Read Online infinities by Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Scott Nicholson, Garry Kilworth, Eric Brown, John Grant, Anna Tambour, Kaitlin Queen, Iain Rowan, Linda Nagata, Keith Brooke - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Scott Nicholson, Garry Kilworth, Eric Brown, John Grant, Anna Tambour, Kaitlin Queen, Iain Rowan, Linda Nagata, Keith Brooke
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interest. The fact that much of the acting was as stiff as a clergyman's collar didn't detract from this – if anything, it added to that ambience I had so swiftly come to adore. A lot of the slang, being veddy British, meant nothing to me, but I was able to muddle through and get the general sense of it all.
That evening I didn't make the mistake of eating one of Mr. Perkins's hot dogs, but instead bought from him a couple of ham sandwiches with lashings of salad. I have never liked lying to my mother, and in fact have never been terribly good at it, so I thought it'd be handy during our weekly Monday-evening phonecall to be able to tell her truthfully that I'd had a – relatively – healthy supper.
I needn't have worried. Mom could talk about hardly anything except the latest hot news, which was that in the intervening week it had leaked out that Glenda Doberman was pregnant, and had thereby suddenly slipped out of the "nice" classification, being now worthy of no adjectives at all. I was reassured that I had had a lucky escape; the words "whore of Babylon" lurked somewhere just off-stage, but would forever remain there. My own theory was that Glenda, in a mad burst of frictional enthusiasm that excelled even her own many earlier efforts – which had earned her another nickname, The Human Tuning-Fork – had finally succeeded in melting the condom.
"And what have you been up to, Kurt?" asked Mom after several excited minutes, more by way of form than out of any true interest.
"Oh, nothing much. I went to the movies this afternoon."
"Shouldn't you have been studying?"
I explained to her about Monday afternoons and the undergraduates and the labs and the library and Mrs. Bellis's soap operas and the fish market. She sniffed cynically, but accepted the explanation. I told her about Reach for the Sky and The Man Who Never Was , and the silence at the other end of the line told me she was dutifully pretending to listen – that's what moms are for , after all: to listen to their sons. She'd listened to me all through my childhood and adolescence, doing the listening job of two parents because my father never saw it as his responsibility. She'd bought me my first baseball bat and glove, and spent hours in the back yard hitting the ball or pitching for me; she could have been fairly good at it if she'd ever taken the game seriously, but she showed no signs of disapproval when I proved to be quite hopeless. She drew the line at football, but she would shoot baskets with me for hours, or go out fishing on the lake with me, letting out perfectly genuine whoops of enthusiasm on the rare occasions when we caught anything. In homework she explored with me the equally torturous topics of algebra and the Punic Wars, never grumbling. But, more than all this, she'd listened to me when I explained my little-boy concerns as I'd discovered the world and my place in it.
"Such imaginations these moviemakers have," she said when at length I dried up. "It's so long since I've been to the cinema." There was a wistful note in her voice. "Your father doesn't believe in it. Says it's all Sodom and Gomorrah. And he's right, of course ..."
I felt like shouting at her that she should ignore the prejudices of an ignorant old bigot, but bit back the words. They wouldn't have done any good; all they'd have done was upset her.
As ever, the phone conversation ended in an unsatisfying tangle of desultory well-wishings. I returned the receiver to its hook at the bottom of the stairs, then climbed back up to my dreary little apartment. It was too late for soap operas, so Mrs. Bellis was watching cop shows instead. Someone was getting the shit beaten out of him in the interrogation chamber by a couple of cops who were convinced he was part of a communist plot against someone or other. In the middle of him screaming for mercy the broadcast segued into a commercial for diaper cream. Even over the din of the tv set I could hear Mrs. Bellis cursing and
That evening I didn't make the mistake of eating one of Mr. Perkins's hot dogs, but instead bought from him a couple of ham sandwiches with lashings of salad. I have never liked lying to my mother, and in fact have never been terribly good at it, so I thought it'd be handy during our weekly Monday-evening phonecall to be able to tell her truthfully that I'd had a – relatively – healthy supper.
I needn't have worried. Mom could talk about hardly anything except the latest hot news, which was that in the intervening week it had leaked out that Glenda Doberman was pregnant, and had thereby suddenly slipped out of the "nice" classification, being now worthy of no adjectives at all. I was reassured that I had had a lucky escape; the words "whore of Babylon" lurked somewhere just off-stage, but would forever remain there. My own theory was that Glenda, in a mad burst of frictional enthusiasm that excelled even her own many earlier efforts – which had earned her another nickname, The Human Tuning-Fork – had finally succeeded in melting the condom.
"And what have you been up to, Kurt?" asked Mom after several excited minutes, more by way of form than out of any true interest.
"Oh, nothing much. I went to the movies this afternoon."
"Shouldn't you have been studying?"
I explained to her about Monday afternoons and the undergraduates and the labs and the library and Mrs. Bellis's soap operas and the fish market. She sniffed cynically, but accepted the explanation. I told her about Reach for the Sky and The Man Who Never Was , and the silence at the other end of the line told me she was dutifully pretending to listen – that's what moms are for , after all: to listen to their sons. She'd listened to me all through my childhood and adolescence, doing the listening job of two parents because my father never saw it as his responsibility. She'd bought me my first baseball bat and glove, and spent hours in the back yard hitting the ball or pitching for me; she could have been fairly good at it if she'd ever taken the game seriously, but she showed no signs of disapproval when I proved to be quite hopeless. She drew the line at football, but she would shoot baskets with me for hours, or go out fishing on the lake with me, letting out perfectly genuine whoops of enthusiasm on the rare occasions when we caught anything. In homework she explored with me the equally torturous topics of algebra and the Punic Wars, never grumbling. But, more than all this, she'd listened to me when I explained my little-boy concerns as I'd discovered the world and my place in it.
"Such imaginations these moviemakers have," she said when at length I dried up. "It's so long since I've been to the cinema." There was a wistful note in her voice. "Your father doesn't believe in it. Says it's all Sodom and Gomorrah. And he's right, of course ..."
I felt like shouting at her that she should ignore the prejudices of an ignorant old bigot, but bit back the words. They wouldn't have done any good; all they'd have done was upset her.
As ever, the phone conversation ended in an unsatisfying tangle of desultory well-wishings. I returned the receiver to its hook at the bottom of the stairs, then climbed back up to my dreary little apartment. It was too late for soap operas, so Mrs. Bellis was watching cop shows instead. Someone was getting the shit beaten out of him in the interrogation chamber by a couple of cops who were convinced he was part of a communist plot against someone or other. In the middle of him screaming for mercy the broadcast segued into a commercial for diaper cream. Even over the din of the tv set I could hear Mrs. Bellis cursing and
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