The Northern Star Trilogy: Omnibus Edition by Mike Gullickson

Author:Mike Gullickson
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Lightside/Darkside Entertainment
Published: 2015-04-05T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter 7

Cynthia wasn’t good company. Mosley stewed around the interior of the large house, checking in on her occasionally like a nurse monitoring a mental patient. She was always in the same chair, looking out the window. Only a couple of times did he hear her get up, the old wood floor creaking under her footsteps like a piano out of tune.

His attempts at conversation were met with clipped responses. Not rude, but uninterested. After the third attempt, he quit trying.

The house was dark and cold. Mosley fell asleep on a couch in the living room, and when he woke up, it was pitch black. His mouth tasted of sleep and he smacked it open and closed to get the saliva going. He checked his phone. It was half past midnight. Sabot had been gone for four hours.

He got up and went to the sunroom near the kitchen. Cynthia was in her same spot.

What’s wrong with her? he wondered. She turned slightly when he walked in.

“Can I get you anything?” he asked.

“I’m good. Thanks,” she replied.

“Are you okay?”

She gave him a polite smile. “I’m fine. I just have a lot on my mind.”

He exhaled in sympathy. “I don’t get it, but I get it. All the stuff you’re going through, I mean.”

He paused.

“Can I ask you a question?”

“Of course,” she said.

“What’s it like being so smart?”

She regarded him for a moment.

“Sit down.”

Mosley sat in the chair next to her, suddenly uncomfortable.

“How old are you?” she asked.

“Twenty-one.”

“College?”

“Online, but I didn’t finish. I serve—”

“Ah, yes. I remember. Sabot loves you.”

“I was stupid back then.” He shook his head. He’d served three months for theft.

“You were nineteen.” Her eyes glowed a bit, amused. “Trust me, when you’re thirty you’ll look back and say ‘Man, I was dumb when I was twenty-one,’ and when you’re forty, you’ll say the same about thirty.”

Cynthia pulled out a pack of joints and fired one up. Her ADD had already been staggering because of her genius, and now, combined with her near-constant immersion online with the MIMEs, being restricted to a single line of thinking felt as alien to her as wings on a pig. The weed dulled the empty roar. She dragged deeply, holding the smoke. She offered it to Mosley.

Mosley thought about how serious Sabot had looked before he’d ridden off on the motorcycle. “I shouldn’t.”

“There’s nothing to do now but wait,” Cynthia replied. “I won’t tell.”

Mosley hesitated, but if the most powerful person in the world wasn’t worried, why should he be? He took a hit and passed it back.

“That’s . . . really good,” he stammered.

She took another pull. “One of the perks of being a trillionaire. You get the good stuff.”

“Yeah,” he coughed, still recovering. The world fuzzed around him comfortably. He looked at Cynthia; he’d never noticed that she was pretty. She was small in the chair.

“I get asked that question a lot,” Cynthia said. “Or I used to. I usually give a canned answer. Do you want the truth?”

“Sure.”

She leaned in as if she were sharing a secret.

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