Footsteps in the Sky Read Online Free Page B

from which peered stylized, grinning skulls. The door checked his I.D., odor, and retina prints before admitting him.
    The inside of the building was as clean and modern as the outside was archaic and grotesque. Alvar made his way to the elevator terminals, where a young woman in a fashionably crumpled black-and-gold shirt and shorts motioned him on. She examined him appraisingly—his athletic meter and a half frame, sienna skin and broad, handsome features. When she met his bloodshot eyes, however, she registered what could only be disgust and perhaps a little pity.
    She thinks I’m a plaguer, he realized. He tried to smile and correct her impression with a few coherent words, but at that moment his car arrived. With a mental shrug he stepped in. What did he care what she thought? If he was right about this meeting, he would never see her again.
    The old man was indeed that; Alvar recognized this fact immediately. Though Vilmir’s hair was still chestnut brown, though his skin was as smooth and perfect as a twenty year old’s, the signs were obvious to the practiced eye. Re-grown skin always had a sort of papery look to it, and it was always uniform, without the slight color variations that marked the run of humanity. His teeth were too white and too short; he must have recently had new buds implanted, so that they weren’t fully grown. Most of all there was the way Vilmir bore himself, the way he used his black eyes and smoothly tapered fingers. An insect clothed in human form could not have seemed more alien, precise, considered in its movements.
    There were logical clues as well. No twenty-year old would hold such an important position as this man; there was no one on the Foundation board under the age of eighty, and Egypt Vilmir was the majority stockholder. He was two hundred if he was a zygote.
    â€œMr. Washington,” Vilmir acknowledged, and with a slight motion of his hand indicated that Alvar should sit upon one of the cushions that lay in a precise semicircle around his own raised couch. The room was furnished in a vaguely Arabic fashion. Muted earth tone carpets and tapestries patterned with abstract curvilinear motifs were illuminated by two shafts of greenish light falling through tinted skylights a hundred feet above them. Holographic birds filled that lofty space, distorting and changing form as they described complex patterns around one another. Truly, thought Alvar, a palace fit for a king.
    But Vilmir was no mere king: he was chief executive of the Vilmir Foundation. That made him more akin to an emperor.
    â€œNormally, Mr. Washington, I don’t speak to my agents, but this is a special case. There is no time to lose, so I will be brief.” His voice was smooth and pleasant, not at all like Alvar imagined an emperor’s should be.
    â€œI would first like to state that I do not enjoy seeing my employees in your present state. When you leave here, you will go immediately to the clinic and have your shots updated. You will not miss them again.”
    He paused for the barest instant to let that sink in, and Alvar nodded. The old man continued.
    â€œAs you may have surmised, you will soon be visiting one of our projects. This will not be a routine check, and it will not be for the purposes of renewing an agent. Something important, unexpected, and pressing has occurred that demands our immediate attention.”
    Vilmir paused, and Alvar saw something very human flicker in his eyes, an eagerness—a hunger, even.
    â€œMr. Washington, you should be aware that terraforming is a long, arduous process. It takes several centuries to make even a prime planet into a self-sustaining environment for large numbers of people. And there are very few prime planets. If we had to terra­form Venus, for instance—that would take many thousands of years. We have been very fortunate to discover a number of planets which are already rather similar to Earth in atmospheric