The Arcturus Man Read Free Page A

disliked taking orders from Sami Zhidov. Smolenskiy didn’t like Jews and
Sami was a Jew of the worst kind.
He despised fat people.
He hated Bulgarians.
Sami
was all these things.
His orders were strict. Under no circumstances was he to eliminate the Latvian in
a public area. He must use the sniper rifle when the quarry was alone or virtually alone.
Smolenskiy lived for the moment his bullet strikes the rabbit--as he preferred to call the
prey--at hundreds of meters.
He enjoyed seeing the hit through his high-powered scope
and the fear in the rabbit’s eyes as the realization he was dying came home. For the moment, he had to watch and he had to wait. He could derive some gratification in making a
killing act last a long time. It could be satisfying to a psychopath. The predation brought
its own pleasures.
An attractive young woman pulled into the parking lot.
Smolenskiy recognized
her. She was a student at M.I.T. She had been one of his students. He couldn’t remember her name but he was certain he knew her. Was this a complication? Perhaps! Someone was here who could recognize him. He decided to wait for a better time and a better
place for the kill.
    The sinking late noon sun still glared through the smoky glass panes.
Jared kept
looking out the window through the glare. He knew that he was being watched. It felt a
little ominous, but he didn’t sense any imminent danger. Then again, perhaps it was nothing.
When he was out in the general population, he often felt the menacing thoughts
people harbored about one thing or another. It was a sad and pathetic world.
    He preferred to watch a beautiful, young woman walking outside. He focused on
her. She was interesting. The white shorts were perfect. She wasn’t wearing a bra, just a
thin blue blouse. He liked the way she moved. They were just fatty deposits on her body,
but they were delightful fatty deposits.
    “ Glutei maximi … Stop it ,” he said to himself. Why was he questioning it?
“ Analysis is paralysis ,” he thought again.
He liked sex. It was one of the very few things he had in common with everyone
    else—with the Home sapiens . Why couldn’t he stop analyzing it? It was the language of
chemistry in his body, a language he spoke so fluently. Trees talked to other trees by releasing a scent that a caterpillar invasion was coming.
The trees receiving the message
would release new toxins in their sap to ward off the attack. Every thought in every person’s mind was spoken in a chemical language.
Every vision was chemistry. Chemistry
was a silent language that people didn’t know was all around them and within them. He
understood this language. He was eloquent. As importantly, he also understood the language of pheromones.
    He had the typical dark blonde hair of most Latvians and a rugged look that some
women found intersting. He thought about women often, however, even though he didn’t
usually act on his impulses. He was about to focus on her as she climbed into her silver
Land Rover, but suddenly something flitted in front of him.
    Out of the corner of his eye he glimpsed a very old black woman walking into
Ashley’s.
She was old enough to have gotten that brittle look.
She was tiny.
A faded
black dress draped her small body. Limp yellowed white lace framed her dark skin. She
was dressed for church. She must have come from church. He had never seen her at Ashley’s before. He remembered everyone.
“Was today Sunday? Already?” thought Jared.
     
A gold wedding ring glinted in the sunlight coming through the window. She
didn't have a car.
     
“ What church is close?”
    There were no churches in this neighborhood. For that matter, a Negro was relatively rare anywhere in Maine.
There were some Ethiopian refugees in the larger cities,
like Portland, but she certainly wasn’t Ethiopian. Where did she come from?
How did
she get here? Could she have walked here without breaking?
And then, Jared began to
understand her. She was Lucy in the Sky with