The Rift by Walter Jon Williams Read Free Book Online

anyway? And why,” warming to the subject, “is Missouri’s karma supposed to be all that great? They had slavery here. And all those Cherokee died just north of here on the Trail of Tears.” The Trail of Tears had been the subject of a field trip the previous month.
    It had rained.
    Jason, stuck in an alien land, in lousy weather, shoes filled with rainwater, and far from his spiritual home, had taken the Cherokee experience very much to heart.
    “I am trying to save your life,” Catherine said.
    “I’ll take my chances in L.A.! My karma can’t suck that badly!”
    “We were talking,” Catherine said, narrowing her eyes, “about the Internet. I don’t want you spending all your time online— I want you to restrict yourself to an hour a day.”
    Jason was aghast. “An hour!”
    “One hour per day. That’s all.” There was a grim finality in Catherine’s tone. “And I want you to make some effort to make friends here.”
    “I don’t want to know anyone here!”
    “There are good people here. You shouldn’t look down at them just because they don’t live in the city. You should get to know them.”
    “How?” Jason waved his hands. “How do I meet these good people?”
    “You can stop radiating hostility all the time, for one thing.”
    “ I don’t radiate hostility !” Jason shouted.
    “You certainly do. You glare at everyone as if they were going to attack you. If you met them halfway—”
    “I am not interested !I am not interested at all !One minute after I’m eighteen, I’m out of here!” Jason bolted from the dinner table, stormed up the stairs to his study, slammed the door, and turned the skeleton key that locked it.
    His mother’s voice came up from below. “You better not be online!”
    Jason paced the room, feeling like a trapped animal. His life was one prison after another. He was a minor, completely dependent on other people. He was in an alien country, walled off by the levee, with nothing but soaked cotton fields to look at. His school, with its red brick, concrete, and windows protected by steel mesh, even looked like a prison.
    And now he was in a prison cell, on the second floor of his house.
    And the worse thing about this cell, he realized, was that he had turned the key on himself. He had to get out of here somehow.
    As he paced, his eye lighted on the telephone, and he stopped in his tracks.
    Ah, he thought. Dad.
    *
    “Well,” Jason said, “I'm bummed. I sort of had a fight with Mom.”
    “Have you apologized?” said Frank Adams.
    This was not the initial response that Jason had hoped for. “Let me tell you what it was about,” he said.
    “Okay.” Frank sounded agreeable enough, but over the phone connection Jason could hear his father's pen scratching. The pen was a Mont Blanc, and had a very distinctive sound, one loud enough to hear over a good phone connection. Frank was working late at the office, which was normal, and Jason had called him there.
    “Mom says I have to restrict my Internet access to one hour per day. But the Internet is where all my friends hang out.”
    “Okay.”
    “Well,” Jason said, “that's it.”
    “That's what the whole fight was about?”
    “There was a lot more about karma, and how yours sucks so bad you're going to get washed out to sea along with my friends, but keeping me offline is what it all came down to.”
    “Uh-huh.” There was a pause while the pen scratched some more. Then the pen stopped, and Frank Adams's voice brightened, as if he decided he may as well pay attention, “It wasn't about your grades or anything?” he asked.
    “No. My grades are up.” The Cabells Mound school was less demanding than the academy he'd been attending in California. Also far more boring— but that, he'd discovered, applied to the Swampeast generally and not just to school.
    “So if it's not interfering with your schoolwork, why is she restricting your Internet access?”
    Jason's dad was very concerned with grades and