”

“Prison. Possibly worse.”

“Prison for what?”

“The FTB agent back in Talla. Rasmussen—remember him? He’d like to see you sentenced to a camp for ten years. But you’re safe here. For the time being.” Yuri walked to the window and gazed out into the sky.

“Ten years for saving a girl’s life?”

“There’s worse news. Last week a team from Justice raided your father’s slave shelter out in the dunes.”

“Slave shelter? My father’s an archeologist!”

“Not anymore, I’m sorry to say. Malcolm Krauss is currently behind bars in Talla awaiting arraignment.”

“What’s he charged with?”

“Aiding in the felony theft of human property.”

“That’s bullshit! That’s crazy!”

“I need a little information, Leon. Help me out now, and I promise to do everything in my power to have the charges dropped.”

“What information?”

“The slave girl. Cassandra. How can I find her?”

“She’s not a slave.”

Yuri turned toward the big cross. In a quiet voice he said, “Help me get the girl back. You do that and I’ll make sure your father is released from custody and banished.

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