Read Online Edge by Michael Cadnum - Free Book Online Page A

something solid to consider, a historic event that could be weighed and argued.
    â€œMaybe, when they had a chance to think, they realized that it wasn’t fun any more,” she suggested, like someone offering a tentative theory on the collapse of the French Revolution.
    I nodded, trying to think about what she was saying. Bea and I had once been very close, but I had felt distant from her lately. Now I felt grateful for her—not just for her companionship but for her odd, puzzling personality and for the fact that I didn’t have to get to know her, like the doctor, the detective, all these strangers who were suddenly so important.
    â€œI want you to tell your father something,” she said. She had never met my father, although she had seen him at a distance, hurrying to his car.
    I must have stared down at her with some tension in my eyes, in my body. Bea was close to saying something rash, something that could change our luck.
    â€œTell him that reading Prehistoric Future made me cry,” she said. “Especially at the end,” she said. I didn’t want her to continue, but she did. “When he said that even if there were no human beings, life would still be a miracle.”

T WELVE
    I found a place to park the Volvo all the way out on the street. The parking lot was full of cars with out-of-state licenses, New Jersey, Iowa.
    The Golden Gate Motel on outer Geary was maybe a mile from the hospital, and it had a coffee shop and a swimming pool, heads tossing in the water like cabbages. The bleach odor of the pool drifted all the way across the parking lot, along with the sound of someone pretending to drown, spluttering, thrashing. The pool closed at ten, according to the rules under NO LIFEGUARD ON DUTY . It was nearly eleven.
    Mom was on the phone in the motel room, nodding approval as her suitcase rattled in behind me on its swivel wheels.
    She hung up and said, “Dr. Monrovia ate lunch at the White House last month.”
    The people in the swimming pool were having a party, everyone drowning, spluttering back to life. “That’s good news,” I said. My voice was tense, fake-confident, but I managed to sound more or less like myself. “Dad could wake up to see the president bending over him. Should be very reassuring.”
    â€œDr. Monrovia is very prominent,” she said.
    For an intelligent person, my mother falls for clichés. I have actually heard her refer to a real estate lawyer as “powerful and well-to-do.”
    â€œI called the American Express toll-free 800 number,” she said. “They were very helpful,” she said, almost dreamily.
    â€œHow about the other cards?”
    â€œI took care of all of them. Even the Chevron card.”
    â€œIs there any news from the hospital?”
    She didn’t answer me directly, putting the white-and-green Golden Gate Motel pencil right next to the notepad, as though neatness was all that mattered. Then she tilted her head and let her eyes flick towards me: no news.
    Bodies splashed, voices called, giggles, shouts.
    â€œWhat did you find out about Detective Unruh?”
    â€œI’m not worried about the detective,” she said, taking a deep breath now and then, like someone battling hiccups, a sort of instinctive breathing exercise to calm herself down. “Did you pack my floss?”
    I didn’t answer at once. “I think there’s a Walgreen’s not far from here.”
    I picked up the telephone and was about to ask her for the hospital’s phone number.
    â€œDr. Monrovia suggested seriously that we all get a good night’s sleep,” she said. “He said that if there is any change, it will come tomorrow morning. Sofia has gone home, too.”
    Maybe my mother had noticed it, too—how much Dr. Monrovia was like my father in appearance. “I should give her a call,” I said. I was testing to see how Sofia and Mom were getting along.
    â€œIf