Oblivion by Dave Stone

Author:Dave Stone [Stone, Dave]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Action & Adventure, Fiction, General, Science Fiction, Time Travel, Summerfield; Bernice Surprise (Fictitious Character)
ISBN: 9780426205227
Google: Y99BYgEACAAJ
Amazon: B000XYHNSU
Publisher: Virgin
Published: 1998-08-15T07:00:00+00:00

20

PAST TIMES CATCHING UP

(ALTERNATE EARTH)

The first thing to do was get off the street, to find somewhere

to hole up and hide. The world they were in might have been

different from the ones they had known, but in immediate

terms they could feel and touch and taste it, and to be hurt

or killed here would no doubt be as painful, inconvenient and

final whether the world it happened in was ultimately real or

not. Avoiding the Patrols and the heavy armoured caterpillar-

treaded prowl cars was easier than they had expected. The

darkness was one factor, but the far more decisive factor was

that the forces of this world seemed to be innately geared

towards an utterly predictable populace - whether of the

dronelike, psychically cowed City or the savage,

fundamentally ignorant and so effectively stupid Underclass.

The methods of dealing with intelligent, responsive

individuals, who were more or less in the saddles of their

minds and wills, were simply not in place.

In a patch of waste ground they found a dying-down

garbage fixe and banked it up. Other figures lay huddled,

wrapped in blankets or in makeshift huts of cardboard, ply

and plasterboard, but nobody more than vaguely stirred.

They remained undisturbed.

„I just can‟t think how we didn‟t notice,‟ Leetha said.

„Hm?‟ Li Shao had been lost in looking at her face in the

firelight. It was a face of someone he knew and loved, but,

while humanoid, the red eyes, reptile skin and saurian

features were in no way human. He wondered how he could

have possibly not noticed a small detail like that. The

comment, meshing as it did with his own thoughts, pulled

him back from his reverie. „Notice what, exactly?‟

Leetha reached over and touched his steel-reinforced

jacket. „All that red leather you wear, the bloody big sword

slung across your back. I‟m sure I should have noticed that.

Did it all appear out of thin air? That seems... impossible,

somehow, even with the strange things that have happened.‟

She flexed cramped shoulders in her own leather corslet, in a

manner that would have had anybody standing stock still

and noticing in almost any world.

„I don‟t think we could notice,‟ said Kim, who was wrapping

his silk robes around himself carefully, trying to eke out the

best benefit from them in the now chilly air for which they

were not entirely suitable. „Our minds threw up memories of

events and personalities that had to be, if we were to be

where we found ourselves. Anything else was incompatible;

our minds wouldn‟t let us see them. I think we could only

break out of that under moments of extreme stress.‟

„You‟re right, in all probability.‟ Li Shao recalled the instant

when he had returned to his true self, briefly, during the fight

with... something about being underground, fighting

monsters that physically, he now seemed to recall, were

certainly no worse than members of his own family, even, but

at the time he had thought to be repugnant.

The memories of these other worlds seemed to recede. He

could remember the specific places he had been, the things

he had done, but the whys and wherefores seemed

increasingly elusive. He looked around him at the hovels and

the huddled figures, the crumbling buildings beyond. They

were obviously among

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