Read Online Skypoint by Phil Ford - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Phil Ford
Tags: Fiction, General, Science-Fiction, Sagas, Children's Books - Young Adult Fiction, Fiction - Science Fiction, Space Opera, Science Fiction & Fantasy, Science Fiction, Space Opera
Ads: Link
and he didn’t blame her.
Instead he said, ‘I suppose we should count that as our first marital.’
TEN
Toshiko didn’t want Owen to think a joke was going to get him off the hook just like that.
With barely a word she had gone into the bedroom and grabbed the messenger bag that carried her equipment then told him she was going to take a look around as she went through the front door.
‘I’m getting on with the job,’ she said as the door closed.
It didn’t hit her until she got into the elevator that she was following the ritual of domestic politics she had grown up watching her mother employ on her dad.
Never let a man know you’ve accepted his apology. Let him sweat a little more first.
Her mother had never actually tutored her in the fine art of male-female power games, but it was the sort of thing she would have said. And the young Toshiko had seen her employ the gambit so many times, she had come to understand its mechanics the way a lion cub learns to hunt.
The longer you leave it, the more opportunity he has to buy you something nice.
Toshiko rode the elevator down to the basement. As long as she was playing sexual politics with Owen, she might as well get on with what she had told him she was doing, she thought. When she and Jack had snuck into SkyPoint before, she had been unable to pick up any Rift activity, but she had been wondering if it was possible that the building itself was somehow masking the energies that would normally mark its presence. She didn’t have the first idea how that could be the case, but she figured that the best place to look for a clear trace was at the building’s foundation.
So, the basement.
It wasn’t part of the regular itinerary for residents using the elevator – access to the basement was through a button with a key that Toshiko guessed would be carried by the building’s maintenance people. But it was going to be a pretty special key that stopped Toshiko Sato going where she wanted.
A few seconds later, the elevator doors opened in the SkyPoint basement.
She had pulled up the SkyPoint blueprints in the Hub before Jack and she had made that first visit. She now had them on the screen of her hand-held computer. The basement was below SkyPoint’s underground car park, and that put her now at twelve metres below the surface. She shivered. It was cold down here. Nothing all that strange about that, she thought, and the Rift didn’t work like so-called psychic activity – supposedly haunted locations were said universally to register markedly lower than ambient temperatures; Toshiko’s research had in fact shown that Rift activity often created a slight increase in temperature. Scientifically that made sense: the power involved in tearing a passageway between dimensions would inevitably create an energy fallout that would most easily be manifest as a brief temperature boost. It was basic physics. That was why Toshiko didn’t believe in ghosts. Even if there were ghosts, they couldn’t hurt you – the things that came through the Cardiff Rift were something else, altogether.
Light from the elevator fell across a board of switches on the wall, but Toshiko took a flashlight from her bag – the darkness of the subterranean level was comforting, it meant that no one else was already down here. If a janitor turned up before she completed her readings, she didn’t see why she should advertise her presence.
The flashlight burned a hole in the darkness and picked out an expanse of piping and wiring beyond her. Holding the torch at shoulder height, she stepped into the darkness and the elevator doors hissed to behind her. The only light now was that of the torch beam and the glow of the hand-held. Moving further into the gloom, Toshiko switched screens on the hand-held with a practised movement of her thumb. The SkyPoint plans were replaced by a graphic that would pick up the slightest hint of Rift activity. She had taken four steps across the basement floor
Instead he said, ‘I suppose we should count that as our first marital.’
TEN
Toshiko didn’t want Owen to think a joke was going to get him off the hook just like that.
With barely a word she had gone into the bedroom and grabbed the messenger bag that carried her equipment then told him she was going to take a look around as she went through the front door.
‘I’m getting on with the job,’ she said as the door closed.
It didn’t hit her until she got into the elevator that she was following the ritual of domestic politics she had grown up watching her mother employ on her dad.
Never let a man know you’ve accepted his apology. Let him sweat a little more first.
Her mother had never actually tutored her in the fine art of male-female power games, but it was the sort of thing she would have said. And the young Toshiko had seen her employ the gambit so many times, she had come to understand its mechanics the way a lion cub learns to hunt.
The longer you leave it, the more opportunity he has to buy you something nice.
Toshiko rode the elevator down to the basement. As long as she was playing sexual politics with Owen, she might as well get on with what she had told him she was doing, she thought. When she and Jack had snuck into SkyPoint before, she had been unable to pick up any Rift activity, but she had been wondering if it was possible that the building itself was somehow masking the energies that would normally mark its presence. She didn’t have the first idea how that could be the case, but she figured that the best place to look for a clear trace was at the building’s foundation.
So, the basement.
It wasn’t part of the regular itinerary for residents using the elevator – access to the basement was through a button with a key that Toshiko guessed would be carried by the building’s maintenance people. But it was going to be a pretty special key that stopped Toshiko Sato going where she wanted.
A few seconds later, the elevator doors opened in the SkyPoint basement.
She had pulled up the SkyPoint blueprints in the Hub before Jack and she had made that first visit. She now had them on the screen of her hand-held computer. The basement was below SkyPoint’s underground car park, and that put her now at twelve metres below the surface. She shivered. It was cold down here. Nothing all that strange about that, she thought, and the Rift didn’t work like so-called psychic activity – supposedly haunted locations were said universally to register markedly lower than ambient temperatures; Toshiko’s research had in fact shown that Rift activity often created a slight increase in temperature. Scientifically that made sense: the power involved in tearing a passageway between dimensions would inevitably create an energy fallout that would most easily be manifest as a brief temperature boost. It was basic physics. That was why Toshiko didn’t believe in ghosts. Even if there were ghosts, they couldn’t hurt you – the things that came through the Cardiff Rift were something else, altogether.
Light from the elevator fell across a board of switches on the wall, but Toshiko took a flashlight from her bag – the darkness of the subterranean level was comforting, it meant that no one else was already down here. If a janitor turned up before she completed her readings, she didn’t see why she should advertise her presence.
The flashlight burned a hole in the darkness and picked out an expanse of piping and wiring beyond her. Holding the torch at shoulder height, she stepped into the darkness and the elevator doors hissed to behind her. The only light now was that of the torch beam and the glow of the hand-held. Moving further into the gloom, Toshiko switched screens on the hand-held with a practised movement of her thumb. The SkyPoint plans were replaced by a graphic that would pick up the slightest hint of Rift activity. She had taken four steps across the basement floor
Similar Books
