Drowning Towers by George Turner

Author:George Turner
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Science Fiction, General, Fiction
ISBN: 9780380786015
Publisher: Avon Books
Published: 1996-12-01T08:00:00+00:00

NICK

AD 2050

At seventy-one my old man thought he still ran his tower in Richmond. In fact my brothers and their grown kids did the tower’s rough and tumble work and my eldest sister, who had failed her Test by a fraction, was the planner; the old man took such kudos as there was and loved himself no end. He never forgave my being a copper, refused to speak to me when I visited, but once a year signed that his paternal heart bled still for a stubborn son—he sent me a Christmas card.

In some sentimental long ago he had somehow acquired several hundred of them and each year distributed a few as tokens of favor. They were traditionally stupid, with red-coated Santa Clauses ho-hoing over the arses of grinning reindeer as they whiffled through midnight blue skies over landscapes of snow, with some verses on the inside flap by a dewy-eyed illiterate. These, for an Australian Christmas with the air like steamed pudding at 42 degrees or better!

The thought, as they say, was a kindly one and the card for 2050 had more than the usual stark Nick, from Your Father on it. There was a message, the first in nearly twenty years, in his inexpert script: You never come to see me. This was untrue—I went two or three times a year to stand around while he pretended not to see me. But I knew what he meant—I was up for official forgiveness.

I left the card on my desk while I went to see what the Colonel (Operations) wanted of me.

What he wanted was my services over the Christmas holiday period because of a confluence of weather forecasts which made Christmas Day tactically favorable, in his estimation, for a Swill raid. I might have wriggled, even argued, if the job had not been in Newport on request (through illicit channels) from Tower Twenty-three—the Billygoat.

I laid Dad’s card in the drawer with all his others, thinking that I would have to find a way of explaining that duty really did come before even the most royal forgiveness, when I was struck by an idea—concerning forgiveness—that at first only tickled my fancy, then on consideration seemed promising. It could further an aim deferred too long, it might set me in the good books of a Tower Boss whose goodwill was no mean asset, and it might be the making of a bright but directionless young PI officer.

That flash of an idea had far-reaching consequences.

• • •

Now—about corruption and Nola Parkes:

The coupon system was cumbersome but necessary. Computer rationing would have been simpler, but to have thrown the Swill to the mercy of Molecular Storage Accounting—which would have told them when and how they could have what, with no leeway for individual preference—might have been incitement to more violence than could have been controlled without slaughter. The mob was always simmering; the harassed State knew better than to remove all self-determination.

It had hoped that the coupon system would inhibit corruption; PI, with corruption part of the air we breathed, could have told them otherwise.

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