Watson, Ian - SSC by The Very Slow Time Machine (v1.1) Read Free Book Online

ambulance. He could
see. But he stayed out on the road to rescue a woman caught in a burning car.
He was still foaming it down when you ran him over. You dragged him half a
mile. They wouldn’t let me see him, he was so smashed.”
                 “Wouldn’t let you see him?” Grocholski caught out
of what she said—but he didn’t press the point.
                 And
I wanted her to know—to really understand, inside herself—what we people had,
when we weren’t being vicious beasts—how we were the real authentic people of
our times, facing up to the dirt and dark outside instead of hiding in Fuller
domes, hunting down the last glimpses of the natural world—the sun, the sky!
How we were the last braves, the last hunters—how could I get that through to
the Indian in you smothered in the plastic waspish flesh?
                 “The
ambulance man saw it all on radar—how you changed course at the last moment, to
hit him, out there on the road.”
                 “Ambulance man probably hated us anyway— tell any sort of lie.”
                 “Do
you,” in that frozen voice that I yearned to melt, “deny you run men down just
for kicks?”
                 “You’re
not so kind yourself, are you? Why not ask yourself deep down what you’re doing
here torturing us—whether you aren’t enjoying it? Revenge? A long revenge, hey! Something you’re specializing in?” (Dared I say it yet—and
expect you to accept at least a little bit of it—if not immediately, then
later maybe when you were alone, lying awake in bed and worried because
something had gone astray in your scheme of things?) “You’re interested in us
beasts. You took this job to be near us. Like a zoo visitor watches the tigers.
Smell our musk, our fear, our reality.” Marina’s hand cracked across my face,
so hard my whole body rocked in its white cocoon.
                I swallowed the taste of blood in my
mouth and stared hard at her, whispered:
                 “True,
it’s true, think about it.”
                 A
look of horror came into her eyes, as she quickly pulled the gauze mask over
nose and mouth again.
                 I
suppose the Compensation Laws worked our way too. How else could it be, in a
split society?
                 They
bought our tacit support for the maintenance of “civilized” life—the deceits
that otherwise we’d have done our best to explode, us sunclubbers, saboteurs,
ghettopeople, all of us outlaws (whom it’s plain ridiculous to call outlaw when
full fifty per cent of the people live outside of wasp society). And the wasp
world could only blast us out of existence by turning its own massive nuclear
artillery upon itself—so, in return for the relative security of its slave
superhighways, our own relative freedom to roam them. If the wasp world put too
many feet wrong, explosives would go off in its highway tunnels, gatherings of
the tribes pull down a Fuller dome, a satellite shuttle plane blasting off be
met by a home-made missile with a home-made warhead on it. And if we put too
many feet wrong (taking wasp lives with our sun buggies was one way) and if
they caught us, there would be a blood debt to pay, hooked up to their milking
machines, where we were not supposed to be hurt too much, or die, or get brain
damage, but just repay, repay society. For they need red blood like vampires need it.
                 So
I began working on your mind, Marina.
                 As
for the others, well, Grocholski’s thoughts were of tearing his enemies’ teeth
out with pincers, he knew nothing about minds. A king—but a stupid king, like many kings who must have triumphed over the
stupidity of their subjects by a greater and crueller stupidity.
                 Shanahan
was a subtler sort of president, had some idea what we stood for, could put it some way into words. Yet he