The Thousand - Kevin Guilfoile [0]
Cast of Shadows
For Mo
a cognizant original v5 release october 13 2010
Contents
Cover
Other Books by This Author
Title Page
Dedication
Things Can Get So Strange So Fast
Part 1 - Monad
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Part 2 - Dyad
Chapter 3 - Tuesday, July 13
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6 - Wednesday, July 14
Chapter 7 - As Much of the Truth
Chapter 8
Chapter 9 - Thursday, July 15
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14 - Friday, July 16
Chapter 15
Chapter 16 - Monday, July 19
Chapter 17
Part 3 - Triad
Chapter 18 - Friday, July 23
Chapter 19 - Monday, July 26
Chapter 20
Chapter 21 - Tuesday, July 27
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24 - Wednesday, July 28
Chapter 25
Chapter 26 - Thursday, July 29
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29 - Friday, July 30
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33 - Saturday, July 31
Chapter 34
Part 4 - Tetrad
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38 - Sunday, August 1
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41 - Monday, August 2
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46 - Tuesday, August 3
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54 - The Rest of the Truth
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75 - The Following Spring
Chapter 76
Acknowledgments
A Note About the Author
Copyright
We are the most dangerous species of life on the planet, and every other species, even the earth itself, has cause to fear our power to exterminate. But we are also the only species which, when it chooses to do so, will go to great effort to save what it might destroy.
—Wallace Stegner
THINGS CAN GET SO STRANGE SO FAST
SHE WAS SITTING at a kidney-shaped blackjack table, barely glancing at her cards. Her hair was mostly dark, but she wasn’t brunette. What would you call that? Maroon? Venetian? Indian Red? Firebrick? Wayne had never seen a crayon that color. And her eyes, great big almonds of eyes, even the casino’s expensive German cameras couldn’t tell him what color her eyes were.
“Here’s what you gotta do,” Peter said, tossing the remains of his newspaper between their desks. “You gotta bury yourself in mud.”
Wayne Jennings recognized this girl on his screen. She was a poker player. A pretty good one. So why is she playing blackjack in my casino? And for small stakes, too. The poker pros he knew preferred games where skill could tip the balance in their favor. Even a perfect blackjack player could only draw the odds close to even.
“You gotta bury yourself in mud,” Peter said again. He was maybe twenty pounds lighter than Wayne, a barely noticeable amount at their size. Like Wayne, he had played college football, lower on the depth chart and at a smaller school.
“What?”
“I was watching this show on PBS last night. They got these satellites that can detect your heat signature from space. So that means they could do it with a helicopter, too, no problem. When you sleep at night, no matter how thick the tree canopy or whatever, you gotta bury yourself in mud. Eliminate your heat signature.”
Peter had a long list of odd interests. One of them was M. C. Escher. He had prints of those crazy drawings all over his apartment. Another was UFOs. The most annoying was disappearing. He thought endlessly about the ways a normal person could erase any trace of himself. To run away and never be found. To scrub the earth of any evidence he still existed. As a result, his casual office conversation was littered with words like heat signature and epithelials and tree canopy. “Bury yourself in mud” was something like Peter Trembley’s thirty-seventh rule of disappearing into thin air. Exiting