Circuit Of Heaven by Danvers Dennis

Author:Danvers, Dennis [Danvers, Dennis]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fantasy, Science Fiction
ISBN: 9780061866616
Google: DnyZAWu1nP8C
Amazon: 0380790920
Barnesnoble: 0380790920
Goodreads: 179191
Publisher: Eos
Published: 1998-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

9

JUSTINE KEPT TELLING HERSELF SHE SHOULD BE be happy, and that was that. He loves me, and he’s coming inside. Isn’t that what I wanted? She was happy he loved her that much, but not about the rest of it. It wasn’t right, she thought. He says he’s sure, but he only wants to be sure, because he loves me—but how long will he love me in a world he hates, a world I’ve dragged him into? She wasn’t even sure she wanted to be in here. When was it she ever made that decision? She couldn’t remember.

She went into a restaurant at the station called the Pentagon Pub, sat at a table in a far corner. Everything was pentagonal—the tables, the chair seats, the rugs, the rooms itself. There were only a handful of people, most of them sitting at the bar. A holo-mural of the Bin under construction played on the walls—thousands of Constructs laboring away to transform the most powerful military establishment in the world into the paradise. She turned her chair so that she faced in, her view of the opposite wall blocked by a stand of palms in pentagonal pots. She ordered coffee and watched the pentagonal cup and saucer rise from the table.

She looked at it through Nemo’s eyes—another silly gizmo. She imagined a cleaver in Nemo’s hand, Sophie squirming under the other. The cleaver coming down hard on Sophie’s neck, the jolt of her death. So he could live.

She shoved the coffee to the side and pushed the Special icon. An index of foods appeared on a screen in the tabletop. You could get anything you wanted at any restaurant in the Bin, even a place like this. She pressed Rabbit and got a submenu of about two dozen dishes. She could press a ? icon to get a complete description and a picture of each one, but she didn’t really care. She pressed Hasenpfeffer because she liked the look of the world.

A plate of steaming stew rose from the table, and she ate it, every bite, as if her life depended on it. When she was done, she slid the pentagonal plate onto the middle of the table, pressed the Clean icon, and watched the plate sink into the table out of sight.

“Thank you, Sophie,” she said, but it was an empty gesture. Nothing dies in here, she thought. Not for me, not for anyone. She remembered Romeo and Juliet, dying in each other’s arms, the man beside her saying, Why are you crying? It’s just a play, dear. But it used to be that people watched Romeo and Juliet die, and wept, even though they knew it wasn’t real. Back then, people could imagine they were the star-crossed lovers or the bereaved parents—because they lived with death every day. In the Bin, death itself was just a character in an old play.

There was a snicker from the bar, and Justine turned to look. A man was telling a joke to three other men.

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