Kaleidoscope Century by Barnes John

Author:Barnes, John [Barnes, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Science Fiction, General
ISBN: 9780312855611
Google: 4DI-jsT7qqwC
Amazon: 0312855613
Publisher: Tor Books
Published: 1995-05-14T14:30:00+00:00

3

Slouches Toward Bethlehem

1.

Did I really get Childs’s tag that way? It makes sense, but I seem to remember what he looked like. Wait. Pull up the file on the werp. The read button on that tag has long since gone dead, but somewhere back there I copied the image onto the werp. Sure enough, the face and expression I remember is the one in the werp. Probably I was talking to the image from the button, the two times that I have recordings where it sounds like I was talking to him.

I’d rather not have been a target. And besides, GIs learned early to avoid being alone with anyone who looked like them.

It’s the seventh day I’ve been awake and able to remember. I’m up early again. After probing around in the werp, I find myself thinking I’d rather get moving. The werp shows that I have a good pile of cash, enough to live on a year or more if I have to, even in comfort.

But Martians, like most space people, despise idle wealth, so I probably won’t do that. Never make yourself too noticeable to the neighbors. So off to find my funds and then find a place for me to be and a thing for me to do. Ecoprospecting, maybe, that wasn’t so bad the last time.

I don’t know if I will come back here or not, so I run all the clothes through the fresher in the corner and pack them in my valise. Then I put all the mementos back in the space allocation box. I seem to know the list of them without trouble as I check them off. Matchbook, key, knife, picture, dog-tag, chess piece, napkin. I look over them one more time, dose the space allocation box, and slide it into the valise. Still plenty of room in there, so I slide in the werp also. The valise has a shoulder strap and I can carry the whole works without difficulty — it masses only about twelve kilos or so, which means it weighs only as much as five kilos does on earth.

I will leave nothing of mine behind except the Marshack itself and the food in the fridge. Maybe I’ll be back — free food and a free place to stay, just a short ride away on the maglev, and the fact that nobody’s here yet means no one has found this hideout. But more likely I won’t come back. It’s not a good habit to come back to where you’ve been. I have no trouble remembering that, either.

I’m pulling on the pressure suit as the sun comes up. I go through the written checklist carefully, even though my hands are executing all the moves faster than I can read them and think them.

When I open the outer airlock door, the first rays of the sun are glowing on the boulders, and a few little patches of shore grass are twitching in the light breeze. The sky’s pale pink. I walk farther and crank up the helmet’s outside mike so I can hear.

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