Aliens In The Family Read Online Free Page A

long, in case they noticed his curiosity and studied him too closely.
    He skated along, smiling as he went. Sometimes he would see something not included in his false memory file and then he would blink as if his mind was taking a photograph. Later, if he was successful, these details would be read off by the School and recorded in the gigantic Inventory of the Galgonqua which was eventually intended to hold all the information, feelings, memories, sensations, ideas, jokes, riddles, mysteries, answers and explanations in the entire universe. They had already been building it up for thousands of years but sometimes it seemed as if they had barely begun.
    Though Bond drifted through the crowds without any apparent purpose, he was in fact following his clue. The faint impulse from the Companion was a thread he could follow, running through his head, a constant drone like the humming of a tiny fly, and growing more distinct when he turned his face to it—a thrill which he alone in the busy street could pick out of the air. Earlier in the day this sensation had been interrupted by distance, by his own confusion, by pneumatic drills, by the radios of taxis calling to each other across the city like animals separated from their herd, and even by the electronic presence of microwave ovens in restaurants and coffee bars. He had patiently picked his way through all this, untangling that one thread from all the threads the city offered him. But now it was constant. He had trapped it inside him and even began to feel his old confidence returning.
    It's hot a difficult test after all, he thought, or perhaps it is — for others. He had always been very clever at detecting and unravelling the signals by which the Galgonqua kept in touch with one another. He was a tireless and deft unraveller. So at last, by following this impulse and recording as he went, he came to a particular shop and stood outside it, hesitant and uncertain.
    Peering in at the door as a cautious animal might inspect a trap, Bond saw racks of old cardigans and dresses, somehow more sinister than new ones, as if ghosts had been trapped and strung up on coat hangers. Even from the door it seemed to Bond that the brown jersey on the front of the rack still carried the shape of the woman who had once worn it. He went in at last, feeling his skates, so quick and clever out on the footpath, grow clumsy and heavy on the worn, green matting. A woman sat knitting behind the counter.
    "Can I help you, dear?" she asked.
    "Just looking" replied Bond, and he did look with great curiosity at vases, china ornaments and old cups and saucers set on a shelf. On other shelves behind the woman were the more valuable things, including a black box studded with buttons and little dials. Bond knew at once that this was no ordinary transistor radio. This was what he was searching for—the Companion emitting its constant location call but giving no information about what had happened or why it was here in this shop or quite how he was to get it. He supposed it must be for sale and he had been issued with money—but had he been given enough? He felt frightened at the sight of the box, so square and dark in the shop full of ghosts. It seemed so open, so obvious, yet he was sure there must be a catch. All the time he hesitated he was aware that in that black square, under those studs and dials was unbelievably tiny and intricate machinery, and that set in a maze of pinpoint circuits was the voice, the reasoning and some of the powers of his older sister Solita. She had been sent down in this form to be part of his test, and also to record for the Inventory in a different and more complicated way than a young, untested student such as Bond could manage. The Solita in the box had been set in a state of unconsciousness but the School had told him that her brother's voice was one that might interrupt whatever strange mechanical dreams she was dreaming. He was to reclaim her, awaken her and bring her