Atlantis Endgame Read Free

not that; it's us," Eveleen said. "I was thinking about it at the dojo today. They all ask after one another's families and friends, and if someone has a disaster, they rally. Oh, I know if we have problems the Project takes care of us—that's not it. It's just that I realized so many of our social and emotional networks—kinship networks, almost—were formed with people in the past, some on other planets, and we can never get those back. It's finished, because if we go back again in time, we risk ruining the now. We can pretend we live with normal people in the here and now, but we aren't really part of the contemporary world; we can't let ourselves be."
    Ross took her face in his hands so he could gaze down into those lovely brown eyes flecked with tiny bits of gold. I could swim in those eyes, he thought, but that was sensory reaction. What was she thinking? He remembered some of the poetry he'd tried to get out of reading when he was a school kid, proclaiming eyes as the window to the soul. Very poetic, except they weren't. You couldn't really tell what thoughts went on behind those eyes, even the eyes of one you loved more than anything or anybody. "What're we really talking about here?" he murmured. "You want to quit the Project, is that it?"
    She shook her head, smiling. "No. Because it really is our family, in a sense, even though we took this apartment to make a kind of grand gesture, as if we really do have a life outside Project Star. But there isn't one. We do have to admit it and not take out our annoyance on innocent busybodies like Mrs. Withan."
    Ross kissed her again. "All right. Got it. From now on, I promise to think of Mrs. W. as a normal, nice busybody."
    Eveleen laughed. "I give up. Lecture over! I'd better grab that shower, or when Gordon's call comes, I'll be not just hungry but grungy."
    "Oh! Almost forgot. He said the damndest thing right before lie took off. When we do meet up, he wants you to wear your gold earrings. Something dubious about those I don't know?" Tie wiggled his eyebrows.
    "If there is something dubious, no one told me," Eveleen said, going into the bedroom and coining out again with the earrings.
    They both looked down at the simple beaten gold hoops on her palms. Inexpensive for golden earrings, a style that women—and sometimes men, according to the vagaries of fashion—had been wearing for thousands of years.
    "My dad gave me these when I turned twenty-one," she said. "I don't think that exactly registers as dubious, mysterious, or otherwise provocative."
    Ross spread his hands. "Crazy."
    Eveleen laid down the earrings, and padded toward the bathroom. "But I guess yon never know! Watch 'em in case they suddenly start beeping mystery messages."
    "With our hick, they're more likely to explode," he said grimly.
    She was still laughing when the phone rang.

CHAPTER 2
     
     
    GORDON ASHE REACHED the restaurant twenty minutes early and was annoyed with himself. He could sit in the bar and brood for what would seem like twenty hours, or he could take his laptop in and look like a pompous fool. Or he could drive around the block twenty times.
    With a sigh of annoyance he got out of his car and tossed the keys to the parking attendant. He checked his watch again, knowing it was a stupid impulse. Thirty whole seconds had sped by!
    All right, he was in a sour mood anyway; why not go inside and brood.
    The restaurant was an old favorite. It wasn't dark as pitch inside—he hated that—and it had decent food without a lot of the pretentious posturing that seemed to go with it in tonier places. He headed for the bar, which was mostly empty, for the hour was early yet.
    A woman sat alone at the end. Tie almost looked away, but something in the curve of shoulder, the angle of her head zapped his memory. Twenty-five years he hadn't seen her, but he knew her immediately.
    "Is that you, Gordon?" Her voice hadn't changed.
    "Linnea?" His mind fumbled back and forth between two different tracks