Half the Day Is Night by Maureen F. McHugh Read Free Book Online Page A

radiated off hub in all directions. “Are you going that way?” Mayla asked.
    â€œNo,” the woman said and turned her back on them.
    David looked at the woman, looked at Mayla and shrugged. He pulled out his map and started pulling off overlays to find Tarrou. “Not this hub,” he said after a moment, “I don’t think. Excuse me,” he said to the woman. “Tarrou, it is not from this hub, is that right?”
    The woman did not even look at the map. “I have to work,” she said. The checkpoint was secured and one of the women sat down on it. The woman with the headset got in front and the third woman sat down next to her.
    David said something in French which did not sound polite.
    â€œI agree,” Mayla said.
    The woman with the headset started the skid and turned it in a tight circle.
    There was no evidence that the checkpoint had ever been there.
    â€œSo, we wait,” David said, watching the skid putter off. “How long, do you think?”
    â€œMaybe we should call,” Mayla said. She didn’t see a callbox but they could probably call from the café where they’d gotten the burro. Of course, if they went back there, Titon or whatever his name was could show up and leave. David could go with her and she could call. Or they could use the map and try to find Tarrou.
    â€œThere’s a police station in the port,” she said. “Why don’t we just go there and have them take it off?”
    He shrugged again.
    â€œIf we wait we could be here for hours,” she added.
    He shook his head. “They are always this efficient?”
    â€œA lot of things are like this,” she said.
    He checked the map to see how they got back to the port and she let him lead.
    Better than Tim, she thought on the ped mover as the flats slipped by. Tim would be blustering.
    David looked surreptitiously at the telltale and then pulled his sleeve over it to hide it.
    The way back to the municipal shuttle seemed shorter than when they had come in the morning. The waiting area wasn’t crowded but the shuttle wasn’t in, either. She fumbled through her purse until she found change for the turnstiles. Just beyond they triggered a VR ad and the air was suddenly full of electric blue butterflies. The shimmer was irritating and the focus was off because the butterfly flock was without depth. She ignored them and as soon as she passed out of range they disappeared.
    She glanced over her shoulder in time to see David walk into them. He started, raising his hands against the empty air.
    â€œThey are allowed?” he said when he had gotten through. “In France, they are not allowed in a public place.”
    A good idea, she thought. She didn’t like them and every so often she read where a tracking laser had burned someone’s eyes. The walls were covered with advertisements. There were butterflies in a lot of them: women in carnival costumes with yellow gauze wings, women’s faces painted with wings so their eyes became eyespots, the electric blue butterflies, this time alighting on a flash unit, wings scintillating as they settled and then flickered off, the advertisement tirelessly repeating. Why so many butterflies, were they this year’s gimmick?
    David sat down next to her, slouched on the bench studying his shoes. He looked very foreign in the suit. Of course he looked pretty foreign anyway. He really needed some new clothes. She should say something but she didn’t want to insult him.
    The people in the waiting room were the flotsam of midday. There were women who worked the evening shift, old women with their shopping bags, old men in old sweaters and tights that bagged under their knees and around their ankles. A group of boys who should have been in school stood by the door talking and laughing. They wore divers’ vests that bared their long ropey arms. A crew. One had a leather demon mask hanging from a seal by a leather