Read Online The Adjacent by Christopher Priest - Free Book Online Page A

superficially. She was broader, taller, her breasts were slightly fuller, her waist was narrower. He guessed she was younger than Melanie had been, but it was difficult to tell by how much.
    ‘I still don’t know your name. Or who you are.’
    ‘You needn’t know.’
    ‘Why do you say that?’
    ‘Because of what I am and why I’m here with you.’
    ‘Then what are you?’
    ‘A woman with physical needs.’
    ‘And why?’
    ‘The same needs.’
    ‘More than that.’
    ‘A woman whose job doesn’t allow her a private life, so her physical needs become urgent.’
    ‘So you take what you can.’
    ‘No, I have almost no life outside my work. You have no idea of the arranging I’ve had to go to for you, tonight. Or the risk I’m running.’
    ‘Please tell me your name,’ he said.
    She held up her fingers, touched each one with her other hand, as if counting. She smiled. ‘Flo,’ she said. ‘You can call me Flo.’
    ‘Is that your real name?’
    ‘It could be.’ She was sitting erect, her back straight, her arms stretched out before her. She touched her fingertips to his chest. Her legs were folded around each other. She held his gaze steadily. It was an unnerving kind of calmness, not created by inner peace but by seeming to use some kind of tight control on herself. Tarent realized it made him tense up in reaction to it, because he did not know what she might do. He knew she was for some reason playing with him.‘Flo was what they called me,’ she said. ‘Years ago. No one uses that name now, so you can.’
    ‘Is it based on Florence?’
    ‘For a time I was a Florence. But that was never who I was. Nor what I am. Not then, not now.’ She was obviously tiring of his questions about her name, and used her fingers to flick his bare shoulder in mock annoyance. ‘I still want those pictures you took of me.’
    Trying to tease, he said, ‘You’ve gone to a lot of trouble for a couple of photographs, Flo.’
    ‘No. I wanted to fuck you. If you think that was trouble, you should see the trouble I can make for people if I have to. Going after a fuck is not what I call trouble.’
    ‘OK. Shall we have another fuck? Flo?’
    ‘In a while.’ She shifted her position, leaning back a little and stretching out her legs in front of her. She pinned them against his sides. ‘I’m still too hot.’
    She raised herself, reached for the window catch behind Tarent’s head. Her breast brushed against his cheek as she strained at the immovable bolt. The window remained sealed up, and she subsided.
    ‘In some of our buildings, a few of the windows still open,’ she said.
    ‘Our buildings?’
    ‘The MoD.’
    ‘So that’s who you work for.’
    ‘Why are you so curious about me?’
    ‘I like to know who I’m with. All I know about you is that you travel about the country in an armoured Mebsher, with a minder.’
    ‘So do you.’
    ‘I don’t have a minder.’
    ‘As it happens, you do. As it happens, it’s me. I’ve been assigned to you.’
    ‘I was told – I’d missed the transport I was supposed to be in. They said there was another Mebsher in the region and it detoured to pick me up. That doesn’t sound like you were assigned to anything. You just happened to be aboard.’
    ‘We knew where you were. After the storm had passed a call went out for one of the personnel carriers to collect you. There are four or five Mebshers en route to Hull at the moment – there’s a departmental meeting coming up. When I heard it was you, I decided I’d be the one to pick you up.’
    ‘I thought you said you don’t go to trouble to get laid.’
    ‘I don’t. Trouble is what I do when I’m in the office. I wanted to meet you, not because I wanted to get laid but because of what happened to you in Turkey.’
    ‘So how do you know about me?’
    ‘We have ways. You’re at diplomatic level, which means the files are open to our office.’ She briefly tossed her head, flicked her hair back. She laid her fingers