Tanith Lee by A Day In The Skin (or The Century We Ran Out of Them)

Author:A Day In The Skin (or, The Century We Ran Out of Them) [Skin, A Day In The]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2011-12-12T02:16:51+00:00

Rebuilt, and glamorized to make us happy, once we were stuck here for a century or so, Base Town was a strange sight, white as meringue against NX 5’s lemon sky. Made in the beginning for the accommodation, researches and pleasures of a floating population of two thousand, you now seldom saw more than twenty people on the streets at a time. For whom now did the bright lights sparkle, and the musics play, the eateries beckon, the labs invite and the libraries yawn? Who races the freeway, swims the pool? Who rides the carousel? And, baby, ask not for whom the bell tolls. With the desert blowing beyond the dust traps on all sides, and sand-blown craters of the west, the Rockies over there, frowning down, where weird whippy birds go flying in the final spasms of sunset-Base has the look of an elegant surreal ghost town. It’s as if everyone has died, after all. The ones you see are only ghosts out for a day in the skin.

A new road goes west, off to that ship the machines are still working on. Haro and I walked out to the road, paused, looked up it into distance, but made no move to do more. Once, years ago, we all went to see what progress they were making on the getting-home stakes. So the road had occasional traffic, some buggy or jetcar puttering or zooming along, like a dragonfly with wings of silver dust. Not any more. Oh they’ll get the ship ready in time, it’s in the contracts, in time for the new bodies, so we can all go to sleep for thirty years and wake up home in H.Q., which isn’t home. Who cares, anyway. What’s home, who’s home, to hurry for? Thirty years older, sixty years, one hundred and sixty. And we, the Children of the Ice, are the same as always. Live forever, and sell your soul to the Company Store.

“Hey, Haro, what do we do now?”

We discussed possibles. We could take a jeep out into the desert and track a pack of doggies, bring back a lady doggy and give it to Dydoo (who’d not smile). We could swim, eat curry, nap in the Furlough, walkabout, eat pizza, go to a movie. We did those. The film was Jiarmennon, sent out to our photo-tape receptors inside a year of its release on the Earth Worlds, by the kindly Company. A terrific epic, huge screen, come-at-you effects, sound that goes through the back of the cerebellum and ends up cranking the pelvis. One of those marvelous entertainments that exactly combine action, spectacle and profound thought. I admit, some of the profound thought I didn’t quite latch on to. But the overall was something plus. Five hours, with intervals. Three other people in the theater. One of them, the one in Fedalin, was asleep or passed out.

When we came forth, the afternoon bloomed full across the town, a primrose sunshade for two suns, and it was sad enough to make you spit.

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