Read Online Wulfsyarn: A Mosaic by Phillip Mann - Free Book Online

him.
    An official of the prison gave me my few belongings and papers which stated that I was a free citizen. There was money too.
    I sat in the air-lock waiting for the shuttle to carry me down from the prison torus and I cried. You see, for a while I had known peace, and then my friend, or the man who I thought was my friend, with his cruel words had opened the wound again, had revealed a blackness inside me. Misery gave way to anger, which is healthier, but the anger was directed against myself. You see, I was not what my friend had called me ... I was not cold. Am not cold. I have followed my lights into darkness. I have tried to be kind. I have shared. But I have been ignorant and vanity is a sure sign of ignorance. “What do people want of me?” I asked as I sat in the shuttle sliding down toward the surface of Icarus. And I wondered what I could do to achieve peace and where I could place the fierce energy that threatened to tear me apart.
    Every question has an answer. The problem is knowing what questions to ask and recognizing answers when they come.
    The shuttle port was busy when we landed. There was no one to meet me and I was glad. I doubted if my family and friends yet knew where I was. I was alone and unknown. That felt clean. There was a transit vehicle about to leave for my home sector of Icarus but I avoided it. I remember how turbulent I felt: free and frightened, angry and hopeful. I could not sit, passive in a transit carriage, my bag on my knee.
    Then I made a decision. I decided to run home. I was half a planet away but I would run home. No sooner was the thought born in me than I knew it was the right thing to do. I thought the run would be an achievement. I hoped it would bring meaning of some kind. There are those whose spirit is only satisfied by challenges. I had the money I had been given and with this I bought a small tent, some provisions, a small pack for my back and shoes that I could run in. Then off I went.
    Icarus is covered by a network of translucent tunnels which join all the dome farms. The tunnels are like canals of air. Within them there are always plants growing and the air is sweet and pure. The tunnels He like a giant silver net thrown over brown rocky hills and swamps where the mineral water bubbles pink and green and poisonous.
    I had never seen my own world. The shuttle port was somewhere close to the equator and the crops there were soft red fruits which grew under the shade of leaves and a chewy grass which stained the mouth yellow. Here everything was larger than at home. The domes were higher and enclosed trees and I saw flowers which had a crown like a single staring brown eye. They produced oil.
    I ran. I was not fit but I had will. I ran and avoided the main transport routes. I took the tunnels which had only been built for the convenience of the farmers. At night I slept in my tent. When my provisions ran out I began to live off the land, eating the food raw. I was punishing myself for being what I am and curiously I felt better for it.
    Eventually, after three weeks or so on the road, I came to a narrow tunnel which climbed up a rock face in a series of long zigzags and emerged on a high plateau.
    Here there were no forms. The air was thinner and the sky which shone above the crinkled plastic cover was a deep blue, almost aquamarine. Standing with my nose pressed against the stiff plastic wall I looked out on a wild desert where coils of dust and sand were the only things that moved as they scoured the landscape. Here nothing grew. I saw black ice in the fissures between rocks. I saw rocks split as though with a knife. Once a sandstorm blew up and the black and brown particles crawled over the clear plastic like water and left marks like the sucker prints of one of the creatures that lived in the Sour Sea close to my home.
    At night it was so cold that I dared not sleep but ran blindly, my hand pressed against the smooth dome until the fingers were numb and then