Read Online Nova Swing by M. John Harrison - Free Book Online Page B

happened to Vic in there felt as if it represented something else. “It’s like a metaphor, Emil,” he thought of saying. But he was still in awe of Bonaventure’s generation, and of Bonaventure’s generation’s definitions, so in the end all that came out was, “I think things are taking a whole turn for the worse.”
    The old man didn’t want to know. He only lifted the bottle to his mouth again, then let it fall on to the bed and stared into himself instead, his face stubbled, leaden, collapsed. “It was a long time ago,” he said. “Everyone had his own ideas.”
    “You remember more than that, Emil. Don’t pretend you don’t.”
    Bonaventure shook his head. “In those days, everyone had his own ideas,” he repeated. Then he seemed to relent, and asked Vic, “Were you ever at the Triangle? Were you ever in that deep?” When he saw Vic had no idea what he meant, he shrugged. “Because for a while Atmo Fuga thought that was the centre of it all. He was there once and it was all shoes. The air was perfectly still but full of old shoes, floating around one another as if they’d been lifted up on a strong wind. As if shoes had a gravity of their own. He said they exhibited something that looked like flocking behaviour. Filthy old shoes, cracked and wrinkled, soles hanging off. He saw other stuff too. It was Atmo’s belief the Triangle was at the centre of it.” He shrugged. “But if you were never there—”
    “I’ve been further in than anyone I know,” Vic was able to state, “and I never saw anything like shoes.”
    Bonaventure couldn’t seem to grasp this. Perhaps he didn’t want to. He blinked and bit his lip, and it seemed to Vic he was refusing some basic understanding—something about the world he knew well but wouldn’t share because he preferred to be in denial. He stared over Vic’s shoulder for a moment, weak tears coming to his eyes. “None of these kids know anything,” he appealed to the room at large, as if there was someone other than Vic he could talk to. “It’s all show with them.”
    “You are talking about me,” Vic said. Despite his good intentions he felt his face contract and harden. “Well then, fuck you, old man.” He pulled out the Chambers gun and dropped it on the bed where it lay against Bonaventure’s frail form defined by the bedclothes, its magazine a matt-black roil of particles held in suspension by some kind of magnetic field. “I’m forty years old, so fuck you.”
    Bonaventure winced away from the gun. He curled up and threw one arm across his eyes.
    “Don’t leave me, Atmo!” he cried. “Not here!”
    “You’re fucked with me,” Vic Serotonin said. “Why should I keep coming here, for you to insult me?” He regretted that immediately. He picked his gun up again and secured it. “I’m sorry, Emil,” he said. He laid his hand on the old man’s shoulder. “Hey, if only you’d help sometimes,” he said. “Just help out.”
    “You’ve got a low startle point,” Bonaventure said finally.
    Vic laughed. “It’s how I survive,” he said. “Come on, finish the rum. No one buys Black Heart to keep it for tomorrow!”
    After he had calmed the old man down, and got him to sleep, he hid the empty bottle with several others under the bed and made his way downstairs; where Bonaventure’s daughter reminded him quietly:
    “He sold you a business, Vic. That doesn’t make him your father.”
    “Does it make him yours?” Vic asked her.
    She shrugged. “Say what you like to me,” she said. “You’re not so clever as to make a difference.”
    She was a black-haired woman, with wide blunt hips, who blushed up quickly under her olive skin. Whatever Vic thought, she had made her way here across the Halo, planet to planet, starting out two years old in the crook of Emil Bonaventure’s arm. He named her Edith, no one knew why, and though she did not resemble him at all, was always careful not to drop her. That was almost forty years ago.