City of Pearl Read Free Page A

as she approached. They all looked her over, and she looked at them. They looked away first.
    â€œIt’s just weed control,” said one. “We’re working on Chenopodium strains.”
    â€œI haven’t cautioned you, so perhaps you’d like to save it for the interview,” Shan said. “But it’s useful to know it’s Chenopodium, seeing as that’s also a food staple in some areas, and your organization does have some track record in contaminating crop species.”
    â€œHey, Warrenders wiped out the opium poppy.”
    â€œYeah, and spelt, and non-GM millet. Like I said—I haven’t read you your rights yet. Save it for later.”
    She walked away, leaving a hard silence and then a hum of hushed voices behind her. The word “unaltered” filtered through. She was glad they could see that she was one of the few with plain old unaltered human genes. It would psych them out a little further, that hint of wildness and savagery. It was no more than her mother’s Pagan distrust of any medical treatment involving gene therapy, but it had its propaganda uses. McEvoy brushed against her arm.
    â€œWell, that confirms the Foreign Office suspicions,” he said. “Maybe they are developing a crop killer for some tinpot government.”
    â€œCould just as easily be our own.” She found it harder than ever to ignore the closed hatchways flanking her while she walked. To McEvoy, they were probably still just closed doors. To her, there was always something behind them, something disturbing and brutal and sickening. She wondered if she’d ever look at doors and see just openings again. There were always things behind them and once you saw what was there, you could never shut them again, not even with plenty of alcohol. They would always be as laden with sinister meaning for her as kitchen knives and cleaning fluids.
    â€œBet you’ll miss all this,” said McEvoy.
    Shan shook her head. I want to be like other people. I want to look at ordinary things and not see all the pain that they can cause. “I don’t think I’ll be able to miss it at all.”
    â€œYou could get a lot more pension contributions out of private security work, you know.”
    â€œI’m not interested in watching anyone else’s arse any longer. Not even for a better pension.”
    â€œNot the smallholding thing, Guv?”
    â€œI kept saying I’d get a life one day, and now I’m going to do it before I’m too old to bloody well enjoy it.” She thought of her tomatoes. It was reassuring trivia—trivia, the details other people didn’t want you to look at, the clues, the building blocks, the very texture of life. But yes, she would miss the family of uniform. And getting by financially was a concern. “Don’t forget that, Rob. You think you’ve got all those years ahead of you but they get eaten up fast. And you with them.”
    She wanted to explain to him about all the corners she had cut and all the gray areas he would have to make black and white when he succeeded her, but her swiss chirped in her pocket and saved her from regret. She flipped it open and checked the message. “Well, the Foreign Office has a team inbound. They could have said so before we embarked, couldn’t they? I hate joint ops with civvies.”
    â€œHow long?”
    â€œEight hours.”
    It was typical of another department to do this without telling EnHaz. Shit, they probably set out at the same time as she did. She concentrated on the prospect of signing out of the service and made her way back to her cabin. As she walked—and it was a long walk following the central ring of the orbital—she passed the occasional station worker who hadn’t been confined to quarters. Sometimes they stared and sometimes they just looked away.
    It was definitely time to pack it all in. Staying objective was getting to be a struggle