The Einstein Intersection Read Online Free

young Lo man. You never saw them dragged back from the jungle when a few did manage to survive. You didn’t see the barbaric way complete norms acted, their reason shattered bloody by fear. Many people we call Lo and La today would not have been allowed to live had they been born fifty years ago. Be glad you are a child of more civilized times.” Yes, they were people. But this is not the first time I had wondered what it feels like to keep such people-Le Dorik?
    I went back to the village.
    Lo Hawk looked up from re- thonging his sports-bow. He’d piled the power cartridges on the ground in front of the door to check the caps. “How you be, Lo Lobey? “
    I picked a cartridge out with my foot, turned it over. “Catch that bull yet? ” .
    “No.”’
    I pried the clip back with the tip of my machete. It was good. “Let’s go,” I said.
    “Check the rest first.”
    While I did, he finished stringing the bow, went in and got a second one for me; then we went down to the river.
    Silt stained the water yellow. The current was high and fast, bending ferns and long grass down, combing them from the shore like hair. We kept to the soggy bank for about two miles.
    “What killed Friza?” I asked at last.
    Lo Hawk squatted to examine a scarred log: tusk marks. “You were there. You saw. La Dire only guesses.”
    We turned from the river. Brambles scratched against Lo Hawk’s leggings. I don’t need leggings. My skin is tough and tight. Neither does Easy or Little Jon.
    “I didn’t see anything,” I said. “What does she guess?”
    An albino hawk burst from a tree and gyred away. Friza hadn’t needed leggings either.
    “Something killed Friza that was non-functional, something about her that was non-functional.”
    “Friza was functional,” I said. “She was!”
    “Keep your voice down, boy.”
    “She kept the herd together,” I said more softly. “She could make the animals do what she wanted. She could move the dangerous things away and bring the beautiful ones nearer.”
    “Bosh,” said Lo Hawk, stepping over ooze.
    “Without a gesture or a word, she could move the animals anywhere she wanted, or I wanted.”
    “That’s La Dire’s nonsense you’ve been listening to.”
    “No. I saw it. She could move the animals just like the pebble.”
    Lo Hawk started to say something else. Then I saw his thoughts backtrack. “What pebble?”
    “The pebble she picked up and threw.”
    “What pebble, Lobey?”
    So I told him the story. “And it was functional,” I concluded. “She kept the herd safe, didn’t she? She could have kept it even without me.”
    “Only she couldn’t keep herself alive,” Lo Hawk said. He started walking again.
    We kept silent through the whispering growth, while I mulled. Then:
    “ Yaaaaaa - “ on three different tones.
    The leaves whipped back and the Bloi triplets scooted out. One of them leaped at me and I had an armful of hysterical, redheaded ten-year-old.
    “Hey there now,” I said sagely.
    “Lo Hawk, Lobey! Back there-“
    “Watch it, will you? “ I added, avoiding an elbow.
     
    “-back there! It was stamping, and pawing the rocks- “ This from one of them at my hip.
    “Back where?” Lo Hawk asked. “What happened?”
    “Back there by the-“
    “- by the old house near the place where the cave roof falls in-“
    “-the bull came up and-“
    “- and he was awful big and he stepped-“
    “-he stepped on the old house that-“
    “- we was playing inside-“
    “Hold up,” I said and put Bloi-3 down. “Now where was all this?”
    They turned together and pointed through the woods.
    Hawk swung down his crossbow. “That’s fine,” he said, “You boys get back up to the village.”
    “Say- “ I caught Bloi-2’s shoulder. “Just how big was he?”
    Inarticulate blinking now.
    “Never mind,” I said. “Just get going.”
    They looked at me, at Lo Hawk, at the woods. Then they got.
    In silent consensus we turned from the river through the break in