City of a Thousand Suns by Samuel R Delany

Author:Samuel R Delany [Delany, Samuel R]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Sci-Fi., Science Fiction
Publisher: Ace Books
Published: 2012-03-21T14:49:53+00:00

Walking up the boardwalk, Jon asked, “Do you think Clea, Catham, and Nonik might be somewhere around here?”

“Why?”

“Clea also used to work for the circus. Maybe she came back to get something she’d left.” Across a field in the horizontal moon, flapping tents still sagged into their guys. "They probably won’t be there now, but maybe they passed through.”

“I can show you which was her dressing tent,” said Alter. They turned from the dark town to the meadow. Breezes sped to the sea and bent the grass toward the waves, ns beyond the sand the crushed ivory foam broke and bent to the meadow. They neared a rippling wall of canvas. As they stepped toward the entrance, a figure moved.

"What do you want out here?” His trousers were from n soldier’s uniform, but the sleeveless vest that laced over his chest was fisherman’s apparel. His blond hair was the short brush of a military cut three months gone.

“We’re just looking through the tents,” Jon said.

“Who said you could look?"

“Who said we had to ask?”

“We don’t like strangers too much, snoopin’. There been all sorts of mali stuff about. The town,” he motioned with his chin toward the collection of houses across the meadow, “don’t want no strangers around. Malis raided them last week. Killed a couple of people. Didn’t steal nothing. Just broke up the place.” He let out a short laugh. “Isn’t that something?”

Jon frowned as the tent wall by which he stood rippled faster, then stilled. “Hey, what’s out there, Koq?” came a voice from behind the canvas.

Koq called back over his shoulder, “I don’t know, Raye.”

A second figure stepped to the first one’s side. “You think they’re malis?" Raye was younger, darker, also in a disorderly soldier’s uniform. He grinned a little when he asked.

“Could be,” Koq shrugged.

“We’re not malis,” Alter declared. “Did the town station you out here to keep malis from moving into the tents?”

“Could be," Koq shrugged, and then laughed again. It was a quiet, windy sound: the voice of a man who lived by the sea’s edge, with something in it over water over rock. Raye laughed too. Then other laughter was coming from behind them as well.

They turned and the laughter rose. Nearly twenty more were standing behind them, and now they closed ranks, forming a circle. Over half wore remnants of army uniforms; most were green-eyed and dark. Two were girls, but they stood with the others. The laughter in peak after liquid peak broke. “They say they’re not malis,” Koq said again. Like a wave rolling back across sand, the sound ceased.

Jon was afraid. He was also thinking fast.

“Bet you can’t prove it,” someone called.

“You know what we do to . . . malis.”

“Come on, let’s show them what we do to malis.”

Seconds later, he and Alter, their arms pushed up tight behind them, were being marched through the tents. One man had gratuitously socked his jaw and it throbbed. But he was thinking, meticulously and quickly. The man guiding him once jerked him to a bare stretch lined with mounds of earth.

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