Read 05-A Gift From Earth for Free Online

Myths."
    Oh, shut up , Matt thought. It was all cover for what was really going on, and he wasn't a part of that. He dropped back out of the circle, hoping nobody would notice him —  except Polly. Nobody did. He eased toward the bar for a refill.
    Harry Kane was gone, replaced by a kid somewhat younger than Matt, one who wouldn't last another half hour if he kept sampling his own wares. When Matt tasted his drink, it was mostly vodka. And when he turned around, there was Polly, laughing at his puckered face.

    The half-dozen suspects were deeply asleep along one wall of the patrol wagon. A white-garbed Implementation medic looked up as Jesus Pietro entered. "Oh, there you are, sir. I think these three must be deadheads. The others had mechanisms in their ears."
    The night outside was as black as always on moonless Mount Lookitthat. Jesus Pietro had left Millard Parlette standing before the glass wall of the organ banks, contemplating ... whatever he might be contemplating. Eternal life? Not likely. Even Millard Parlette, one hundred and ninety years old, would die when his central nervous system wore out. You couldn't transplant brains without transplanting memories. What had Parlette been thinking? His expression had been very odd.
    Jesus Pietro took a suspect's head in his hands and rolled it to look in the ears. The body rolled too, limply, passively. "I don't see anything."
    "When we tried to remove the mechanism, it evaporated. So did the old woman's. This girl still has hers."
    "Good." He bent to look. Far down in the left ear, too deep for fingers to reach it, was something colored dead black with a rim of fleshy pink. He said, "Get a microphone.
    The man made a call. Jesus Pietro waited impatiently for someone to bring a mike. Someone eventually did. Jesus Pietro held it against the girl's head and turned the sound up high.
    Rustling noises came in an amplified crackle.
    "Tape it on," said Jesus Pietro. The medic stretched the girl on her side and taped the mike against her head. The thunder of rustling stopped, and the interior of the wagon was full of the deep drumbeat sound of her arteries.
    "How long since anybody left the meeting?"
    "That was these two, sir. About twenty minutes."
    The door in back opened to admit two men and two women, unconscious, on stretchers. One man had a hearing aid.
    "Obviously they don't have a signal to show they're clear," said Jesus Pietro. "Foolish." Now, if he'd been running the Sons of Earth ...
    Come to think of it, he might send out decoys, expendable members. If the first few didn't come back, he'd send out more, at random intervals, while the leaders escaped.
    Escaped where? His men had found no exit routes; the sonics reported no tunnels underground.
    It was seconds before Jesus Pietro noticed that the mike was speaking. The sounds were that low. Quickly he put his ear to the loudspeaker.
    "Stay until you feel like leaving, then leave. Remember, this is an ordinary party, open-house style. However, those of you who have nothing important to say should've gone by midnight. Those who wish to speak to me should use the usual channels. Remember not to try to remove the earpieces; they will disintegrate of themselves at six o'clock. Now enjoy yourselves!"
    "What's he say?" asked the medic.
    "Nothing important. I wish I could be sure that was Kane." Jesus Pietro nodded briefly at the medic and the two cops. "Keep it up," he said, and stepped out into the night.
        
    "Why'd you leave? It was just getting interesting."
    "No it wasn't, and my glass was empty, and anyway I was hoping you'd follow."
    Polly laughed. "You must believe in miracles."
    "True. Why'd you leave?"
    Embedded in wall-to-wall humanity, drowned in a waterfall of human voices, Polly and Matt nevertheless had a sort of privacy. Manners and lack of interest would prevent anyone from actually listening to them. Hence nobody could hear them; for how could anyone concentrate on two conversations at once? They might