Cusp by Robert A. Metzger

Author:Robert A. Metzger
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

** Chapter 20

Ahead, a virtual room extended forever, morphing with rows of corn fading into a smoky horizon, while beside them, barely two meters away, the corn disappeared behind phantom walls lined with bookcases. The ceiling was low, just above the top of Simon’s head, the swaying corn tassels just touching the featureless gray ceiling. Looking to his left through the rows of corn, Simon again checked the bookcases, seeing the familiar volumes, books read and reread so many times. Every three steps down the furrowed field the pattern of multihued book spines would repeat, the red-green-blue spines of Robinson’s Mars trilogy acting as a marker. A part of him, barely above the conscious level, had been keeping count since they had emerged from the Ag Co-Op—1,211 times they’d walked past the Mars books.

“Just passed the hour mark,” said Bill, walking in front of him, still trying to swat at the cornstalks, but his Jinni arms passing through them. “Flesh and bone!” he yelled, making several grabs for a nearby ear of corn, his fingers passing through it. “What I wouldn’t give to be a real boy!” What had been a middle-aged Bill wearing a wrinkled coal black sharkskin suit, blurred, then relocked as a scrawny boy in jeans and a long-sleeved plaid shirt. He looked back accusingly. “Living in your head is no way to live.”

Simon tried to focus on his breathing. A thick sheen of sweat covered his forehead, beading just above his eyes. The air was actually cool, and they walked slowly, not really exerting themselves. The sweat was a panic response. The walls, bookcases, and ceiling helped some, supplied by Bill to calm him, but they could not alter the reality of what was occuring.

Outside.

His fingers tingled, and a high-pitched squeal filled his ears.

“No!” said Bill, again middle-aged and wearing a sharkskin suit. “Just keep moving. She’s taking us to a place that will have an inside.”

Simon nodded and continued to put one foot in front of the other, his shoes sinking in the soft, red-tinted soil, unless he stepped in Sarah’s footprints, in which case the ground would crunch. Whatever abilities she’d acquired by passing through the Point had not only allowed her to modify herself but also the world she came in contact with. Her bare feet left brittle prints, coated in a thin sheen of crystal. Looking past Bill, up the row of corn, he watched Sarah move. Only a few of the fluttering motes above her head were visible, most apparently above the phantom ceiling, somewhere outside.

Missing a step, he stumbled, falling, hitting hard, his face landing in the red soil.

“Up!”

Simon pushed himself up, spitting out dirt, the shock of falling clearing his head. “How much farther to the Olmos farm?” he asked.

Bill didn’t turn. “A long way to go,” he said. “It’s located 40 kilometers east of the Ag Co-Op.”

Simon groaned and squeezed his eyes shut for just a moment, then quickly reopened them, not wanting to fall again. He was

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