The Wind From a Burning Woman: Six Stories of Science Fiction by Greg Bear Read Free Book Online Page A

asteroids sudden atmospheric compression. Big winds were blowing, but theyd survive.
    It shouldnt have gone this far. They should have listened reasonably, admitted their guilt
    Absolved, girl, she wanted her father to say. She felt very near. Youve destroyed everything we worked fora fine architect of Pyrrhic victories. And now he was at a great distance, receding.
    The room was cold, and her skin tingled.
    One huge chunk rose to block out the sun. The cabin screamed, and the bubble was filled with sudden flakes of air.
    <>
    * * * *
    THE
    WHITE HORSE
    CHILD
    When I was seven years old, I met an old man by the side of the dusty road between school and farm. The late afternoon sun had cooled, and he was sitting on a rock, hat off, hands held out to the gentle warmth, whistling a pretty song. He nodded at me as I walked past. I nodded back. I was curious, but I knew better than to get involved with strangers, as if they might turn into lions when no one but a little kid was around.
    Hello, boy, he said.
    I stopped and shuffled my feet. He looked more like a hawk than a lion. His clothes were brown and grey and russet, and his hands were pink like the flesh of some rabbit a hawk had just plucked up. His face was brown except around the eyes, where he might have worn glasses; around the eyes he was white, and this intensified his gaze. Hello, I said.
    Was a hot day. Must have been hot in school, he said.
    They got air conditioning.
    So they do, now. How old are you?
    Seven, I said. Well, almost eight.
    Mother told you never to talk to strangers?
    And Dad, too.
    Good advice. But havent you seen me around here before?
    I looked him over. No.
    Closely. Look at my clothes. What color are they?
    His shirt was grey, like the rock he was sitting on. The cuffs, where they peeped from under a russet jacket, were white. He didnt smell bad, but he didnt look particularly clean. He was smooth-shaven, though. His hair was white, and his pants were the color of the dirt below the rock. All kinds of colors, I said.
    But mostly I partake of the landscape, no?
    I guess so, I said.
    Thats because Im not here. Youre imagining me, at least part of me. Dont I look like somebody you might have heard of?
    Who are you supposed to look like? I asked.
    Well, Im full of stories, he said. Have lots of stories to tell little boys, little girls, even big folk, if theyll listen.
    I started to walk away.
    But only if theyll listen, he said. I ran. When I got home, I told my older sister about the man on the road, but she only got a worried look and told me to stay away from strangers. I took her advice. For some time afterward, into my eighth year, I avoided that road and did not speak with strangers more than I had to.
    The house that I lived in, with the five other members of my family and two dogs and one beleaguered cat, was white and square and comfortable. The stairs were rich dark wood overlaid with worn carpet. The walls were dark oak paneling up to a foot above my head, then white plaster, with a white plaster ceiling. The air was full of smellsbacon when I woke up, bread and soup and dinner when I came home from school, dust on weekends when we helped clean.
    Sometimes my parents argued, and not just about money, and those were bad times; but usually we were happy. There was talk about selling the farm and the house and going to Mitchell where Dad could work in a computerized feed-mixing plant, but it was only talk.
    * * * *
    It was early summer when I took to the dirt road again. Id forgotten about the old man. But in almost the same way, when the sun was cooling and the air was haunted by lazy bees, I saw an old woman. Women strangers are less malevolent than men, and rarer. She was sitting on the grey rock, in a long green skirt summer-dusty, with a daisy-colored shawl and a blouse the precise hue of cottonwoods seen in a late hazy days muted light. Hello, boy, she said.
    I dont recognize you, either, I blurted, and she smiled.
    Of course