Kzine Issue 12 by Graeme Hurry et al

Author:Graeme Hurry et al. [al., Graeme Hurry et]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kimota Publishing
Published: 2015-05-19T23:00:00+00:00

SAINTS OF THE SPACE AGE

by Don Norum

Morris and Danforth pulled themselves onto the train and buckled in. A few journalists with rabbit antennae and camera lenses sprouting from their shoulders and dignitaries in scratch-free fresh suits followed.

Air hissed out of the lock in a cloud of steam by the windows, something gentle shifted beneath the floor, and the train slid out of the station.

A dozen people stand and churn in the narrow hallway. A thin man in a white dress shirt bibbed with sweat hands typewritten pages to an older man, heavier, in a three-piece suit. He takes it with one hand and waves away a scrum of staffers as someone calls out the time.

He shakes his head away from the makeup girl.

He doesn’t care about winning or losing and cares much less about looking good. He has slept in his suit when he has slept and he has slept five fitful minutes at a time for the last three days.

If they don’t sleep, he won’t sleep.

“What does Sadah think?” said Danforth.

“She said she’d cry, and swear,” Morris said and smiled at the black sky beyond the ashbone-gray of the mountains, “and she said that it might take a year, or two, but she said she knows she’d forgive me for being the bravest, kindest man she ever knew. And that no matter what, she’d love me every second I was gone.”

“Sadah said that?”

“Word for word. She said she stayed up all night thinking how to phrase it.”

Danforth looked at Morris looking out the window to where the mountains faded down into cold airless plains.

“And?”

“I think that it makes the right choice harder to make.” Danforth sunk back into the foam and nodded.

Russia broadcasts the speech uncensored with a single translator murmuring away in a dubbing booth. Some will say the Party had an ulterior motive, because they did not cover the launch.

Some will say that whatever the Party did, the people watching from Novosibirsk to Moscow heard the President’s words as spoken from one human being to another.

They are both right.

The man steps to the podium on every preempted broadcast station on every television screen in the world. He runs a hand across sweaty jowls and clears his throat and speaks, and he never names himself or his country or anyone or anything except for Mother Earth and those on whose behalf he speaks.

The widows sit in the third row and the cameras keep away.

“How old are Aisling and Lucas?” Danforth said.

“Five and eight.”

“Have you talked with them?”

“As much as I can.”

“Right,” Danforth said. “Right.”

Morris sighed. “I’m not sure Lucas understands. Aisling, well, she loves all this.” He ran the back of a glove across the Pyrex window. “She’d probably come with me, if she could.”

“Maybe one day she can.”

“When do you think that would be?”

“Ten, maybe twenty years. But by then she could.”

“Long time to go without seeing your family.”

“Priority broadcast slots whenever possible,” Danforth said. Morris looked back out the window, and Danforth closed his eyes.

The man who has written the words sits by the monitors ten feet from the President.

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