The Green Leopard Plague by Walter Jon Williams

Author:Walter Jon Williams [Williams, Walter Jon]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2010-09-22T06:00:00+00:00

Got you, Michelle thought. Here was a still photo of Terzian at the Fęte des Aires de la Dine, with the dark-skinned woman. She had the same wide-brimmed straw hat she’d worn in the Florence church, and had the same black bag over her shoulder, but now Michelle had a clear view of a three-quarter profile, and one hand, with its critical alignments, was clearly visible, holding an ice cream cone.

Night insects whirled around the computer display. Michelle batted them away and got busy mapping. The photo was digital and Michelle could enlarge it.

To her surprise, she discovered that the woman had green eyes. Black women with green irises–or irises of orange or chartreuse or chrome steel–were not unusual in her own time, but she knew that in Terzian’s time they were rare. That would make the search much easier.

"Michelle . . ." The voice came just as Michelle sent her new search spiders into the ether. A shiver ran up her spine.

"Michelle . . ." The voice came again.

It was Darton.

Michelle’s heart gave a sickening lurch. She closed her console and put it back in the mesh bag, then crossed the rope bridge between the ironwood tree and the banyan. Her knees were weak, and the swaying bridge seemed to take a couple of unexpected pitches. She stepped out onto the banyan’s sturdy overhanging limb and gazed out at the water.

"Michelle . . ." To the southwest, in the channel between the mermaid’s island and another, she could see a pale light bobbing, the light of a small boat.

"Michelle, where are you?"

The voice died away in the silence and surf. Michelle remembered the spike in her hand, the long, agonized trek up the slope above Jellyfish Lake. Darton pale, panting for breath, dying in her arms.

The lake was one of the wonders of the world, but the steep path over the ridge that fenced the lake from the ocean was challenging even for those who were not dying. When Michelle and Darton–at that time, apes–came up from their boat that afternoon, they didn’t climb the steep path, but swung hand-over-hand through the trees overhead, through the hardwood and guava trees, and avoided the poison trees with their bleeding, allergenic black sap. Even though their trip was less exhausting than if they’d gone over the land route, the two were ready for the cool water by the time they arrived at the lake.

Tens of thousands of years in the past, the water level was higher, and when it receded, the lake was cut off from the Pacific, and with it the Mastigias sp. jellyfish, which soon exhausted the supply of small fish that were its food. As the human race did later, the jellies gave up hunting and gathering in exchange for agriculture, and permitted themselves to be farmed by colonies of algae that provided the sugars they needed for life. At night, they’d descend to the bottom of the lake, where they fertilized their

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.