Read Online Nebula Awards Showcase 2016 by Mercedes Lackey - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Mercedes Lackey
Ads: Link
was a tall mulberry tree with saw-like leaves. On her way to school she touched them; they were spiny and jagged. She hadnât eaten mulberries before. She picked a basketful, nipped her wrist with her teeth, and let her blood roast a few. She watched them curl and smoke from the heat of her genes, inhaled the sweet steam of their juice as they turned into mystical symbols.
Mama would have been proud.
She ate them with salt and pepper, and was offended when Wasif Khan wouldnât touch the remaining.
He said they gave him reflux.
3
The Gaseous Phase of Matter is one in which particles have enough kinetic energy to make the effect of intermolecular forces negligible. A gas, therefore, will occupy the entire container in which it is confined.
Liquid may be converted to gas by heating at constant pressure to a certain temperature.
This temperature is called the boiling point .
The worst flooding the province has seen in forty years was the one thing all radio broadcasters agreed on.
Wasif Khan hadnât confiscated a television yet, but if he had, Tara was sure, it would show the same cataclysmic damage to life and property. At one point, someone said, an area the size of England was submerged in raging floodwater.
Wasifâs neighborhood in the northern, hillier part of town escaped the worst of the devastation, but Tara and Wasif witnessed it daily when they went for rescue work: upchucked power pylons and splintered oak trees smashing through the marketplace stalls; murderous tin sheets and iron rods slicing through inundated alleys; bloated dead cows and sheep eddying in shoulder-high water with terrified children clinging to them. It pawed at the towering steel-and-concrete structures, this restless liquid death that had come to the city; it ripped out their underpinnings and annihilated everything in its path.
Tara survived these days of heartbreak and horror by helping to set up a small tent city on the sports fields of her university. She volunteered to establish a nursery for displaced children and went with rescue teams to scour the ruins for usable supplies, and corpses.
As she pulled out the dead and living from beneath the wreckage, as she tossed plastic-wrapped food and dry clothing to the dull-eyed homeless, she thought of how bright and hot and dry the spines of her brotherâs mountains must be. It had been four years since she saw him, but her dreams were filled with his absence. Did he sit parched and caved in, like a deliberate Buddha? Or was he dead and pecked on by ravens and falcons?
She shuddered at the thought and grabbed another packet of cooked rice and dry beans for the benighted survivors.
The first warning came on the last night of Ramadan. C hand raat.
Tara was eating bread and lentils with her foundling children in the nursery when it happened. A bone-deep trembling that ran through the grass, flattening its blades, evaporating the evening dew trembling on them. Seconds later, a distant boom followed: a hollow rumbling that hurt Taraâs ears and made her feel nauseated. (Later, she would learn that the blast had torn through the marble-walled shrine of Data Sahib, wrenching its iron fence from its moorings, sending jagged pieces of metal and scorched human limbs spinning across the walled part of the City.)
Her children sat up, confused and scared. She soothed them. Once a replacement was found, she went to talk to the tent city administrator.
âIâve seen this before,â she told him once he confirmed it was a suicide blast. âMy husband and sister-in-law both died in similar situations.â That wasnât entirely true for Gulminay, but close enough. âUsually one such attack is followed by another when rescue attempts are made. My husband used to call them âdouble tapâ attacks.â She paused, thinking of his kind, dearly loved face for the first time in months. âHe understood the psychology behind them well.â
The
Mama would have been proud.
She ate them with salt and pepper, and was offended when Wasif Khan wouldnât touch the remaining.
He said they gave him reflux.
3
The Gaseous Phase of Matter is one in which particles have enough kinetic energy to make the effect of intermolecular forces negligible. A gas, therefore, will occupy the entire container in which it is confined.
Liquid may be converted to gas by heating at constant pressure to a certain temperature.
This temperature is called the boiling point .
The worst flooding the province has seen in forty years was the one thing all radio broadcasters agreed on.
Wasif Khan hadnât confiscated a television yet, but if he had, Tara was sure, it would show the same cataclysmic damage to life and property. At one point, someone said, an area the size of England was submerged in raging floodwater.
Wasifâs neighborhood in the northern, hillier part of town escaped the worst of the devastation, but Tara and Wasif witnessed it daily when they went for rescue work: upchucked power pylons and splintered oak trees smashing through the marketplace stalls; murderous tin sheets and iron rods slicing through inundated alleys; bloated dead cows and sheep eddying in shoulder-high water with terrified children clinging to them. It pawed at the towering steel-and-concrete structures, this restless liquid death that had come to the city; it ripped out their underpinnings and annihilated everything in its path.
Tara survived these days of heartbreak and horror by helping to set up a small tent city on the sports fields of her university. She volunteered to establish a nursery for displaced children and went with rescue teams to scour the ruins for usable supplies, and corpses.
As she pulled out the dead and living from beneath the wreckage, as she tossed plastic-wrapped food and dry clothing to the dull-eyed homeless, she thought of how bright and hot and dry the spines of her brotherâs mountains must be. It had been four years since she saw him, but her dreams were filled with his absence. Did he sit parched and caved in, like a deliberate Buddha? Or was he dead and pecked on by ravens and falcons?
She shuddered at the thought and grabbed another packet of cooked rice and dry beans for the benighted survivors.
The first warning came on the last night of Ramadan. C hand raat.
Tara was eating bread and lentils with her foundling children in the nursery when it happened. A bone-deep trembling that ran through the grass, flattening its blades, evaporating the evening dew trembling on them. Seconds later, a distant boom followed: a hollow rumbling that hurt Taraâs ears and made her feel nauseated. (Later, she would learn that the blast had torn through the marble-walled shrine of Data Sahib, wrenching its iron fence from its moorings, sending jagged pieces of metal and scorched human limbs spinning across the walled part of the City.)
Her children sat up, confused and scared. She soothed them. Once a replacement was found, she went to talk to the tent city administrator.
âIâve seen this before,â she told him once he confirmed it was a suicide blast. âMy husband and sister-in-law both died in similar situations.â That wasnât entirely true for Gulminay, but close enough. âUsually one such attack is followed by another when rescue attempts are made. My husband used to call them âdouble tapâ attacks.â She paused, thinking of his kind, dearly loved face for the first time in months. âHe understood the psychology behind them well.â
The
Similar Books
