Awares Read Online Free Page B

Awares. That one siege of Awareness he had experienced must have been a precursor to the later conversion.
    The Awares related to the challenge, to somehow abate the threat to all of Earth. Mona had described the vision the sheep sent, of a giant Venus Flytrap taking the planet Earth into its leafy maw. A threat even the sheep could not find a path safely around. The Awares were few in number, maybe a dozen, judging by the missing offspring of space travelers, and largely unable to participate in the affairs of the world; how could they help?
    Bunky bleated.
    She put her hand on his woolly back. “But nevertheless they can help, and we need to recruit them,” she said. “So be it. Maybe as time passes we will come to understand how.”
    She tended to Bela, then talked to Banner, describing what she had learned. “So now I need to get in touch with these supremely elusive folk, and recruit them to our cause, which is to save the world. But they aren't going to want to talk to me.”
    He pondered, then spoke. “On Jones, you were able to see the vampires for what they were, because your consciousness is not influenced by the subjectivity of life. Could the Awares be utilizing a similar mechanism to make themselves disappear?”
    “Clouding men's minds? It's possible.” Then she caught his point. “I might see them!”
    “Especially if the Lamb is with you to zero in on them.”
    “But they still could avoid me or refuse to talk with me. I need to be able to persuade them.”
    “How about offering them what Yonson did? An interface with the real world. They still need that, especially now that he can't do it himself.”
    “That's it!” she exclaimed gladly. “I could kiss you!”
    “Oh, I think my input is worth more than that.”
    “I'll pay!” She turned to the animals. “Please babysit Bela for one minute.”
    “One minute!” Banner protested.
    “I can do a lot in a minute.” She bundled him off to the bedroom and made impassioned love to him. It was a kind of game they played, wherein he was always angling for sex and she was always obliging him. She had been crafted as a fembot, a sex robot, and knew that business. In this manner they kept it from becoming routine.
    Five minutes later she looked at her watch. She didn't need a watch to keep time, but it was part of acting like a normal woman. “One minute. You're done, you lecher.”
    “I'm done,” he agreed, sated.
    She returned to the Companions. “Tomorrow we go out looking for elusive Awares. Be ready.” As if they ever were not.
    In the morning she packed them all in the car: Bela, Bunky, Vulture, and Python, because the Lamb's vision indicated that they were needed. She drove to a different section of town, trusting Bunky's precognition. Would she really see them, as others could not?
    And there they were, or at least two of them: Yon and Adela. She recognized them by their pictures in her memory. Bunky had known.
    “Now how many of us approach them?” she asked. “I don't want to leave anyone in the hot car, but some of you might freak out my subjects.”
    It turned out that Elasa, Bela, and Bunky would go, while the other two remained near the car. If anyone thought it was odd for a woman with a baby and a lamb to be out on the street, well, they could ask.
    She approached the two, who were seated on a covered bench. She thought they might quietly get up and depart as she approached, but they remained in place.
    “Hello,” she said.
    To her amazement, one answered. “Hello,” Yon said. “You can see us.”
    “Yes. I am Elasa, a humanoid robot, not much subject to subjective illusions. I have a proposition for you.”
    “We are interested,” Adela said. “We are Yon and Adela, Awares.”
    “You were expecting me,” Elasa said, realizing. “So you waited for me.”
    “It's the appropriate thing to do,” Yon said.
    And just like that they were in the dialogue.
    “This is my baby, Bela,” Elasa said. “And this is the Lamb,