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eBook Category: Science Fiction AnLab Award Runner-up, Locus Poll Award Nominee
eBook Description: Ex-cop Hugh Longworth is dying, looks it and knows it. AIDS has been largely beaten, but there are a very few who have a variant Hugh suffers from.... It's called TRAIDS, or Treatment Resistant AIDS. Those few thousand, and others dying of other incurable diseases, are prey to quacks and con artists offering 'miracle' cures, the predator much more easily able to find his or her prey in the Information Age. Hugh is spending the last months of his life working undercover for a Federal task force which is trying to locate and close down as many of these amoral merchants of false hope. The latest place he is sent both meets and misses his cynical expectations. It is a Native American Veterinarian offering a sure-fire cure for his incurable condition. The more he learns the less clear-cut things become, and he finds himself fighting against that most dangerous of enemies to a man in his situation: hope.

eBook Publisher: Fictionwise.com, Published: Analog, 1999
Fictionwise Release Date: November 2002

34 Reader Ratings: Great Good OK Poor

Available eBook Formats [MultiFormat - What's this?]: Adobe Acrobat (PDF) [136 KB], eReader (PDB) [51 KB], Palm Doc (PDB) [40 KB], Rocket/REB1100 (RB) [36 KB], Microsoft Reader (LIT) [81 KB] - PocketPC 1.0+ Compatible, Franklin eBookMan (FUB) [109 KB], hiebook (KML) [116 KB], Sony Reader (LRF) [72 KB], iSilo (PDB) [33 KB], Mobipocket (PRC) [42 KB], Kindle Compatible (MOBI) [69 KB], OEBFF Format (IMP) [57 KB]
Words: 11789
Reading time: 33-47 min.
Microsoft Reader (LIT) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
Adobe Acrobat (PDF) Format:  Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud DISABLED
All Other formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED

Vultures, Hugh Longworth thought sourly as he turned a weary warning scowl on the panhandler buckbumming him as he tried to get into the cab. They're everywhere.

He was beyond tired, and god how he hurt. The plane ride had been pure misery. The stews had treated him like a leper. The old prune in the next seat had all but beaten him over the head with her Bible in her attempts to instruct him in the error of his ways. The smell of the inflight lunch had nearly driven him to spend the rest of the trip in the head, writing a Ralph Report in quadruplicate--which actually might have been more pleasant than old pucker-mouth's braindamaged pronouncements.

Now this. He was tempted, really tempted, to reach into his bag, haul out his piece, jam it up under the glomrat's stubbly chin, and suggest that he get out of his face and go find a new venue, posthaste. Maybe go get his worthless ass run over trying to wash the windshields of passing semis on the freeway.

But he was keeping a low profile. Very soon, far bigger game would be in his crosshairs.

Besides, he still had enough of his old mojo working for the look on his face--and the face that look was on--to send the gimme scuttling away.