Spheres of Influence-eARC Read Online Free Page A

it…a lot harder than I thought. Sons? Of course there would be. Dammit. “Look, Wu—I have to talk to you first. It’s really important.”
    For the first time he saw a flash of comprehension in the Monkey King’s eyes—the knowledge that there were important things left unsaid, truths unthought. He saw a plea there, too, one to drop it, leave it lie, to stay a day or two and return to his “faraway land” without disturbing that which was here, in Sun Wu Kung’s paradise.
    But Wu was also his friend, and part of him knew DuQuesne would not have come if he didn’t have some terribly important purpose. “Of…course. Sanzo, we will be nearby—just over the other side of the ridge, to speak of whatever secret matters DuQuesne has on his mind.”
    He bowed to Sanzo as they took their leave, and then followed Wu over the nearby ridge. “Thanks, Wu.”
    The Monkey King fidgeted, no longer so cheerful. “We…were allies in a great war, you and I. I cannot refuse to hear you out.”
    Even in your own thoughts you try to evade it. As did I. As K does, even better that I could manage. “Wu, you know I wouldn’t have come if I didn’t think I had to.”
    “I know. But…you promised. Never again.”
    Yeah. I did. But I also promised myself that I had to find a way, someday, to free you from yourself. “Something’s happened, Wu. Something huge. Something wonderful, in a way, but also pretty scary.” He took a deep breath—very vaguely aware, with the part of him that still had the perceptual skills of the ultimate end of Hyperion—that his real body was not breathing deeply, was sitting quietly inert, almost paralyzed, with the mind occupied in this waking dream. “I want you to come back with me.”
    Wu shook his head, frowning. “No. No. I told you.…” His voice suddenly took on the pleading tones of a child, a little boy who knew that something terrible was waiting for him, and that there was no way to avoid it, “…told you, I don’t want to anymore. I can’t. There…it’s cold. Cold, and none of my friends can follow. Just you. And there’s no place…no place for me.”
    He stepped forward, reaching out. “Wu—”
    A sledgehammer smashed into his jaw; for a minute the pain was so shockingly, blazingly overwhelming that he thought, impossibly, that it had been broken. The impact sent him crashing uncontrollably through the brush, over a small cliff, to land with almost bone-breaking impact on thin turf. He managed to roll slightly aside and the gold-ended staff hammered a small crater in the dirt rather than trying to shatter his ribs. “ NO! ” Wu Kun shouted, and yanked him up, shaking him like a rat in the jaws of a terrier despite the fact that DuQuesne outweighed him by three to one. “Why do you want to destroy them? They’re my family! My friends! Don’t come here saying those words again! I can’t! I can’t!” The too-wide green-gold eyes were filled with all too human tears. “You KNOW there’s nothing out there but cold and loneliness and machines, there’s no poetry in the sky, no trail of wonders, no miraculous Dragons waiting under the ocean, just…just…”
    Oh, damn. DuQuesne felt his heart ache inside. It’s harder than I thought. So much harder. He saw Wu sinking to his knees, looking at DuQuesne’s blood on his hand.
    “Wu…there is a place now.”
    For a long, long moment he was sure that Wu wouldn’t ever answer—that he either would not hear, or was too angry and afraid to accept what he did hear. But then, finally, the childlike tenor whispered, “…a place?”
    “Yes, Wu.” He forced himself to stand as he searched for the right words, words so critical for this moment. “Something so wondrous and terrifying, something so huge and strange that…that even the Buddha would spend a year closing his hand around it and still never grasp it. A place where a thousand races of…of demons and gods walk and speak, where there are worlds floating in the