Read Online Watson, Ian - SSC by The Very Slow Time Machine (v1.1) - Free Book Online Page A

the
monotonous environment of the sun buggy (green radar no substitute for
video), radio crackling out data from
                Met Central revealing total disarray
among the air currents, turbid gas blowing everywhichways, absurd peaks and
dips in the nitrogen oxides, crazy chemical transformations—a scene in
disarray awaiting my touch, and what I brought it was the body of Marina , magnet to the iron filings of the
everywhichways polluted sky.
                 Two
hours down the highway, piloting with ever-greater certainty, careless of
pursuit, I picked the radiophone up, tuned to the Sun Club waveband. . . .
                 Nearby,
voices of some charioteers of the sun. “Considine calling
you. Considine’s Commandos. Smokey
Mirror Sun Club. I’m heading straight for the sun. Anyone caring to join
me is welcome. Vector in on my call sign . . .”
                My voice woke Marina up, to the babble of voices answering over
the radiophone. “Considine?’’
                “How did you get
out?’’
                 “How
do you know? Man?’’
                 Who
had ever dared call a hunt into being among sunrunners other than his own? How
great the risk he ran, of shame, revenge, contempt! How did I know, indeed!
                “Where are we?” yawned Marina . “What’s going on?”
                 “We’re
hunting for the sun—I’ve cried fox and I’m calling the hounds in.”
                 “Whose
voices are those?”
                 “It
hasn’t been done before, what I’m doing. Those voices— the
cry of the hounds.”
                “Considine, I’m hungry. Is there
anything to eat in the car?”
                “Hush—I’ve told you, buggy is the name. No eating now—it’s
time to fast. This is a religious moment.”
                 A
louder challenging voice that I recognized broke in on the waveband. The Magnificent Am- berson’s.
                 “Considine? This is Amberson. Congratulations on your
break-out—how did you do it?”
                 “Thanks,
Amberson. I got a nurse to spring me.”
                 “A nurse?”
                 “She’s
with me now—she’s part of it.”
                 “Hope
you know what you’re doing, Considine. You really meaning to call a general hunt?”
                 “A gathering of the tribes. That’s it, Amberson.”
                 “Sure
your head isn’t screwed up by loss of blood? The weather data is chaos. Sure
you haven’t bought your way out of there by offering something in return—say, a
gathering of the tribes in a certain location?”
                 “Screw
you, Amberson—I’ll settle with you for that slander after I’ve greeted the sun.
Sun hounds, you coming chasing me?”
                 And
a rabble of voices, from far and near, jammed the waveband.
                 Marina
clutched my arm.
                 “It
frightens me, Considine—who are they all? Where do they come from?”
                 “Some of the other half of the people in this land, Marina—just
some of the other half of the people. The ones who
stayed outside in the dark. The ones that weren’t
wasps. The Indians vour ancestors would have understood. Spirit voices
they are—gods of the land.”
                “Indians my
ancestors?”
                 “Yes.”
                 Green
blips swam by me on the radar screen— slave cars that I sped by effortlessly. I
paid no heed to the weather data. My gestalt, my mind-doll, was fully formed.
Its embodiment hunched by me in the passenger seat, the curves and planes of
Marina's body were the fronts and isobars and isohets of the surrounding
dirt-darkened land. A message, she had been placed in the hospital for me to
find,