Damocles by S. G. Redling

Author:S. G. Redling [Redling, S. G.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Speculative Fiction
ISBN: 9781480516281
Publisher: 47North
Published: 2013-01-01T08:00:00+00:00

LOUL

* * *

The Effans sounded like they would break their knuckles, they typed so fast taking notes on the bizarre behavior of the Urfers. Mamu, the archivist, found a tarp to cover his camera sufficiently to get some footage that would probably never see the light of day since there was nobody who could think of a way to describe to the public what they were seeing. Seeing it themselves, the crews still couldn’t believe it. Kik and his crew thought at first they were trying to kill each other and then trying to kill themselves, but when they kept getting back up, all those white teeth the only thing showing though the masks of mud, the crews had no choice but to accept that for some reason the Urfers were enjoying this.

For the first time since arriving on the site, Loul didn’t care. He saw Meg laughing even though he couldn’t hear her over the pounding of rain on the awning. He saw her grinning and happy, inexplicably throwing herself again and again into the mud in that bizarre flying-on-the-ground way they did. He saw the cuts and tears in her skin and the red blood weeping to the surface and washing away in the downpour, but he didn’t feel the urge to rush out and comfort her or bandage her the way the Effans so wanted to do for Cho. And when they all stopped one at a time and turned their faces up to let the waning rain wash the mud from their skins, when they turned their backs on the work crews sheltered beneath the awnings to stand in a circle together, Loul felt farther from Meg than he had since first laying eyes on her.

It figured it would rain. Loul hated the rain, always had. He hated it more than the average city dweller, more than even his parents who lived close to the river and always feared the rain’s flood. He hated the sound of it and the smell of it and the way it made the light milky and dim. Most of all he hated the way it drowned out all the sounds around him, making him hear only the sounds in his head. It never failed. It always rained when things went wrong.

The administration was lying to the media. The media was lying to the public. By not saying anything when that reporter from The Searcher had been dragged from the press conference, he had lied to the world. He had lied to his friends, Po and Hark and Reno Dado; he had lied to his family. He had lied to himself. The worst part of all of that was that he could live with it. He could live with the fact that people lied and fudged the truth and omitted facts for whatever expediency they could rationalize. He didn’t expect any better. What hurt the most, what made the rain feel like it was crashing down like gravel on his skull, was that Meg had lied.

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