Sunspire (The Reach, Book 4) Read Online Free

the container carefully under the dribble of water.  “We park this here for a bit, and we can take some wet stuff with us.”
    “Good idea,” Knile said.  “I guess if we don’t find anything better, we’re going to have no option but to drink it.”
    Ursie got up and edged away from them.  “We’re going to get sick if we drink any more of that.”
    “They used to treat the water, get the nasties out of it,” Tobias said.  “Back in the day.”
    “Yeah, fifty years ago,” Ursie muttered.  “I think I’d prefer to die of thirst than drink any more of that shit .”  She turned and walked to the end of the sweepdrone, glancing down curiously as she inspected Lazarus.
    “Look at that,” Tobias said suddenly, pointing toward the ceiling.  Knile turned to see a small round window in the hull of the Skywalk, through which he could observe the glinting surface of Earth far above.  “Must be a beautiful sunrise for somebody up there, no?”
    Knile grimaced.  “I don’t know if there’s such a thing as a beautiful sunrise on Earth anymore.”
    “Oh, there is, I’m sure,” Tobias said.  “You just have to know where to look.”
    Ursie chortled at Knile’s puzzled expression.  “Tobias is a bit of an oddball,” she said.  “He seems to think Earth is some kind of paradise, even though he hasn’t been there in about a hundred years.”
    “Now, now, I’m not quite that old.”  Tobias turned back to Knile.  “You have the look of a traveller, mister.  A wayfarer.  You must’ve seen a bunch of things in your time.  I’d be happy to listen to you, if you had a mind to talk.”
    Knile thought of his journeys through the lowlands when he’d been exiled from the Reach.  He remembered the barrenness of the lands, the gauntness of the people who had worked it.  Children lifting hoes with purpled knuckles, their skin mottled and discoloured, while their elders lay inside their huts and shanties, toxin-riddled bodies too weak to help.  He thought of stained teeth and yellow fingernails, of blackened fruit shrivelled on the vine.  Desperate people, distrusting of their neighbours, afraid for their young.  Despairing of their futures.
    Knile looked at the expectant face of the old man.
    “Sorry.  Wish I had something to tell you, but I don’t.”
    Tobias’ half smile wilted away, and he nodded dejectedly.  “I see.  Well, maybe another time.”  He took a small marble elephant from his pocket and began to turn it over in his hands, lost in his own thoughts.
    Knile got to his feet.  As he began to walk away he noticed Ursie leaning over Lazarus, her fingers gently pressed to his cheek.  She looked as though she were about to drift off to sleep.
    “Ursie?” Knile said.  She recoiled at the sound of his voice, snatchi ng her hand back and sticking it in her pocket.  “What are you doing?”
    “Uh, nothing, I–”
    “The same thing she was doing to Heketoro,” Tobias said, turning his attention away from the elephant as he glanced back at her.  “That’s it, ain’t it?”
    “Who’s Heketoro?” Knile said.
    “A guy back at the habitat,” Ursie said quickly.  She shot a timid glance at Tobias.  “I didn’t hurt him.  I swear.”
    “Will someone explain what’s going on here?” Knile said.
    Ursie took a deep breath as she tried to compose herself.  “Something happened to me, all right?  When I fought off my Sponsor, van Asch, a part of me changed.  I don’t know how, or why.”
    “What changed?” Knile said.
    “I can’t see people’s thoughts anymore, not unless I’m touching them.”
    “People’s thoughts?” Tobias said, perplexed.  “So you’re some kind of mind reader, or somethin’?”
    “Something like that.”  She gestured down at Lazarus.  “I can see something inside this guy, way down.  I mean way down.  It’s like a candle flickering at the bottom of a well a mile deep.”
    “So he’s still alive,” Knile said.
    Ursie