Enemies by Lee Hogan

Enemies by Lee Hogan

Author:Lee Hogan [Hogan, Lee]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction, Fantasy
ISBN: 9780451459190
Publisher: Roc


25

I think you are looking for someone. I worry that you may find him.

Why does that worry you?

Because he is so hard to find.

Kathryn looked for Peter among the rows of the St. Petersburg Public Library. He wasn't in the building. She had checked for that first thing. He wasn't on the train either, or in any of the places she had stopped to look on the way over. That didn't surprise her. Peter wasn't going to let her find him. It would have to be the other way around. But she could find some of the people he knew.

"I'm trying to find a boy," she told the woman at the information desk. "He's about twelve years old. His name is Peter. He likes to come here a lot."

"Yes," the woman said politely, no trace of recognition in her expression.

"He has brown curly hair and very distinctive eyes. They're an odd shade of green."

"Many children come in here, miss," said the woman. Her scan revealed no physiological changes. She stared a little too long at Kathryn's clothing, but curiosity was her only reaction to queries about Peter, just like every other person Kathryn had asked so far.

Kathryn wandered the library. It evoked unexpected memories of her own childhood. She had been an orphan too, and haunted her local library. It wasn't just the books that fascinated her, but also the people who read them. This library on the other side of the galaxy had the same smells, the same mix of book lovers, fuddled students, researchers, and crazy and homeless people. Its shelves were filled with hard copies of books, and Kathryn supposed that on Belarus, the ones that looked the newest might actually be the oldest.

She wandered past rooms where people were bent over viewers on desks, looking at texts on glass slides. That was an elegant bit of technology that required no energy source to access information. Library workers walked back and forth between the tables, watching the researchers like hawks as they handled the thousand-year-old slides. Children probably weren't allowed into these rooms, maybe not even a serious boy like Peter.

Kathryn climbed the stairs to other floors. She strolled up and down the rows, almost wishing she were a girl again, free to explore the worlds inside the books without a care about time, responsibility, deadlines. That had once been her life, although it wouldn't have stayed that way. Time always catches up to people, even orphans who think they have no connections.

On the sixth floor, the stairway ended in a hall full of closed doors—except for the door at the very end. A woman stood there, looking at Kathryn as if she had been expecting her. The woman beckoned, and Kathryn walked all the way down to meet her.

"You're a Star Woman, aren't you?" asked the woman.

"Yes," said Kathryn.

"I've never seen someone dressed like you before." The woman might be in her early fifties. She was just over five feet tall, stocky but athletic in build.



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