Callahan's Place 07 - Callahan's Legacy (v5.0) by Spider Robinson Read Free Book Online Page A

burning, and addressed Tommy, amid a gathering silence.   “Thanks, friend.   I really appreciate that.   What’s the matter with your hand?”   Without waiting for an answer, he turned to the rest of us and raised his voice slightly.   “You folks might want to reconsider the wisdom of playing with paper and fire when you’ve been drinking.”   He was clearly angry, but had it under good control.
    Buck discreetly tipped the lid of his guitar-case shut.
    The new stranger was young, no more than twenty-five, well beyond skinny and into significantly underweight.   His features made me think both Eastern European and Semitic; he reminded me of an Ashkenazy Jew I knew.   His complexion was what I believe is called swarthy (though I can’t say for sure as I’ve never seen a swarth), and there were blotchy skin rashes at either side of his face, and another visible on his left hand.   There had been something just a little off about his walk, like the slightly teetering stride of someone who has just gotten off a small ferry on a stormy day.   Now that I studied him closely, I noticed that even parts of his head that the splashing coffee could not have reached were beaded with moisture: he was sweating profusely, despite the cold he had just come in out of.   He needed a shave, but there was a round bald patch on his right chin, an old burn scar.   (So it was possible to burn him.)
    “You’ve got a point, mister,” I agreed.   “I’m sorry for your trouble.   Are you okay?”
    He looked alarmed and glanced quickly down at himself.   “Why?   Am I on fire somewhere else?”  
    “No, no,” Tommy Janssen said hastily.   “But that was real hot coffee I tossed on you: Jake serves it just short of hot enough to burn.”
    “And the back of a neck is a lot easier to burn than a tongue,” Doc Webster said in that gentle bellow of his.   “You’ve got some hard bark on you, mister.”
    The newcomer shook his head ruefully.   “I wish I did.   I’ve got so many scars and colloid patches I look like Frankenstein’s first attempt.   See?”   He held out his right hand, and sure enough it was crisscrossed with scars, old and new.
    The Doc came through the crowd like a whale passing through a school of fish, and examined the appendage.   “That one there must have hurt,” he remarked, pointing to a large ugly one.
    The newcomer laughed.   It was a shocking sound.   “If only it had,” he said, and laughed some more.   People began to murmur.
    The Doc was staring at him.   “Wait a minute now.   Are you saying…?   I believe I read something about this—”
    Across the room, Solace somehow managed to cut through the murmuring without overloading her speakers.   “Riley-Day Syndrome,” she said.
    The newcomer stopped laughing.   He located the source of the voice, and blinked.   The visual display was the one Solace usually used unless she felt need for complex facial expressions: a greatly enlarged version of the classic Smiling Mac startup icon.   Except at the moment it wasn’t smiling as broadly as usual.  
    “Is that somebody on the Internet?” he asked me.
    “Yes,” I answered briefly.   Well, I wasn’t exactly lying: Solace was somebody, in my book, and she lived on the Internet—was, in fact, despite all rumors to the contrary, the only being who actually did literally live on the Internet.   And we had been skittish about revealing Solace’s true nature to our rare newcomers, always letting her make the first move.   Some people, you tell them about a sentient computer network, and the first thing they think of is Demon Seed or “ƒ Press Enter,” or at best, War Games .   “Anything I don’t understand must be malevolent.”
    “What is she, a pathologist?”
    “Y-e-s,” I said carefully.   I didn’t think Solace had ever taken med-school exams, but didn’t doubt that she could ace them if she chose—I hadn’t claimed she was a licensed