String City by Graham Edwards

Author:Graham Edwards
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction
Publisher: Rebellion Publishing Ltd

Windy City

57

SEVEN DAYS PASSED, during which I finally grew to understand why Zephyr and Raymond had never talked about the guy being a bosquadrille. “Talk about the elephant in the room,” she’d said. Well, instead of a room I had the inside of my head, and in place of the elephant I had a shiny spinning coin and a bird with blue-green feathers.

I had little enough idea what they meant individually. Together, they signified nothing at all. Except they did. I just didn’t know what. So I avoided them. Every time my thoughts strayed their way, I turned my mind to someplace else: an old case, a new case, the fact that none of our clients could pay us and we owed the bank a Thane’s ransom, didn’t matter what. I was in denial. If you’d asked me, of course, I’d have denied it.

On the morning of the seventh day, the sun rose bright as a tangerine. For all the rioting that had gone on the night before, and for all the devastation evident in the street outside, it sure was a beautiful dawn. I flipped over the calendar and immediately choked on my coffee. From the sublime to the mundane in a single swipe of the wrist.

“Tax inspector’s due,” I said.

I trudged to the coffee machine. My first visit from the tax department in ten years and I’d done nothing to prepare. I pulled the spigot with a shaking hand and ended up with more java on my shirt than in the cup.

“Let me do it,” said Zephyr. She pushed me aside and drew us both a double espresso. “And stop fretting. They probably won’t turn up, given the state of emergency and everything. I can’t believe collecting taxes is very high on the government’s to-do list right now.”

“You don’t know the municipals,” I said, pulling a clean shirt out of my desk drawer. “They subbed out the whole tax business a couple of years ago. The new operators are keen as razors. They’ll be here.”

“You think so? Have you seen the state of the street?”

I had to admit things looked bad. The tangerine sun had already disappeared behind clouds, and the road outside the office was crushed like an accordion and littered with half a dozen fresh thunderbird corpses. Most of the surrounding buildings were rubble. Beyond, the String City skyline looked like a set of cancer-ridden gums. Gale-force wind blew grit and tattered newspapers in a horizontal stream. It had been blowing like that for days.

A single hamadryad hooker stood forlorn on the kerb. She looked like a lightning-struck elm, bent double by the wind. There were no passers-by to offer her trade. Looking at the state of her, I doubted anyone would have stopped anyway.

“It’s like the whole city’s dying,” said Zephyr. She looked tired, and her face was pale.

“It’s dead already,” I said. “It just doesn’t realise it yet. The minute that Fool started picking at the Still Point, the future was set. He’s still picking at it now, and there’s nothing anyone can do to stop it.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.