Short Stories by James Tiptree

Author:James Tiptree [Tiptree, James]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Your Faces, O My Sisters! Your Faces Filled Of Light!

Hot summer night, big raindrops falling faster now as she swings along the concrete expressway, high over the old dead city. Lightning is sizzling and cracking over the lake behind her. Beautiful! The flashes jump the roofs of the city to life below her, miles of cube-buildings gray and sharp-edged in the glare. People lived here once, all the way to the horizons. Smiling, she thinks of all those walls and windows full of people, living in turbulence and terror.

Incredible.

She’s passing a great billboard-thing dangling and banging in the wind. Part of a big grinning face:

W-O-N-D-E-R-B-R-E-A, whatever that was, bright as day. She strides along, enjoying the cool rain on her bare head.

No need to pull up her parka for a few minutes yet; the freshness is so great. All headaches completely gone.

The sisters were wrong; she’s perfectly fine. There was no reason to wait any longer, with the messages in her pack and Des Moines out there ahead. They didn’t realize how walking rests you.

Sandals just getting wet, she notes. It feels good, but she mustn’t let them get wet through; they’ll chafe and start a blister. Couriers have to think of things like that. In a few minutes she’ll climb down one of the ramps and take shelter.

There’s ramps along here every half-mile or so, over the old city. Chicago or She-cago, which was it. She should find out; she’s been this way several times now. Courier to the West.

The lake behind her is Michigam, Michi-gami, the shining Big Sea Water.

Satisfied, she figures she has come nearly seventy miles already since she left the hostel yesterday, and only one hitch. I’m not even tired. That beautiful old sister, she thinks. I’d have liked to talk with her more. Like the wise old Nokomis. That’s the trouble, I always want to stop and explore the beautiful places and people, and I always want to get on too, get to the next. Couriers see so much.

Someday she’ll come back here and have a good swim in the lake, loaf and ramble around the old city. So much to see; no danger except from falling walls; she’s expert at watching that.

Some sisters say there are dog-packs here; she doesn’t believe it. And even if there are, they wouldn’t be dangerous. Animals aren’t dangerous if you know what to do. No dangers left at all, in the whole free wide world!

She shakes the rain out of her face, smiling up at the blowing night. To be a courier, what a great life! Rambling woman, on the road. Heyo, sister! Any mail, any messages for Des Moines and points west? Travel, travel on. But she is traveling in really heavy downpour now, she sees. She squeezes past a heap of old wrecked “cars” and splash! one foot goes in ankle-deep. The rain is drumming little fountains all over the old roadway. Time to get under; she reaches back and pulls the parka hood up from under her pack, thinking how alive the highway looks in the flashing lightning and rain.

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