The Centauri Device by Harrison M. John

Author:Harrison, M. John [Harrison, M. John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction, Fantasy
Goodreads: 304243
Publisher: Gollanz
Published: 1974-01-01T08:00:00+00:00

All Chromians are dyslexic from birth. It may be why their culture is still feudal. Truck sat down in one of the command chairs and shrugged at the inscription. ‘Fix, Fix.’ It was no more than he deserved. He felt unutterably weary.

Tiny, meanwhile, had stirred, rubbed his eyes, and sucked the empty bottle. ‘Fix left,’ he said, helping himself up with the edge of the chart computer. ‘Christ that stuff stinks.’ He staggered round the cabin looking for water, tripping repeatedly over the bottle, intent only on his own pain. ‘Took his chopper and everything.’

‘It’s happened before. Hell be back. We’re always falling out.’ It was true, but it didn’t make him feel any better: it was always his fault.

Finally, Tiny got his sight back.

‘Hey, Truck,’ he sniggered, ‘did you get converted?’ He squinted across the control room, a big, silly grin spreading across his face as he took in Truck’s new clothes. ‘Jesus, what—’

Truck, inspired by a dreadful rage, had leaped to his feet and was making determined grabs for Tiny’s throat.

He skipped smartly back. ‘Truck, I—’

Truck got hold of him. ‘Laugh, and I’ll kick your head in, Skeffern,’ he said earnestly. ‘Come on then—’ He wanted to hurt somebody. He was being driven further and further out on his own, away from even the minimal decencies of the hinterlands. He shoved Tiny up against the bulkhead until his thin blond hair was rubbing out Fix’s illiterate plea for fair treatment. ‘Come on’—inviting with steely fingers—‘say one word.’

And then, from all the sick misery of his awakening in Grishkin’s ghoulish city; ‘Oh sod it, sod it. Help me, Tiny.’

Tiny gaped and snuffled.

Truck slumped back in his seat and set his eyes sorrowfully on the bos’n’s stupid half-erased note (Fix wasn’t fit to be out on his own: he only got into fights with people bigger than himself, or pawned his chopper). ‘What am I doing, Tiny? I made a deal with Grishkin. It was the only way I could see to get hold of the bloody Device. Now I’m not sure he didn’t suspect that all along. He expects me to try and double-cross him. He cut me open as a warning. What am I doing?’

‘It was only a joke, Truck, I didn’t—’

Truck shivered and stared at the bulkhead.

Bleak steel.

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