Palace : a novel of the Pinch by Kerr Katharine

Palace : a novel of the Pinch by Kerr Katharine

Author:Kerr, Katharine
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science fiction, American
ISBN: 9780553573732
Publisher: New York : Bantam Books
Published: 1996-08-21T16:00:00+00:00


^ ith a long sigh the wiretrain slid onto the platform at V>J route end. Kata and Elen quit the car to find themselves on a long concrete platform beside a corrugated-metal station building, both gray, both stained. Open stairways led down to the ground. Down at the far end of a narrow street they could see docks and a canal, glittering in a shaft of the day’s first sunlight. Elen looked around and shivered in the damp dawn wind.

“This is it?” he said.

“Yes,” Kata said. “I was hoping for a little more traffic, so we wouldn’t be so noticeable.”

The sunlight faded as clouds closed. Kata hoisted his heavy websling over one shoulder and led the way down the stairs. A shambling village of sorts huddled around the train depot: a few shops, a few houses, a fuel station, all of them settling so unevenly that windows and doors hung angled. The place looked oddly festive thanks to the fungi in green fronded festoons or sulfur-yellow globes stuck under eaves and protrusions. When Kata glanced up, he saw huge bunches of purple fingers hanging from the underside of the wiretrain platform.

“The swamp is taking it back.”

The voice came from under the stairs behind them. Kata

swirled around to find an old human woman sitting on a rusty oil drum. She’d wrapped herself in layers of clothes that were barely more than rags, a dirty medley of red and brown with the odd touch of yellow.

“I saw you looking at the Hands of God,” she said. “That’s what I call ’em, the purple ones, the Hands of God. They soften things up, like, because they ooze this acid, and then they pick things right apart. It’s busy, busy fingers, plucking here, poking there. The men come and scrape them off, but the swamp sends more right the next day.”

“Well, it’s a problem, all right, the fungi.” Elen fished in his websling and found a couple of coins. “Here, grandmother, buy yourself something to drink.”

“Thank you, youngling. I’ll do that. And you remember, when the city comes atumbling down, you remember what I told you. The swamp’s taking it back.”

“We will, grandmother,” Kata said. “And a good day to you.”

Heading for the water, they hurried off down the street, past a straggle of houses, listing and cracking, sporting a fine crop of fungi and molds.

“Living out here would make any sape a little crazy,” Elen remarked. “The swamp’s taking this village back, all right.”

“No one wants to keep it, that’s why. Spread a few gallons of Megatox over these buildings, and the swamp would get its claws out fast enough.”

“Well, there are problems with that stuff.”

“This isn’t a problem?”

“You win.”

Their destination lay right on the water: a wooden dock, soaked black in what looked like old-fashioned creosote, with a bait-and-tackle shop perched on the far end. Since most Leps had a taste for flatties, the gray fish that swarmed at the edge of the swamplands. Kata was expecting no fuss over their renting



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