The Delphi Agenda (42 page)

“Something’s changed,” Steve said with a sad smile. “You’re different.”

“Yes.”

Ted and Marianne walked away toward the opposite side of the track. He was saying, “The people here may have been telling people what was going to happen, but they were still betting on the games.” They stopped in the middle and looked back at Steve and Lisa. “Isn’t that curious, Marianne?”

“Yes, Ted, they were betting on the games. It’s ironic, I suppose.”

“And what does that tell us, love?” Their conversation faded, carried off by the breeze.

Steve took the box from Lisa’s hands and closed it. “What happens now?”

Her answering smile was bright. “Who knows, Steve Viginaire?” She laughed gaily. “As Lorenzo di Medici said, ‘
Di doman non ce certezza
. The future is uncertain.” She put her arms around him and whispered in his ear. “Won’t it be interesting to see what we make of it?”

THE END

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The Thriller in Paradise Series:

VECTOR

TOXIN

VENOM

Also by Rob Swigart

Archaeology Novels:

STONE MIRROR

XIBALBA GATE

Satire:

LITTLE AMERICA

A.K.A./A COSMIC FABLE

THE TIME TRIP

Science Fiction:

THE BOOK OF REVELATIONS

PORTAL

ROB SWIGART is the author of one nonfiction book, four electronic fiction titles, and 11 novels, including
Little America
, declared as “Wildly funny…” by the
LA Times
, and hailed as a “Bold and brassy…breathless romp with prose that crackles like a live wire, bites like a rabid dog, [and] smoothes like 30-year-old Scotch,” by the
San Francisco Review of Books
. His classic and highly revered interactive novel
Portal
has attained near cult status as the first ever narrative “game” produced by Activision, published two years later as a hard copy novel by St. Martin’s Press, and heralded as “spooky, audacious, breakthrough science fiction” by Timothy Leary.

Now a visiting scholar at the Stanford University Archeology Center, Swigart’s most recent books include
The Delphi Agenda,
as well as two teaching novels,
Xibalbá Gate
, a novel of the Ancient Maya, published by AltaMira, and
Stone Mirror,
a novel of the Neolithic, by Left Coast Press. These works weave near-future science fiction with famous and obscure archeological events, melding true fact and fiction as a conscious product of Swigart’s lifelong passion for using narrative to tell stories of the past as found in material records. He is currently working on a nonfiction book about the Neolithic.