Globalhead by Bruce Sterling

Author:Bruce Sterling [Sterling, Bruce]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction, General, Science Fiction, Anthologies
ISBN: 9780307796769
Google: LtVKginG1LAC
Amazon: B005FY6QPO
Barnesnoble: B005FY6QPO
Goodreads: 13535641
Publisher: Spectra
Published: 1991-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

THE MORAL BULLET

BY BRUCE STERLING AND JOHN KESSEL

The throb of a helicopter cruising low over the roof wakes Sniffy from a luxuriant dream about a banana split. His eyes snap open, his heart pounds, he flops out of his bed, to coil up tight beneath the rusting bedsprings, in the grit and dustbunnies. They’re after him!

But after a moment the turbine’s whine, and his panic, fade. He’s just a kid; nobody’s really looking for him; nobody gives a damn about a kid. Sniffy crawls out, shivering, and peeks through the blackout curtains. The chopper is receding, in the daylight of summer morning.

Sniffy’s mouth waters, anachronistically, for hot fudge, nuts, real whipped cream. A maraschino cherry. Banana splits are the stuff of legend now, but hunger’s still real; he’s gotta find something-or-other to eat. He pulls on sneakers, jeans and a T-shirt.

Sniffy’s been living in this abandoned duplex for a couple of weeks, ever since the Chamber of Commerce took over this part of West Raleigh. The Commerce gang sort of take care of Sniffy, though most of the time they basically ignore him, to tell the truth. He hauls his rust-spotted Schwinn from beneath the back stairs, slings his baseball bat—an old George Brett signature—across the handlebars, and pedals up Brooks in the direction of the campus, weaving between the potholes.

This is one of Raleigh’s older neighborhoods, heavily wooded. In every yard the pines stand tall and crowded; below them, oaks, maples and sweetgums fight for light. Nobody’s pruned them in years and with the heavy rains the city’s returning to forest. The lacing branches form thick green canopies over the narrower streets, which has been uncommonly handy lately, what with the helicopter raids.

Three burnt-out pickups stretch across the intersection of Brooks and Wade. The busted truck beds are heaped with leaky sandbags. Grafitti covers the bright flaking wreckage, angry scrawls and morbid boasts from the local militia groups.

A couple of Chamber of Commerce gangsters crouch beside the trucks, peering warily up through the treetops. There’s no sign of the helicopter, though. Sniffy leans his bike against a dead fireplug, and scuttles up to join the two men.

Sniffy recognizes them: “Trump” and “Getty.” The bigger of the two, the one who calls himself Trump, sports a red polyester baseball cap with a surly wolf stencilled on the front. He’s got a black nylon ski-mask, too, tucked floppily into his pistol-belt.

Except for this, Trump looks pretty much like any American civilian used to look in the old days, except that his jeans and shirt are patched and dirty, and he’s thinner. And he looks very young. Sniffy tries to imagine what Trump would look like if he appeared his true age: forty? Fifty? Sixty-five? It’s hard to see this scraggly bearded tough, hardly more than a teenager—with sharp, clear, lively eyes—as a vice-president pushing papers across the desk in some bank.

Trump’s pal, Getty, crouches lithely beside the bullet-riddled bed of the second Toyota. Getty’s girlfriend, or maybe his mom or even his grandmother, has stitched his gang-name across the back of his Chamber of Commerce camou-jacket.

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