Strata Read Free

to work.
    Consider Kin Arad, now inspecting outline designs for the TY-archipelago:
    Twenty-one decades lie on her shoulders like temporal dandruff. She carries them lightly. Why not? People were never meant to grow old. Memory surgery helped.
    On her forehead, the golden disc that multiple centenarians often wore – it inspired respect, and often saved embarrassment. Not every woman relished attempted seduction by a man young enough to be her great-to-the-power-of-seven grandson. On the other hand, not every elderly woman wore a disc, on purpose … Her skin was presently midnight-black, like her wig – for some reason hair seldom survived the first century – and the baggy black all-suit.
    She was older than twenty-nine worlds, fourteen of which she had helped to build. Married seven times, in varying circumstances, once even under the influence of love. She met former husbands occasionally, for old times’ sake.
    She looked up when the carpet cleaner shuffled out of its nest in the wall and started to tidy up the sand trails. Her gaze travelled slowly round the room as though seeking for some particular thing. She paused, listening.
    A man appeared. One moment there was air: the next, a tall figure leaning against a file cabinet. He met her shocked gaze, and bowed.
    ‘Who the hell are you?’ exclaimed Kin, andreached for the intercom. He was quicker, diving across the room and grabbing her wrist politely yet agonizingly. She smiled grimly and, from a sitting position, brought her left hand across and gave him a scientific fistful of rings.
    When he had wiped the blood out of his eyes she was looking down at him and holding a stunner.
    ‘Don’t do anything aggressive,’ she said. ‘Don’t even breathe threateningly.’
    ‘You are a most unorthodox woman,’ he said, fingering his chin. The semi-sentient carpet cleaner bumped insistently around his ankles.
    ‘Who are you?’
    ‘Jago Jalo is my name. You are Kin Arad? But of course—’
    ‘How did you get in?’
    He turned round and vanished. Kin fired the stunner automatically. A circle of carpet went
wump
.
    ‘Missed,’ said a voice across the room.
    Wump
.
    ‘It was tactless of me to intrude like this, but if you would put that weapon away—’
    Wump
.
    ‘There could be mutual profit. Wouldn’t you like to know how to be invisible?’
    Kin hesitated, then lowered the stunner reluctantly.
    He appeared again. He wiped himself solid. Head and torso appeared as though an arm hadswept over them, the legs popped into view together.
    ‘It’s clever. I like it,’ said Kin. ‘If you disappear again I’ll set this thing on wide focus and spray the room. Congratulations. You’ve managed to engage my interest. That’s not easy, these days.’
    He sat down. Kin judged him to be at least fifty, though he could have been a century older. The very old moved with a certain style. He didn’t. He looked as though he’d been kept awake for a few years – pale, hairless, red-eyed. A face you could forget in an instant. Even his all-suit was a pale grey and, as he reached into a pocket, Kin’s hand moved up with the stunner.
    ‘Mind if I smoke?’ he said.
    ‘Smoke?’ said Kin, puzzled. ‘Go ahead. I don’t mind if you burst into flame.’
    Eyeing the stunner, he put a yellow cylinder into his mouth and lit it. Then he took it out and blew smoke.
    This man, thought Kin, is a dangerous maniac.
    ‘I can tell you about matter transmission,’ he said.
    ‘So can I. It’s not possible,’ said Kin wearily. So that was all he was – another goldbricker. Still, he could turn invisible.
    ‘They said that it was impossible to run a rocket in space,’ said Jalo. ‘They laughed at Goddard. They said he was a fool.’
    ‘They also said it about a lot of fools,’ said Kin, dismissing for the moment the question of whoGoddard was. ‘Have you got a matter transmitter to show me?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘But not here.’
    ‘No. There’s this, however.’ He made a