Good News From Outer Space by John Kessel

Author:John Kessel
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Science Fiction, General, Fiction
ISBN: 9780312931780
Publisher: Tor Books
Published: 1989-09-15T04:00:00+00:00

TRUTH

One cap only, seekers. Inhibits left temporal lobe language receptivity, stimulates right lobe tonal & attitudinal receptivity. Global aphasia of six to eight hours duration.

During that period you will be unable to understand spoken language; your sensitivity to tone of voice, body language, inflection, nonverbal cues will be simultaneously enhanced.

The Tyranny of the Word is broken. Enjoy. Just don’t try to talk too much.

Delano broke the seal on the packet and examined a cap. The stuff was so hard to get that she’d been willing to take the chance on getting burned with the blind locker dropoff.

The powder inside was yellowish white. It could be powdered sugar. She got some water and swallowed one. She wondered how long it took. She turned on the TV and watched the cable news. Twenty minutes later, during a review of the Bogart/Gable remake of “The Man Who Would Be King,” Delano realized that, although she could understand what the director was saying, his words had turned into gibberish. She smiled. “God damn,” she said aloud.

At least that was what she thought she said.

As she walked to dinner through Georgetown, Delano was followed. To make sure she made three consecutive right turns and stepped into an alley. She stood against the building and watched the sidewalk. A small figure appeared there. Delano took one quick step, grabbed the kid by the arm and jerked him into the alley. She clamped her hand over his mouth.

“Are you following me?” Delano said. The words came readily to her lips, but she heard them as if she’d spoken a foreign tongue.

The boy stopped struggling and answered in a brief rush of words. Delano felt his tense muscles, heard the fear in his voice, saw the flick of his eyelashes in the dim light. Whatever his words were he was saying he wasn’t following her. And he was lying.

He wore a green work shirt and patched jeans. She found a knife strapped to his leg. “What’s this?”

The boy was trying to think of a way out; Delano could feel it in the twist of his shoulders. Another flight of words, superficially calmer, but with an edge of calculation. Some kind of excuse.

“Who do you work for?” Delano found that, if she didn’t think about what she wanted to say, but simply let the words flow, it was easier to talk. The sounds she produced still didn’t make sense, but she decided she could tell what she’d said by the boy’s reaction.

The boy spoke more words, clearly no answer. Let me go, please.

He was as easy to read as a billboard. A feeling of power swept through Delano. The .38 slipped into her hand like a touchstone, cool, heavy. “Who do you work for.”

The boy knew he was in trouble now. His reply was less defensive. It might not be the truth, but it wasn’t a lie either. An equivocation.

“The CIA?”

No. Truth.

The kid was too evasive. He might be a mugger, or a religious nut sent to follow Delano from the Ellipse, or a spy for one of the President’s enemies, or Eberhart’s agent.

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