The Live-Forever Machine Read Online Free Page B

“It’s the whole city. It’s getting too big. It’s getting too high. But it’s also getting too forgetful. It can’t even remember what it used to look like fifty years ago, twenty years ago, maybe even ten years ago. No wonder libraries burn. The city’s eating itself up!”
    Eric was used to his father’s attacks on the city. His own thoughts were drifting back to the two men whispering in the medieval gallery. In a split second of total recall, he saw their dark shapes grappling, and the locket tumbling from Alexander’s pocket. Gabriella della Signatura, he thought, what am I going to do with you?

3
Deep as the City
    Chris scratched his short-cropped blond hair. “You know, when I first met you, I thought you were just another skinny geek—no offence, right?—but you do these crazy things. It’s really more than five hundred years old?”
    “I didn’t know until I got home. I just pushed it right into my pocket. It could have been anything.” Skinny geek. Great.
    Chris shook his head in amazement. “You going to take it back?”
    “I have to, don’t I?” He had to force out the words. He’d spent a humid, restless night debating with himself. Returning it was the only right thing to do. But something about the locket—something about the woman’s face—made him want to hide it away, to keep it for himself. He’d told Chris only because he was sure that, unlike his father, Chris wouldn’t want to see it.
    “You’re not making this up, right?”
    Eric shook his head and sighed. How manytimes did he have to go through this? “Chris, I saw it. They were fighting in the display, and the locket fell from the tall guy’s pocket.”
    “You sometimes make things up, is why I’m asking. You tell me crazy things and I believe you and then I feel stupid.”
    “I haven’t done that in a long time.”
    “Well, it’s utterly weird. But I’ve heard weirder things lately. Did you watch the news this morning?”
    “About the two guys who hijacked the window-washing platform and took it up to the thirtieth floor?”
    “Uh-huh. It’s the heat. It’s making everyone utterly crazy.”
    They were strolling down Astrologer’s Walk, a wide, tree-shaded lane that ran behind the museum. Eric looked up at the tall arched windows of clouded glass set into the blackened brick. On the other side of the path rose the gleaming shell of the new mall. It was nearly finished construction, a smooth veneer of steel and mirrored chrome supported by massive metallic buttresses and ventilation pipes. Work crews on scaffolding were fitting plates of glass onto the top level. The roar of winch motors and heavy machinery battered Eric’s ears.
    “Hey, that’s a great rip,” Chris said, nodding at Eric’s jeans.
    “My knee went through,” Eric told him a little impatiently.
    “Oh.” Chris looked down at his own pair of designer jeans, which had a long slash above each knee and a second set of rips at mid-thigh. “Mine came this way. They make you pay for it, too, believe me. Costs a friggin’ fortune.”
    “You buy them,” Eric pointed out.
    “Peer pressure,” Chris countered. “Utterly beyond my control.”
    “Like the nose ring.”
    “You got it.” He touched the metal stud in his nostril.
    “What if driving a nail into your head comes into fashion?”
    Skinny geek. That rankled him. Well, it was true enough. He glanced enviously over at Chris. He wasn’t much taller than Eric, but he was a lot bigger, with broad shoulders and a filled-out chest. And Chris’s jeans were solid-looking, the fabric falling in smooth, straight lines, unlike the baggy husks of his own pant legs. Chicken legs. Like father like son. He hated it. At least he didn’t wear glasses. That would have been the final humiliation.
    “So what did you want to show me?” he asked. Chris had called him early that morning, insisting that there was something he had to see at the new mall.
    “Even you, techno-serf, will like this.