Black Snow Days by Claudia O'Keefe

Author:Claudia O'Keefe [O'Keefe, Claudia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Sci Fi & Fantasy
Publisher: Ace Books
Published: 1990-04-05T23:00:00+00:00

“He wants to die,” Garth said.

“He’s dead. He’s been for a while now, and I’m getting sick of him flopping around down there.” Christopher held onto a torched sapling to keep from sliding off the mountain into the street lamps. Outer and inner barks may have been charred, but the big-leaf maple’s green wood core bent and flexed under his weight. Ash peeled. It sifted through the lights, a somber tickertape wafting to the powerway. The tree still thinks it’s alive, Chris thought.

Like Pope.

It is sickening to watch him. He couldn’t bear to see technology working any longer. He wanted every last bit of it blown up, so he wouldn’t have to worry that it was there. Would this particular piece of technology please hurry up and expire?

“He’s speaking to someone.” Roberta’s voice was low.

Garth and Kim manipulated settings on their binoculars.

“Two burned bodies in the rear trailer,” Kim said.

“Anyone moving?”

Garth readjusted a ring behind the eyepieces, then surveyed the scene again. “I’m not getting any heat inside the truck.”

“Doesn’t mean there isn’t a second party in there,’’ Chris said.

“There isn’t,’’ Roberta said. “I know who he’s talking to.’’ Chris’s ex-wife never looked at him in a personal way since the war. Rather, her deeper feelings assumed a near-scientific abstraction by the time they got to her face. To bug the shit out of him or slap his face with the world. She constantly blamed him for the disappearance of the ecosystem. Her ecosystem. That willowy place where she had lived before, dredging old visions from the minds of men who’d never had to deal with pollution or deforestation. Monet, Manet, Renoir and the other imperious pricks who’d been alive when the Earth was fresh produce and they could be virtuous heroes in the “Glorification of Nature.’’ Since the bursts, he’d had a disenchanted species on his hands in the singular example of Roberta. Fuck the fact that he had once dedicated himself to reclaiming the wetlands. He had touched corporate, while she had clasped purity to her bosom. Abstaining from a modem career while going into Bohemian swoons over cloned American elk and restructured swans. As if they were natural.

Roberta viewed things wrong. She heard him say he wanted to wipe out all technology so the world could redeem itself, and it didn’t even dent. She concentrated her piping-hot stream of blame straight for him. She pinpointed his heart and meant to cauterize it from his chest.

How could she not love him and die with him?

“Kim,’’ Garth said. “Push your magnification. Can you read what he’s saying?’’

“Forget it.’’ Chris let go of the tree. “He’s dead. I want to retrieve him and cut out the chips.’’

“Shouldn’t we give him the decency of his death first?’’ Kim said. Wooden beads clacked together on his pocket abacus. It was as if Chris hadn’t spoken, the bass farmer worked the beads so obsessively. It drowned everything, the far-off susurrus that came with woods, putrefied or not, hail and sandstone crumbling under his boots, Garth making one neophyte racket for a reconnaissance, squatting and resquatting anxiously.

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