Read Online Sidney's Comet by Brian Herbert - Free Book Online Page A

desk. Judy asked her supervisor, but he just said, ‘Abercrombie is no longer with us.’ It’s all kinda weird, if you ask me.”
    A tray holding two Styrofoam cups of coffee and a plate of mini-donuts popped out of the table between Sidney and Carla. Carla signed a Tele-Charge board mounted next to the dice cage, then mento-spun the dice. Her results appeared on the Tele-Charge screen.
    “Five sixes!” she exclaimed. “That puts me in the Trip to Glitterland Sweepstakes! Now you try it!”
    Sidney signed the board, mento-spun the dice cage.
    “Aw,” she said, her voice reflecting disappointment. “Only a pair of fives.”
    “Oh well,” Sidney said, reaching for his coffee cup. “Guess I wasn’t meant to do anything exciting.”
    “I can’t believe it!” she said. “Just think! I could be a winner!”
    “Uh huh.”
    “Isn’t Freeness wonderful?”
    “Yeah.” Then his voice grew more cheerful as he said, “I’m happy for you.”
    Carla knocked over her coffee cup in her excitement, spilling liquid on her dress. “Dam!” she said, quivering as she reached for a napkin. “I’m so excited I can’t stop shaking.”
    Sidney used his napkin to wipe the table.
    “Thank you,” she said, dabbing at the dress with her napkin. “I’ll change as we leave. There’s a venda-dress machine in the lobby.”
    “That reminds me,” Sidney said. “What are you wearing to the reunion?”
    “I don’t know.” She lifted her gaze to the attentive eyes of Billie Birdbright. “I’ll shop for it tomorrow.”
    * * *
    General Munoz did not like to be kept waiting. Slapping his gold-braided military cap rhythmically against his thigh, he moto-paced the length of Dr. Hudson’s office. Passing from sunlight to shadow, he mentoed the digital cuckoo clock on the wall, noting the readout beneath the closed cuckoo bird doors: P.M. 3:39:26. He spun angrily as he reached an end wall, then saw Hudson standing in the doorway, holding a red velvet box.
    “Sorry I’m late,” Hudson said nervously. He entered and set the box on his desk. Adjusting his horn-rimmed glasses, he said, “You’re going to like this.”
    Munoz’s dark eyes flashed. “Hrrumph! Nearly ten minutes wasted! My time is valuable, you know!”
    Hudson kept his gaze on the box, smiled proudly at the corners of his mouth. “Open it.”
    Munoz rolled to the box with his orange mustache curled into a scowl, but there was a glint in his eyes. Setting his cap on the desk, he opened the box, then stared at a burnished gold cross and chain which lay on red velvet. “A cross? But I alrea . . . “ He stopped, noting Hudson’s bemused expression. Munoz lifted the cross out, studied it intently.
    “It looks like the cross you’ve always worn, General. But it’s more. Much more. The wearer of this baby commands all AmFed weather control machinery. Simply touch the cross with either hand and memo-transmit.”
    Munoz looked at the cross with disinterest.
    “This is a nicer, more compact system, General. We can dismantle the weather console now. . . . All that bulky equipment has been replaced by one little device. You can play God with this little unit, changing the weather as you please, wherever you are.”
    Still no response from General Munoz.
    “To monitor the results, you simply close your eyes and there it will be, dancing on the insides of your eyelids.”
    “Uh huh.”
    “Try it.”
    Munoz took a deep breath, touched the cross with one hand and thought of a tidal wave hitting an unpopulated stretch of Kamchatka coastline. He dropped his eyelids and saw a great wall of blue green ocean thundering toward shore. There was no sound in his vision, and the tidal wave hit land with unharnessed fury, destroying trees and land shapes in its path.
    “Interesting,” Munoz said. He opened his eyes, looked at Hudson with the expression of a spoiled child who wanted a better present. “Nice gadget, Dick,” he said.
    Hudson gathered his robe and sank into his