Bradbury Weather by Caitlín R. Kiernan

Author:Caitlín R. Kiernan [Kiernan, Caitlín R.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781645241515
Publisher: Subterranean Press

Zora didn’t come for chess tonight. She called and wanted to know if I needed anything, and when I asked her if we’d be playing later, she said that she had a late client, a man from Belgium, a Gemini.

Sometimes she has late clients.

So, maybe I can finish with this, instead.

The shuttle leveled out at about 9,100 meters, and I sat wishing I had more than the grainy images from the vidscreen, wishing that I was getting the same direct and unobstructed view through the vehicle’s windshield that Joakim and Umachandra had from their places in the cockpit. Peter wasn’t interested in the scenery; he’d gotten fall sick during the drop and sat with his eyes shut tightly, beads of sweat dappling his cheeks like dew or a fever. Through the faceplate of his helmet, he looked ready to vomit again, and the suit’s tiny waste-clearance mechs clustered around his cheeks, just in case.

The barren landscape stretched out below us might easily have passed for Afghanistan or southern Arizona or the Daedalia Planum, except for the countless intense hues of red that made Mars seem pale by comparison. Already, journalists and webzats on Earth had seized on this, labeling Piros the “Redder Planet” and the “true God of War.” Some Christian mystics had even cited the moon’s discovery as a sign of the nearness of Armageddon. There was, of course, no need for recourse to portents and prophecies and apocalyptic metaphors. Biochemistry and geophysics were suitable enough alchemies to account for the seemingly endless plains of blood-red stone and sand and dust that had been left behind by the retreat and eventual death of the Pirosan oceans.

I anxiously checked my timepiece. There were hardly 500 kilometers left from our present position to the LZ, ten or twelve minutes’ flight time at the most. I tried not to think about what we were going to find down there, tried not to think about Evelyn, and the boltgun, and the lines of William Blake that Jack Baird had quoted. I busied myself with the topography below us, the few landmarks that I recognized from the charts I’d spent years studying: a deep canyon that had to be the Valles Hela, its narrow floor more than five kilometers below the surrounding plateau of the Mare Malacia; a towering line of cliffs marking the weathered edge of the paleocontinent Niflheim; an unnamed impact crater, less than a million years old, more than two hundred miles across. Some of the oldest macrofossils recovered from –

Zora, I cannot write this this way, as some mundane, linear narrative, as though it is hardly more to me than a story or a travelogue. None of these things are relevant, what I saw on the screen, the geology of a dead world humans will likely never visit again, the trivial names men had given canyons and mountains orbiting a distant star.

Suddenly, I seem hopelessly lost in this manuscript, fumbling in its dry pages, and I’m afraid that it’s simply because I am coming close to the end.

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.