The Webs of Everywhere by John Brunner

Author:John Brunner [Brunner, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Sci Fi
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Published: 1983-01-19T00:00:00+00:00

INTERFACE K

Incomprehensibly

Our ancestors preferred

Putrefaction over evolution.

They were embalmed

Wrapped in sheets of lead

Or stored in coffins in a vault.

When my time comes

I want to grow into a stalk,

A leaf, a flower and an ear of corn.

—Mustapha Sharif

XI

His reaction was pure reflex, without calculation. His left hand flew up to cover Anneliese’s eyes while his right stabbed another code into the skelter, and between one breath and the next they were bitterly cold.

“Error! Transmission error! Sometimes happens— nothing is perfect, I think I must have drunk too much, terribly sorry, what a horrible sight to have run across by accident!” Gabbling. He heard her moan a little, but she was too overcome to form words.

At Least, though, here in Sweden it was briefly light, low sun glinting on the snow-ridges beyond the windows. And the Erikssons’ corpses had safely gone to be incinerated. He could take her by the hand and lead her passive into the living-zone, inventing frantic reasons for the state of the house.

Her teeth chattered although the weak sunlight had raised the temperature above the freezing point. He continued with his meant-to-be-soothing flow of talk.

“Get fire going in a second, don’t worry, I’ll take care of everything…”

On the stone hearth, logs half-charred, ancient ash. He thought of the correspondence paper in the study, ran for it leaving her to stare wide-eyed and amazed at the dust, collected the entire stack and came back carrying a sort of torch already lighted at the end with the betraying truth about the ownership of the house. Damp, it burned poorly. But it did bum. (Goodbye the sheet to be featured in my secret files…) In a box beside the fireplace, kindling which had rotted but not crumbled.

His hands trembled. He hadn’t built a fire in twenty years.

“I’ll turn on the main heating in a moment,” he promised, “i don’t come here often, you see. People don’t stay in one spot these days—I imagine Aleuker told you—we like to follow the warmer weather because it’s so easy and quick to travel, so in winter of course you leave places like this empty until the spring, head for a warmer climate…”

She was shaking, shaking. Near the fireplace there was a low stool; she groped her way to it and sat down. The kindling caught and flames leapt high and yellow. (In imagination he could hear screams. Had the Maori extremists trapped many of his fellow guests, in the pyre of Aleuker’s home? He shut off that line of thought.)

There were other questions bombarding him, such as how to conceal the lack of electricity. With relief he realized: she isn’t used to power, but I ought not to have mentioned the main heating for fear the oil is circulated by an electric pump!

“Are there still policemen in your world?” she said suddenly.

What? Hunkered down, tending the fire, he swiveled to face her.

“You should tell the police about that dead woman,” she went on. ^

“How can I?” The lie was instantly tailored. “I told you, we were taken there by a transmission error.

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