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

couldn’t see his
way clear, as I could, into this woman’s soul with all its possibilities.
                 And
you worked on my body, Marina.
                 Neglected your promised cruelties to the others. Still
treated Shanahan and Grocholski like dirt, but carelessly, indifferently, reserving
your finest moments for me.
                 And
I tried to grit my teeth through the pain and not scream out meaningless noises
or empty curses, but always something that would drill the hole deeper and
deeper into you—as the sun drills through the smog—till the protective layers
were undercut and the egg of myself could be laid in your heart.
                 “Milkmaid
with buckets of blood in your yoke, why not believe me?” I winced, as Marina
thrust the gruel of drugs into the tender parts of my body. “We’re hunting for
something real in a dirty world—the dirt you wasps have spread around, till
there’s such a pile you have to hide yourselves away from it.”
                She drained the blood from me till I
fainted, green eyes boring into me, doting on my pain. . . .
                 The
Myth of the Five Suns—how brightly Marti told it one day after a long fruitless
race for the sun that took us near five hundred miles across the plains, till
we pulled in tired and restless at a service area run by ghettopeople with
their hair like head-dresses, like black coronas around eclipsed suns.
                 “Five
worlds there were,” said Marti, the pupils of his eyes dilated to black
marbles, his tight brown skin over small sharp bones like a rabbit sucked dry
by ants, wizened by the desert sunshine that he had smarted under in his
dreams. “In the first World men swam about like fishes under a Sun of Jewels.
This world perished in a flamestorm brought about by the rising of the second
sun, the Sun of Fire. The fishes changed into chickens and dogs that raced
about in the great heat, unwilling to pause for their feet were burning. But
this Sun of Fire died down in turn, gave way to the Sun of Darkness, whose
people fed upon pitch and resin. They in their turn were swallowed up by an
earthquake and a Sun of Wind arose. The few survivors of the Sun of Darkness
became hairy dancing monkeys that lived on fruit. But the fifth sun was the Sun
of Light— the one the ancient Mexicans knew. Which sun are we under now, can
you riddle me that?”
                 “Sun
of Darkness,” answered one of the ghettopeople. “Here’s your pitch and resin
to eat.” Dumping our plates of hamburgers, which may have been made from oil
sludge or algae—so perhaps he was right in a way.
                 Then
Snowflake—of the snub nose and blond pigtails, with her worry beads of rock-hard
dried chestnuts on a silver chain—who was riding with Marco in his buggy—wanted
to tell a story herself, and Marti let her go ahead while we were consuming
the burgers.
                 “There
was this waspman, see, whose slave car broke down on the highway miles from
town, and quite by chance in the midst of a sunspot. He’d lost all sense of
time on the journey, watching video, so when the car stopped he thought he’d
reached hi's destination—especially when he opened the car door and saw the sun
shining and a blue sky overhead, like at home in the Fuller dome. He got out of
the car, too busy with his briefcase to notice that under that sun and that
blue sky the land stretched out black and devastated, a couple inches deep in
sludge. An area where some light-hating plants had taken over, see, which had
the trick of dissolving if the sun came out ...”
                 “What?”
cried Marco, indignant.
                 “Shut
up, this is a story! At that moment the power came on in his car again and away
it whisked, leaving him standing there on the road. Other cars zipped by on
either side. He waved his arms at them and held