Terra Insegura by Edward Willett

Author:Edward Willett [Willett, Edward]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781101050156
Publisher: PENGUIN group

Chapter 12

THE KEMONOMIMI treated Chris well enough, except perhaps for the tiny Kemonomimi woman who came in twice a day with a syringe and took a sample of his blood. She wouldn’t tell him why.

In fact, nobody would tell him anything.

For days they held him in a small suite in what had been a small hotel. Meals appeared at regular intervals in the discreet room-service dumbwaiter, hidden behind a rather ugly red-and-brown abstract painting: the first time the elevator beeped to announce there was a tray inside it, it took him fifteen minutes to figure out where the noise—and the maddeningly delicious smells—came from.

The suite boasted an entertainment unit well-stocked with vids and feelies and games and texts, and Chris made good use of it, but after the first couple of days, he began to feel pangs of stir-craziness. After a week, he dreaded waking up to face another day in his comfortable prison... and found himself looking forward to the visits by the taciturn blood drawer.

At least the windows gave him a clear view of the airstrip. Aircraft continued to come and go. Kemonomimi moved hither and yon, often unloading bundles from aircraft and hustling them into one of the storage buildings alongside the runway.

And then, without any warning at all, Victor Hansen summoned him again.

The sun was actually shining that day, and Chris blinked in its bright light as Napoleon and Alexander, his guards from a few days before, led him along the sidewalk between landscaped flower beds, now gone to seed, to Hansen’s appropriated office.

The first thing Chris noticed, after Napoleon and Alexander ushered him in and closed the door on him, was that the photograph of the previous owner’s family had vanished. So had every other personal knickknack. Now the office was as impersonal as Chris’ hotel room, although with better art.

The second thing he noticed was that Hansen wasn’t alone. One of the chairs had been pulled into the corner, and sitting cross-legged on it was a Kemonomimi woman with fur as white as fresh-fallen snow over all of her body except her hands and feet, which were pitch-black. She looked like she was wearing gloves and boots, when in fact she wasn’t wearing anything at all—and the fur didn’t entirely cover what clothes would have. Chris tried not to stare at her. She had no such compunction about staring at him. Her eyes, amber yellow, narrowed as she looked at him.

Hansen stood with his back to Chris, hands folded behind him, looking out the window at the sunlit runway. An aircraft taxied along it, the sun glinting off its clean white flanks.

“Keating,” Hansen said without preamble. “I have a question for you.”

Chris looked at the clone’s back warily, then glanced at the woman. Her eyes narrowed further, and he quickly looked away again. “I’ll... answer it if I can,” he said.

“Yes,” Hansen said. “You will.” He turned. “Do you serve God?”

Chris blinked, sensing a minefield. “I... guess,” he said. “I’ve never thought about it very much.

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