Schismatrix plus by Bruce Sterling Read Free Book Online

sullen crunch of impact. Glass and metal grated and burst free in a sucking roar.
    The belly of the cloud overhead bulged downward and began to twist. A white plume spread above the blowout with the grace of creeping frost. It was steam, condensing from the air in the suddenly lowered pressure. Lindsay held the camera above his head and leaped down onto the grimy floor of the window. He ran toward the blowout, ignoring Ryumin's surprised protests.
    A minute's broken-field running brought him as close as he dared go. He crouched behind the rusted steel strut of a plug, ten meters from the impact site. Looking down past his feet through the dirty glass, Lindsay saw a long tail of freezing spray fanning out in rainbowed crystals against the shine of the sunlight mirrors.
    A roaring vortex of sucking wind sprang up, slinging gusts of rain. Lindsay cupped one hand around the camera's lens.
    Motion caught his eye. A group of oxygen farmers in masks and coveralls were struggling across the glass from the bordering panel. They cradled a long hose in their arms. They lurched forward doggedly, staggering in the wind, weaving among the plugs and struts.
    Caught by the wind, a camouflaged surveillance plane crashed violently beside the hole. Its wreckage was sucked through at once.
    The hose jerked and bucked with a gush of fluid. A thick spray of gray-green plastic geysered from its nozzle, hardening in midair. It hit the glass and clung there.
    Under the whirlwind's pressure the plastic warped and bulged, but held. As more gushed forth, the wind was choked and became a shrill whistle. Even after the blowout was sealed, the farmers continued to pump plastic sludge across the impact zone. Rain fell steadily from the agitated clouds. Another knot of farmers stood along the window wall, leaning their masked heads together and pointing into the sky.
    Lindsay turned and looked upward with the rest.
    The sudden vortex had spawned a concentric surf of clouds. Through a crescent-shaped gap, Lindsay saw the dome of the Eighth Orbital Army, across the width of the Zaibatsu. Tiny forms in white suits ringed the dome, lying on the ground. They did not move.
    Lindsay focused the telephoto across the interior sky. The fanatics of the Eighth Orbital Army lay sprawled on the fouled earth. A knot of them had been caught trying to escape into the airlock; they lay in a tangle, their arms outstretched.
    He saw no sign of the airship pirates. He thought for a moment that they had all escaped back to the landing port. Then he spotted one of them, mashed flat against another window panel.
    "That was excellent footage," Ryumin said in his ear. "It was also very stupid."
    "I owed you a favor," Lindsay said. He studied the dead. "I'm going over there," he decided.
    "Let me send the robot. There'll be looters there soon."
    "Then I want them to know me," Lindsay said. "They might be useful." He crossed another stile onto the land panel. His lungs felt raw, but he had decided never to wear a breathing mask. His reputation was more important than the risk.
    He skirted the Black Medicals' stronghold and crossed a second window strip. He walked north to the ragtag junk dome of the Orbital Army. It was the only outpost in the entire third panel, which had been abandoned to a particularly virulent form of the blight. This had once been an agricultural zone, and the heightened fertility of the soil brought forth a patchy crop of ankle-high mold. Farm buildings, all pastel ceramic and plastic, had been looted but not demolished, and their stiff inorganic walls and gaping windows seemed to long to lapse into an unattainable state of rot. The recluses' dome was built of plastic door panels, chopped to shape and caulked.
    The corpses lay frozen, their limbs oddly bent, for they had been dead before they hit the ground, and their arms and legs had bounced a little, loosely, with the impact. There was a curious lack of horror about the scene. The faceless masks and watertight