Read Germline: The Subterrene War: Book 1 for Free Online Page B

slickest rap, the one I used to hit some source, pry out the information with finesse. He looked at me then and smiled, said really quietly, “You’ll find out, Kaz will suck you in, won’t let go. And you’ll go down smiling like we all do, because there is no world anymore. Except Kaz.” I didn’t get it back then, and didn’t really take it now, but thought I did, only it never became clear until much later what the guy had really been saying. This was only the beginning of a mind trip. Call it false clarity on the way down, a misguided belief that crept in on my way out of the hotel to fool me intothinking I had it all figured out: you
smiled
at the war because it
took
war to show you good shit, to show you human beings. Back then, I thought
that
was the answer.
    The walk to the north side of Shymkent went quickly and it took only an hour to find someone at the Marine supply depot willing to deal. Zip. I bought a month’s worth. The train station wasn’t too far, so I hit it, trying to move fast enough to keep from freezing, and on the way thought about how I would get north.
    As soon as I stepped onto the station platform, a colonel slapped me on the back.
    “
Stripes,
right?”
    “Yeah, Colonel. Wendell. How’d you know?”
    He lit a cigar and blew the smoke over his shoulder. “I thought I recognized you, saw you in Pavlodar. Can’t wait to see your piece on my Marines, son.”
    “Yes, sir,” I said, “I just gave it to my bureau. Headed back to Pavlodar now.”
    “That might be a problem,” he said.
    “Why?”
    “Only genetics are being allowed transit passes to the northern sector.” The colonel thought for a second. “But I could get you in
with
them.”
    The idea made me shiver. I remembered what I had seen of them, innocent murderers. “Sir, I don’t have a combat suit and it’s freezing.”
    “I’ll be back in a second, to bring you a suit.” He pulled me toward a passenger car and helped me get inside. “Get in, hang tight.”
    I had my pack and sat on it, waiting for my eyes to adjust to the darkness, and when they did, I nearly freaked.
    Wall-to-wall betties, all around me—genetics—who stared at me with a vacant,
I-could-kill-you-or-screw-you-and-not-care-about-either
look.
    The suit didn’t fit right. Getting into the undersuit in front of those chicks was another hassle, a tale of embarrassment that I’m sure would have been hilarious to Ox if he had been there. Forty of them, watching me deal with the hoses, my face red.
    Horses—they were like horses or mules. It occurred to me after sealing the suit and hanging my helmet that these girls were low, way down in the order of things, lower than grunts. Draft animals. The military had taken a passenger car and ripped everything out except the steam heat and a samovar so they could cram as many bodies in as possible, stack Gs like vertical cordwood one layer thick.
    I cracked my first tin, then smelled it. Like a summer vacation, the first bit went in easy, hit all the right mental spots, and I melted from the inside, grinned for the first time since leaving Shymkent—until the girl across from me grinned back. That killed it. I just wanted to zip, to ignore the fact that I had been shoved into a train full of Gs, and never thought the things would actually talk to me. Who knew they smiled?
    “You wish for the line,” she said. The others glanced up then, curious.
    I nodded. “Yeah. I left a friend there.”
    “I left many friends there, sisters. I miss the line too. It is where we find our best selves.”
    “Baby, you have no idea how much I understand that.”It took me a second to figure out why they looked so different this time. “Don’t you guys usually wear thermal block?”
    She touched her face, like she wasn’t sure whether she had any on. “Some do, but we all wear helmets in combat. Time enough for thermal block, time for everything. I remember you.”
    “Excuse me?”
    She reached out and placed her