Rags & Bones: New Twists on Timeless Tales by Melissa Marr and Tim Pratt

Author:Melissa Marr and Tim Pratt
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9780316212946
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Published: 2013-08-21T16:00:00+00:00

“I have something for you,” he told her a week later. They were cuddling beneath a blanket in the old cottage. The year had grown old, the days cold, gray, and cheerless. Naked, she shivered against him.

He pressed an envelope tied with red ribbon into her hand.

“What is it?” she asked. He had never given her a present before.

“Open it and see.”

She pulled out the small blue card and said, “Oh, no, Beneficent.”

“Only in case something happens. I’m leaving for my anniversary trip in three days.”

It had been his idea to celebrate the five-year mark of his marriage on the moon, the place where his vow to love Courteous for all eternity had been sealed.

“It’s a very touching gesture, my love,” Georgiana said. “But if something should happen, they will ask why your wife’s persist has your psyche-card.”

“It isn’t my psyche-card.”

Her eyes widened in the gloom. “Courteous’s?”

“Yours.”

She was speechless. What he said made no sense.

“Or it will be,” he added nervously. Her silence unnerved him. “Once you’ve been downloaded onto it.”

“You offer a gift that isn’t yours to give,” she said finally.

“Only if I’m caught.”

“No,” she said, pressing the card against his fist. “Take it back, Beneficent. I don’t want it.”

“It doesn’t hurt, you know,” he murmured, gently stroking her bare arm.

“I won’t be downloaded onto a piece of plastic. Besides, what would be the point?”

“I have a friend who works on the Research and Development Committee. There’s a program he’s working on that can merge two psyches. Well, not a true merger. The donor psyche loses consciousness forever. The receiver retains his personality and memories, but incorporates those of the donor into himself.”

“You would… take me into yourself?”

“In a manner of speaking. I don’t mean now. I mean… I mean, just in case. When… when the time comes.”

“You would make me immortal.” Her eyes shone with wonder and love. “Hiding forever inside you.”

“I told you once I wanted to know everything.”

She threw her arms around his neck and kissed him, again and again, pressing her deliciously warm flesh against the length of his body and, oddly, he swore he could smell muffins.

That evening he and Courteous dined at the Olympus, which no one called the Olympus, but the Top, as in, “Let’s meet at the Top.” The restaurant sailed a thousand feet above the city, held aloft by a quantum envelope of antigravity, offering spectacular sunset views of the metropolis, where the 3Fs might dine like the gods, far removed from the petty mortal strife of the ghetto. The only thing missing was ambrosia, though the Top made up for it with twelve courses, a wine list unrivaled in the western hemisphere, and an after-dinner massage.

“To five wonderful years,” Beneficent said, raising his glass.

“No, to persistence,” Courteous said.

Persistence? Was that a play on words? He said, “That implies I had a choice whether to pursue you. But the truth is I couldn’t give up even if I wanted to.”

She set down her glass without drinking. “Then why did you?”

“I didn’t.

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