Transreal Cyberpunk by Rudy Rucker, Bruce Sterling Read Free Book Online Page A

What a laugh. But you and I ... Scientists, space pioneers ... the Unknown is our natural habitat, right?”
    “Well ...”
    “Come on, Nikita.” He glowered. “We can’t go back and face the top brass empty-handed.”
    Nina joined us. “I knew you’d turn yellow, Globov. Never mind him, Vlad, darling. Why should you share your fame and glory with this sneaking coward? I’ll go with you—”
    “You’re a woman,” Vlad assured her loftily. “You’re staying here where it’s safe.”
    “But Vlad—”
    Vlad folded his arms. “Don’t make me have to beat you.” Nina blushed girlishly and looked at the toes of her hiking boots. She could have broken his back like a twig.
    The dog barked loudly and capered at our feet. “Come on,” Vlad said. He set off without looking back.
    I grabbed my pack and followed him. I had to. I was guarding him: no more Vlad, no more Globov ...
    Our journey was a nightmare. The dog kept trying to follow us, or would run yipping through ratholes in the brush that we had to circle painfully. Half on intuition, we headed for the epicenter of the blast, the little hillock at the valley’s focus.
    It was almost dusk again when we finally reached it, battered, scratched and bone-tired. We found a yurt there, half-hidden in a slough off to one side of the hill. It was an Evenk reindeer-skin tent, oozing grayish smoke from a vent-hole. A couple of scabby reindeer were pegged down outside it, gnawing at a lush, purplish patch of swamp moss. The dead trees around had been heavily seared by the blast, leaving half-charcoaled bubbly lumps of ancient resin. Some ferns and rushes had sprung up, corkscrewed, malformed, and growing with cancerous vigor.
    The dog barked loudly at the wretched reindeer, who looked up with bleary-eyed indifference.
    We heard leather thongs hiss loose in the door flap. A pale face framed in a greasy fur hood poked through. It was a young Evenk girl. She called to the dog, then noticed us and giggled quietly.
    The dog rushed toward the yurt, wagging her tail. “Hello,” Vlad called. He spread his open hands. “Come on out, we’re friends.”
    The girl stepped out and inched toward us, watching the ground carefully. She paused at a small twig, her dilated eyes goggling as if it were a boulder. She high-jumped far over it, and landed giggling. She wore an elaborate reindeer-skin jacket that hung past her knees, thickly embroidered with little beads of bone and wood. She also had tight fur trousers with lumpy beaded booties, sewn all in one piece like a child’s pajamas.
    She sidled up, grinning coyly, and touched my face and clothes in curiosity. “Nikita,” I said, touching my chest.
    “Balan Thok,” she whispered, running one fingertip down her sweating throat. She laughed drunkenly.
    “Is that your dog?” Vlad said. “She came from the sky!” He gestured extravagantly. “Something under the earth here ... brought her down from the sky ... yes?”
    I shrieked suddenly. A gargoyle had appeared in the tent’s opening. But the blank, ghastly face was only a wooden ceremonial mask, shaped like a frying pan, with a handle to grip below the “chin.” The mask had eye-slits and a carved mouth-hole fringed with a glued-on beard of reindeer hair.
    Behind it was Balan Thok’s father, or maybe grandfather. Cunningly, the old villain peered at us around the edge of his mask. His face was as wrinkled as an old boot. The sides of his head were shaven and filth-choked white hair puffed from the top like a thistle. His long reindeer coat was fringed with black fur and covered with bits of polished bone and metal.
    We established that the old savage was called Jif Gurd. Vlad went through his sky-pointing routine again. Jif Gurd returned briefly to his leather yurt and re-emerged with a long wooden spear. Grinning vacuously, he jammed the butt of it into a socket in the ground and pointed to the heavens.
    “I don’t like the look of this,” I told Vlad at once.