Probability Space Read Online Free

him or her with her fists. A great rushing sounded in her ears, like a huge waterfall, and then nothing.
    *   *   *
    “Drink this,” somebody said, and Amanda did. Immediately strength flowed into her body. She pushed the glass away, sat up, and looked around wildly. A shabby, tiny room with one bed and one chair and one picture on the wall and—
    “It’s all right,” said a man standing beside the bed. “You’re safe.” He was short and skinny, with a scraggly little beard at the end of his chin. Dressed in dirty black jeans and shirt, he had the pasty, grayish skin of someone who seldom walked in sunlight.
    “Who … who are you?”
    “A more relevant question is, who are you? Amanda Susan Capelo, age fourteen, citizen of the United Atlantic Federation, daughter of Dr. Thomas Capelo and the late Karen Olsen Capelo.”
    He had her passport. Without thinking she thrust a hand between her legs, felt the blue plastic pouch still there, blushed furiously, and looked away. Something terrible stood in the corner. She gasped, “What’s that? ”
    “That’s my assistant. A very strong, very dumb robot who smashed through that fence’s shop and carried you out of there. Don’t thank it; it doesn’t have sound sensors. It only does what I tell it to by handheld.”
    The thing in the corner was seven feet tall, a metal rectangle with three sets of flexible tentacles, built-in gun barrels, and three spray nozzles. Amanda looked at it hopelessly. Tears pricked at her eyes, hot and scalding, but she blinked them back She wanted desperately, blindingly, to go home.
    “Don’t cry,” the man said unsympathetically, “because—”
    “I never cry!” Amanda snapped.
    “—it won’t help. If you’re old enough to go traipsing around a quarter like Building T, you’re old enough to control yourself.”
    “I didn’t know it would be like this!”
    “Of course not. Now tell me why you were there.”
    “You tell me first who you are!”
    “You can call me Father Emil. I’m a Catholic priest.”
    “What’s that?” Amanda said.
    “Oh my dear God,” he said, “you never heard of Catholicism? Not even heard of it?”
    Amanda shook her head. She actually had a vague memory of the word coming up in history, her least favorite class, but she couldn’t remember any details.
    “Stop scowling, child. Do it. Catholicism is a very old religion, and the one true faith in a world that’s forgotten faith. I run the St. Theresa the Little Flower Mission. I rescue lost souls who have fallen into thievery, drunkenness, addiction, or prostitution, which is what I thought you were. An underage prostitute in way over her head.”
    Amanda at least knew what a prostitute was. How dare he call her that! “I’m not a prostitute!”
    “No, I see that. So what were you doing at a sleazy hot shop?”
    She didn’t answer, glaring at him instead.
    “Come on, child,” Father Emil said in that same dry, unsympathetic voice, “if you don’t tell me what’s wrong, I can’t help you. What is the daughter of a world-famous physicist and war-pusher doing selling stolen goods?”
    “They aren’t stolen! And my father isn’t a war-pusher!”
    “Of course he is. The physicist Thomas Capelo, who gave the world the alien artifact that has the power to destroy not only an entire star system but the fabric of space itself. Thereby escalating the stakes in the war with the Fallers from mere destruction of humanity to destruction of the universe which a merciful God gave mankind, all so that egomaniac Stefanak can buy himself power.”
    Amanda was confused. Nobody she knew talked like that. The picture on the wall showed a man bleeding on a cross made of wood, in horrible pain. She said stubbornly, “My father only gave General Stefanak the artifact because the Fallers already have one. General Stefanak is using it to protect the Solar System!”
    Father Emil snorted. “No use talking politics with a child, especially a child