Eruption by Harry Turtledove

Author:Harry Turtledove [Turtledove, Harry]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction, Alternative History, Fiction, General
ISBN: 9781101552209
Google: wFvfaAnTd94C
Amazon: 0451464206
Publisher: Penguin
Published: 2011-12-06T05:00:00+00:00

XII

It was a quiet Saturday afternoon in Ellwood. There were times when

Marshall Ferguson didn’t appreciate his dad for getting him anpartment here rather than in Isla Vista, which was right next to the UC Santa Barbara campus. But his old man the cop had learned of Isla Vista’s many bars and of couch-burning and other quaint native rituals, so Marshall was out in the boonies instead.

Nothing exciting had happened in Ellwood since that Japanese submarine shelled the place. But living here wasn’t so bad. Marshall didn’t mind riding his bike to school, or hopping on the bus on the rare days when the weather was bad. He had a car—of course!—but campus parking cost two arms and a leg. He could get anything he needed at the big shopping center on Hollister, just a few blocks away. And it wasn’t as if Ellwood had no bars; it just didn’t have quite so many. It was still a student town, but a quieter student town for quieter students.

No, not so bad. It wasn’t as if Marshall never drank. Oh, no—not even close. Like his father was a teetotaler. As if! Like his mother had never got up on a Sunday morning making a beeline for the Excedrin. Yeah, right!

But he wasn’t smashed on this Ellwood Saturday afternoon. He could have been. The quarter was still new. Nothing needed turning in Monday morning. So, yeah, he could have been, but he wasn’t. He was stoned instead.

The apartment faced west, so he could sprawl on the ratty but unburnt couch in his front room and watch the sun go down through the Venetian blinds’ half-open slats. Sprawled next to him was a little dark-haired girl named Jenny. They weren’t touching right now. Sooner or later, he expected they would. No hurry, though. No hurry at all.

Not hurrying, he passed her the pipe. “Thanks,” she said. He liked the way her lips closed on the stem as she inhaled. The apartment was already fragrant with smoke. It got a little more so.

She gave the pipe back. He took another hit himself. It was all good: the dope, the company, the half-dark room, the sun slowly sliding down between the slats. Thanks to the dope, it seemed to slide slower than usual.

“Wow,” Marshall said. Jenny giggled—if that wasn’t the stoner cliché, what was? Even wasted, Marshall was embarrassed. But he pointed out through the blinds and defiantly said “Wow” again. This time, he amplified it: “That’s quite a sunset, you know?”

Santa Barbara sunsets, like a lot of Santa Barbara life, often spoiled you and made you feel every other place in the world was tacky and not worth living in. Clouds and soft, moist Pacific air painted the sky in red and orange and gold. Could nightfall in, say, Omaha come close? Not a chance.

This one was outdoing itself, even by Santa Barbara standards. Marshall blamed the good weed he’d got from a grad student in the creative-writing program. It made him feel pretty goddamn

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