Wild Cards X: Double Solitaire by Melinda Snodgrass & Wild Cards Trust

Author:Melinda Snodgrass & Wild Cards Trust [Snodgrass, Melinda & Trust, Wild Cards]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Action & Adventure, Superheroes, Collections & Anthologies, Science Fiction, General, Fiction
ISBN: 9781250168122
Google: j6V_DwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates
Published: 2019-12-03T00:00:00+00:00

Even an imagination as fertile and creative as Jay's couldn't turn Ilkala into New York City. No self-respecting New Yorker would build office buildings in pale lavender, lime green, dusty rose... the list of offensive pastel colors went on and on. And while the Takisians built tall, they built tall wrong. The multistory buildings couldn't really be called skyscrapers, they were too spindly for that. Meadows, in another of his endless, fucking lectures, had explained that too. Something about how Takis had a relative mass about one-third? Two-fifths? -- some damn number or other -- of Earth norm, so the gravity was less, and buildings could look anemic.

And everybody could be a flit, thought Jay sourly as he surveyed his fellow passengers on the tram. It seemed a prosaic description for an impeccably clean means of conveyance which had no apparent means of propulsion. It hummed lightly up the deep valley to within a mile of the House Ilkazam, depositing servants, and the occasional slumming psi lord, and went humming back to the city. If the New York subway system was a tenth this nice -- He cut off the thought ruthlessly. He didn't want to like anything about Takis in his present mood. The seats. Yeah, the seats were way too small. Not comfortable at all.

Mollified by finding fault, he returned to a sour contemplation of his physical surroundings. He had no idea where to exit the tram. The rush of events hadn't left him with much time to peruse the guidebooks. What were the sights and attractions of Ilkala? Did Takisians write guidebooks? Did Takisians take vacations? He tried to picture the Takisian equivalent of a Hawaiian shirt and failed utterly. Some things man was not meant to see.

At least there was a bizarre familiarity to the entire commuting ritual. In place of briefcases the business people possessed wafer-thin laptop computers that were attached by fine filament wires to a throat patch. Jay presumed they were all dictating information to the critters rather than typing. Seemed sort of cumbersome. Other people read (the books were shimmering projections at eye level, which adjusted for a shift in your posture) or listened to music on tiny radios disguised as ear clips. The competing musical styles formed whispers in the air. Apparently Takis had avoided the boom-box phenomenon.

Yeah, as cranky as they all are, they'd come over and beat the crap out of you for infringing on their ear space, Jay mused.

The number of young moms and young dads with babies and toddlers in slings or glider prams were about equal. Apparently child rearing was an equal-opportunity task among the Tarhiji. And then there were the old, all of whom were treated with the gravest courtesy.

The tram sighed to a stop, and about half the passengers rose and began to disembark. Though they were clearly in a financial and business district, Jay decided to go with the flow. He joined the mass exodus.

"Excuse me," Jay said in halting Sham'al. The woman turned and looked at him with an expression of polite inquiry.

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