Read The Credulity Nexus for Free Online Page A

anything, but it sure didn't
mean anything good. He couldn't keep the stuff at home, not around
Brie. He couldn't keep it at the station. He could just put it in a
locker at the bus depot or something, but what if it was stolen?
What if there was some freak accident? A quake, maybe? A public
place like that...
    He was almost
at the station. He had to stop agonising about it and do
something.
    “Pull over,”
he told the car, and it started looking for a parking spot.
    Brie was
right, of course. He should turn it in. But Brie didn't understand
that he couldn't let Rik down. Rik would never have sent it if it
wasn't important. And, with Rik lying low, maybe it was life and
death for him. But he had to do something with the damned
stuff.
    The car came
to a halt and he looked out through the windscreen, searching for
inspiration. And there it was, a big blue and white Post Office
sign. He knew Maria's address. He could send it to her. She lived
alone, as far as Blake knew. And if Rik came looking for his
package, he could send him on to see Maria.
    Maybe it would
be just what they needed to start talking again. Kill two birds
with one stone. Whatever kind of hole Rik was in, Blake was sure
his friend would benefit from seeing Maria again. He'd be doing
both of them a favour, and the package had already survived a trip
all the way from England. He'd wrap it up good in that new
shock-absorbent wrap they sell. It would only be in transit for a
few hours. Not a big risk at all.
    Pleased with
himself, he picked up the package and set off for the Post
Office.

Chapter 7
     
    Rik caught the
underground at East Ham station and had to change twice before he
got onto the Piccadilly Line to Heathrow Airport. At East Ham the
line was above ground, and he could watch the shabby suburbs rattle
by as he passed one run-down little Victorian station after
another. But after just a handful of stops, the line plunged
steeply downwards into the black belly of the great city. From that
point on, all he could do was watch his reflection in the window,
eating the barely-palatable sandwiches he'd bought on his way to
the station, and count off the stops to his next change.
    And go slowly
crazy with boredom.
    When Heathrow
tube station finally appeared, he almost knocked over a couple of
backpacking Aussie kids in his eagerness to get off the train. If
there was one thing he was starting to regret about this job, it
was the travelling! The thought of another four hours on a hopper
to LA, and then another hop to Mexico, and then twelve more hours
climbing the so-called high-speed Guadalajara Spacebridge, had him
knotted up and ready to scream.
    “Think about
the money,” he told himself. “Keep thinking about the goddamn
money.”
    The hopper
pads were way over the far side of the international terminals.
They'd tacked the pads on forty years before, when sub-orbital
flight was new and shiny. In all that time, they hadn't got round
to rebuilding the airport, even though flight by any other means
was now as rare as rainforest.
    Rik grumbled
to himself about it all the way across the airport. At least, he
promised himself, he'd be able to get a shower and pick up some
clean clothes when he got to Blake's house. The luggage he arrived
on Earth with was still in Berlin, and he didn't expect to see it
again. He'd had to dump his gun in a litter bin back in East Ham.
Without his identity as a PLEO and the license that went with it,
he'd be stopped trying to carry a weapon into the airport. Until he
reached LA, then, he was relying on body odour and a bad attitude
to keep the bad guys away.
    He bought a
coffee and a disposable reader and flopped into a hard plastic seat
in the departure lounge. He downloaded a novel from the airport net
and tried to read it. Big displays, spaced around the lounge, were
showing non-stop news and entertainment shows. They blared out a
constant, manic jabber that made it impossible to concentrate or
relax, but which was