The Rebellion Read Online Free Page B

scale. We had taken this as proof that we were not mutated freaks, as the Herder Faction and Council claimed, but a natural progression in human evolution. And what greater catalyst could have occurred than the Great White?
    However, the teknoguilders had regarded the book with skepticism after their initial euphoria, fearing it might merely be one of the fictions the Beforetimers had produced in such number. But the discovery of the actual Reichler Clinic must resolve all doubt.
    “Worth a bit of a walk through the dark, eh?” Garth sounded pleased by our reactions. He poked at my arm. “I thought since you discovered the book and argued so strongly that it was true, you should see this, my dear,” he added.
    “Strange to think of Beforetimers comin’ here to be tested to see if they was Misfits,” Fian said dreamily.
    I felt a strange chill at the thought that, a thousand years before, a girl like me might have come to the clinic, wondering if she was a freak because she could use her mind to speak to animals or to other people.
    Garth led the way through a door, and we found ourselves in a large room with metal benches. Windows along one wall opened to the darkness of the caves, while along another wall was a line of boxlike metal structures that were unmistakablyBeforetime machines. These were smaller than the ones in the Teknoguild cave network in the mountains to the north.
    “We know the Reichler Clinic was a paranormal research center,” Garth said in a lecturing tone of voice. “
Paranormal
was a Beforetime word for ‘Talented’ or ‘Misfit.’ As Fian said, people would come here to be tested. We had no expectation of finding the clinic, and once it was found, it never occurred to me that we would find much in the way of information, because damp has destroyed all but the most impervious materials in the city. And even they will not resist decay forever.”
    “Garth …,” Rushton began.
    “Patience,” Garth said, as if Rushton were an importunate novice. “As I was about to say, I did not expect to find anything here, but I was wrong. It appears that the people who ran the Reichler Clinic were forward-thinking, and they sealed much of their information in a slippery, waterproof, transparent material they called
plast
.” He bent down with a grunt and opened a cupboard, lifting out a sheaf of what first appeared to be pieces of paper. On closer examination, they proved to be made of some sort of pliable material. There were words on the sheets, but I could make nothing of them.
    “The plast-covered paper is absolutely impervious to water, although it is not resistant to heat. As you see, a good deal of the matter contained on the sheets is in one of the peculiar linguistic codes the Beforetimers were so fond of using. Hiding their information in this way always seemed to me a paranoid and pointless business, but as it transpired, they had cause to be careful and secretive. My guild is beginning to fathom many of the codes, and these sheets are in one that the Beforetimers called
Jerman
. Fian has specialized in thiscode, and he was able to translate enough to come up with some very odd intelligence—not about the Reichler Clinic but about another Beforetime organization.” He nodded regally at Fian, who took up the narrative.
    “I believe th’ code was used to store information that th’ folk who ran th’ Reichler Clinic wanted to keep secret,” the highlander said. “I’ve only just begun decodin’ th’ plasts, but it’s clear from what I’ve read so far that they wanted to conceal th’ fact that some of th’ Misfits they tested were not latent.”
    “Conceal it from whom?” I wondered, and Fian nodded.
    “That’s what got to me, too. Why would they want to hide what was basically proof of th’ things they wrote in that book ye found? Th’ answer was in th’ plast sheets. Th’ Reichler Clinic were bein’ investigated by a powerful organization called
Govamen
, which was