Farewell Horizontal by K. W. Jeter Read Free Book Online Page B

blandishments of things you’ve never seen, have only wondered about, moving in their secret ways in the great darkness at the building’s core and in your bad dreams. The whispering voices that had come through the thick, sealed walls way far inside; maybe a signal override on any Wire Syndicate transmissions coming in, just a crawl of words across the bottom of their terminals; maybe little rolled notes floating up in their toilet bowls, spidery handwriting, smeared sticky ink . . .
     
    You’re so wise and good, dear people . The whispers through the wall. So clever and smart. Yet oppressed by those old lies, slanders against those who would befriend you. Let us come to you, and we’ll give you . . . everything . . . everything . . .
     
    Everything, thought Axxter, looking down to where the scorched walls merged with the dark. What would that include? Who knows . . . all sorts of elaborate pre-War high-tech, no doubt. The Dead Centers were supposed to have inherited all of that stuff. Wonders upon wonders, hidden away in the building’s core. Maybe it had even been watching that old Opt Cooder tape, of the dead gas angel tangled in the exterior transit cable, that had worked away on the poor horizontal suckers’ imaginations. Common belief that the angels were the remnant of some military genetic technology, bred for some now-unfathomable strategic use. Forgotten the same as everything else connected with that ancient event. Maybe the Dead Centers themselves were what was left of one of the warring factions. Maybe the War itself . . . some effect of the other guys’ weapons, or their own . . . had changed them  . . . left them crouching in the dark at the building’s core . . . whispering to those who could still stand the light . . .
     
    Just let us come to you. Why should you let those ones above you push you around, cheat you of all you so richly deserve? We’ll help you . . . just let us come to you . . .
     
    A shiver ran under Axxter’s skin. Fuckin’ spooked myself. The image came of the sector’s inhabitants, when they’d had flesh over their grins, drawing back the heavy bolts, cutting through the heavy steel plates, boring a hole through whatever stood between them and the darkness at Cylinder’s core . . . their minds made up after a unanimous vote at the sector meeting . . . or just made up, without a word spoken, silent greed flashing round from eye to eye –
     
    They’d had a big surprise then. Wonder how long they had to think, Not such a great idea, after all. Not too cool .
     
    At least they got to satisfy their curiosity. About what the Dead Centers even looked like. Toads with jewels in their foreheads, or nothing but shining rods of light, or small golden-haired children with dead eyes – the scary stories of childhood romped behind Axxter’s eyes. At least I listened to those tales; these poor suckers must not’ve. And look what they got.
     
    Axxter’s gaze came back to the burnt zone, the smell in his nostrils. He turned toward the jagged edge of metal curling beside him, grasped it, and hoisted himself back out onto the vertical.
     
     
    † † †
     
     
    Deepshade to night. Axxter made camp as far away from the ruins zone as he could get before dark set in.
     
    Even at a distance of several kilometers, the torn metal remained visible, a rim of jagged teeth biting at the stars.
     
    Other than that, a peaceful scene, as he lay in the securely anchored bivouac, hands behind head, rehydrated food inching warm through his gut. The Norton grazed a few meters away, scraping up the wall’s vegetation with its extruded proboscis. My cup runneth over, or at least closer to the rim – Axxter scratched his stomach in deep meditation. Weird day; small profits, smaller than I deserved, but still – profits. A section of his lower intestine gurgled assent, echoing the noises from the motorcycle’s conversion tank.
     
    Overhead, out from