Investments Read Online Free Page B

Martinez was that if Allodorm were stealing money now, he was no longer stealing it just from the government, but the Martinez family.
    In which case, it had to stop.
    Terza pressed closer to Martinez on the bed. She kissed his cheek. “I wonder,” she said, “if when you were a boy in this bed, you ever imagined— “
    Martinez sat up, displacing Terza’s head and arm. “Comm,” he said. “Wall display: on.”
    The chameleon-weave fabric of the display normally matched the geometric pattern of the wallpaper, but now it brightened into a video screen displaying the Martinez crest. “Comm: search,” Martinez said. “Ledo plus Allodorm plus Meridian plus Company. Begin.”
    In a half-second data flashed on the screen. Martinez chose the first listing, and saw a page from the Meridian Company’s official prospectus of the Chee development. He absorbed the information.
    “Allodorm’s chief engineer for the Meridian Company,” he said. “He’s in charge of all their projects on Chee. All of them.”
    He turned to Terza and saw her pensive expression. “Something wrong?” he said.
    A serene smile crossed her face, the one he knew for its falsity.
    “Nothing at all,” she said.
    *
    “Daddy says I’m a genius. Daddy says I’m going to do great things.”
    “I’m sure you are,” said Severin.
    “I’m going to smash Naxids.” The dark-haired child raised a hand over his head. In his fist was a toy warship. He flung it on the polished asteroid material of the verandah. “ Bang !”
    “Good shot,” Severin observed.
    He’d grown with a pair of younger sisters, and knew how to keep a young child entertained. Lord Gareth Chen— who bore his father’s first name but the surname of his mother, who was the Chen heir and ranked higher— picked up the warship and flung it again. Wet explosive sounds came from his pursed lips.
    “But what if the Naxids come from this direction?” Severin asked, and leaned out of his metal whitewashed chair to threaten the boy’s flank.
    “Bang !”
    “Or from here?” The other flank.
    “Bang !”
    “Or here?” Overhead.
    “Bang !”
    Lord Gareth the Younger was at a stage of life where this could go on for quite a while before he got bored. Having nothing better to do, Severin was content to continue the game, though his thoughts were elsewhere.
    He had awakened that morning with a dream clinging to his memory like a shroud. In the dream he had been driving up the oak alley toward the house, beneath the series of iron arches, and somehow one of the arches had transformed itself into a proscenium, and he’d stepped through the proscenium onto a stage that was the house.
    The house had been covered with lights, and a party had been under way. The guests glittered in fine clothes and uniforms. Severin knew none of them. Their conversation was strangely oblique, and Severin kept feeling that he could understand them if only he listened a little harder. At some point he discovered that they were not people at all, but automata, smiling and glimmering as they spoke words that had been pre-programmed by someone else.
    In the dream Severin hadn’t found this discovery horrifying, but intensely interesting. He wandered through the party listening to the conversation and admiring the brilliance of the puppets’ design.
    When he woke he was still under the spell of the dream. He breakfasted alone on the terrace— apparently his hosts were not yet awake— and he found himself thinking about the strange conversations that he’d heard, and trying to work out the obscure story behind them.
    He thought about going back to bed and hoping to pick the dream up where it had left off, but at this point Gareth Junior arrived, and the battle with the Naxids began.
    He was rescued in time by Martinez, who came out of the house and lunged at his son, scooping him up in both arms and whirling him overhead as the child shrilled his laughter.
    Following Martinez from the house came his