The Year's Top Hard Science Fiction Stories 5 by Allan Kaster

Author:Allan Kaster [Kaster, Allan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: AudioText
Published: 2021-06-18T04:00:00+00:00

The evening hyperloop run from L.A. to San Diego is too short for anything but a cigarette and second thoughts. Of the latter I had plenty, but got only halfway through the former before a railway bull flashed his buzzer at me and threatened to toss me in the cooler. I remember a time when the countryside was nothing but citrus groves and every joe and jane considered smoking in public a social contract, like Mulholland’s water. Better days.

I lit another pill as soon as I made the platform. At the taxi terminal I recited Darlington’s address and settled in to wait for a car. I hired a round-trip, figuring the job a short one: meet the bird, slip her the glamour, suggest she call Tom. So I counted easy money and watched the sky.

They were still at it up there. Even through the LED glare of the station lights, the haze of smoke wreathing my head, and the silvery glow of a nearly full moon, the incandescent shimmer of burning aerospace debris made a hell of a show. The way I read the leaves, somebody had poked the wrong loogan and now they were busting up the furniture.

A warm breeze ripped my cigarette smoke to tatters. A warmer breeze folded those scraps of dirtied air into the far fringes of thermodynamic possibility. My exhalations became swirls of anti-entropy, beefing at me to phone home. I’d been getting little hints like this for a while, but I’d learned the hard way not to get my hopes up.

“Nuts to you,” I said, and crushed the pill underfoot.

My car arrived. The door opened. I climbed in. The machine pulled away from the platform and soon merged into the late evening traffic. I’d have lit another pill, but the message from home had put me off that vice. So instead I loosened my flask. Not enough to get stinko, but enough to dip the bill while my ride sidled up the coast.

The houses got bigger and I got tighter. Remembering the way little Tommy Darlington dressed to go slumming in a low-rent gin mill, I wondered just how big they’d get.

Just after a turn inland, the safety alarm decided I’d gone too long between headaches. The console flashed red and amber as the car entered a shutdown mode. It pulled off the road and eased to a stop before I used up a whole month’s supply of blue words. GPS had gone down.

Myrna Darlington’s mansion wasn’t far, so I hoofed it. Not that I have hooves; back home, those are reserved for the high rollers. But the Seraphim have three pairs of wings, too, and never walk. Some people have all the luck.

Not me. And not some of the poor saps down on the coastal highway. Judging from the honking, the crunching, the tire squeals and—eventually—the sirens, mine wasn’t the only ride to suffer an ing-bing as orbital antisatellite platforms wrecked the joint. But it might have been one of the few to shut down with time for an amen.

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.