Light by M. John Harrison

Author:M. John Harrison
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, azw3, pdf
Tags: Fantasy, Science Fiction
ISBN: 9780575106628
Publisher: Spectra
Published: 2002-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

It was the weirdest ride Ed ever had.

2.30 a.m.: the streets were deserted, silent but for the steady soft slap of Annie Glyph's feet. The shafts moved up and down as she ran, but the cab had a chip to damp the effect of that. To Ed it was like gliding and being motionless, both at once. All he could see of the rickshaw girl was her massive lats and buttocks, painted with electric-blue Lycra. Her gait was an energy-saving shuffle. She was designed to run forever. Every so often she shook her head, and an aerosol of sweat sprayed up into the cab's soft corona of advertising light. The heat of her streamed around him, so that he was insulated against the night. He felt insulated from everything else too, as if being Annie's passenger allowed him to withdraw from the world: take a rest from its mysteries.

When he admitted this, she laughed.

'Twinks!' she said. 'Rest is all you fuckers ever do.'

'I had a life once.'

'They all say that,' Annie advised him. 'Hey,' she said. 'Don't you know not to talk to the rickshaw girl? She's got work to do if you ain't.'

The night ran past, the garment district flowing into Union Square and then East Garden. EMC adprop was everywhere. 'War!' announced the hologram hoardings: 'Are you ready?' Annie turned briefly on to downtown Pierpoint, which was as deserted as if the war had already happened. The tank parlours and chopshops were all closed. Here and there some loser drank Roses whiskey in an empty bar while a cultivar in an apron wiped the bartop with his dirty rag and pondered the difference between life and the semblance of it. They would be like that 'til dawn then go home, still wondering.

'So what did you do, this other life you had?' Annie asked Ed suddenly. 'This, "I wasn't always a twink" life of yours?'

Ed shrugged.

'One thing I did,' he began, 'I flew dipships—'

'They all say that.'

'Hey,' Ed said. 'We don't have to talk.'

Annie laughed to herself. She hung a left off Pierpoint on to Impreza, then another at the corner of Impreza and Skyline. There, she had to pull hard into a half-mile grade, but her breathing barely altered. Hills, her body language implied, were the small change of life to a rickshaw girl. After a while, Ed said:

'One thing I remember, I had a cat. That was when I was a kid.'

'Yeah? What colour was that?'

'It was black,' Ed said. 'It was a black cat.'

He could make a clear mental picture of the cat, juggling with a coloured feather in the hall. For twenty minutes it would put its whole heart into whatever you offered—paper, a feather, a painted cork—then lose interest and fall asleep. It was black and thin, with nervous, fluid movements, a pointed little face and yellow eyes. It was always hungry. Ed could make a clear mental picture of the cat, but he couldn't remember anything about the family house. Instead he had

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