Something Coming Through by Paul McAuley

Author:Paul McAuley [McAuley, Paul]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 1473203945
Google: -Jl-BAAAQBAJ
Amazon: B00MTXJ9NU
Publisher: Gollancz
Published: 2015-02-19T08:00:00+00:00

28. The Worst Thing

Mangala | 30 July

Vic was woken by the scratchy rhythm of his phone’s ringtone and groped for it half asleep, the terrible shadow of a hangover looming at the edge of his consciousness. He couldn’t find the bedside table or the damn phone, wincingly opened his eyes. An unfamiliar bedroom, pink pillowcases and pink sheets and some kind of patchwork quilt, the naked curve of a woman’s back close to him.

It had been his day off yesterday. A Saturday. He’d gone into Junktown and found Dodger, who’d told him that he hadn’t been able to find out much about Danny Drury.

‘From what I heard, he doesn’t represent on the streets. But I did hear that he recently hired some tasty geezers. Former soldiers. Serious muscle. Word is he’s looking to rumble with someone.’

‘With Cal McBride?’

Vic was thinking of Skip’s idea that Drury and McBride were headed for that Elder Culture site in Idunn’s Valley.

‘That was one of the names mentioned.’

Vic gave Dodger another forty and told him to find out who Drury had a beef with, and headed over to his ex’s place to pick up the last of his stuff. Halfway there, he became stuck in an epic traffic jam on the ring road. A juvenile plainswalker had wandered onto the carriageway and there’d been a pile-up when a truck skidding around it had ploughed into half a dozen other vehicles. Vic glimpsed the biochine in the distance, sails semaphoring sunlight as it scampered away, pursued by the round-up crew. Way back, when Petra had been nothing more than huts and tents strung along half a dozen streets bulldozed out of the playa, biochines had wandered all over the place, innocently curious about the new arrivals. These days, they were rarely spotted inside the city limits: they had learned what humans could do, and kept well away.

It took more than an hour to round up the biochine and reopen the ring road. And when Vic arrived at what used to be his home, late and exasperated, his ex, Janet, straight away told him that she had a new boyfriend, and they were getting serious.

‘He’s moving in, actually. So I appreciate you finding the time to come over and take away your things.’

‘Because he was poking about in the back of the garage, taking an inventory of your old paint cans, and got upset, finding my shit?’

‘He’s a lovely man. A surgeon at the hospital, came up just a year ago. You might even like him.’

‘I’m not ready for double dating, but hey, I’m pleased for you. Really. Have he and Poppy hit it off?’

Poppy was Janet’s daughter from her previous marriage. Nine years old, bright, energetic, and possessed of an infallible bullshit detector when it came to grown-ups. And presently – Vic was certain it wasn’t a coincidence – at a friend’s house on a playdate. He still missed her, missed their walks along the rim trails in the hills above the lake. Poppy was a fiend for natural history, loved to take photos of biochines and to collect bugs.

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