Christopher Rowe - The Voluntary State.pdf - po ang - Januszek66

Science Fiction

The

Voluntary

State

By Christopher Rowe

The Voluntary State

by Christopher Rowe

Fictionwise

www.Fictionwise.com

First published in Sci Fiction, May 2004

NOTICE: This ebook is licensed to the original purchaser

only. Duplication or distribution to any person via email,

floppy disk, network, print out, or any other means is a

violation of International copyright law and subjects the

violator to severe fines and/or imprisonment. This notice

overrides the Adobe Reader permissions which are

erroneous. This book cannot be legally lent or given to

others.

This ebook is displayed using 100% recycled electrons.

Distributed by Fictionwise.com

The Voluntary State

by Christopher Rowe

Soma had parked his car in the trailhead lot above

Governor's Beach. A safe place, usually, checked regularly by

the Tennessee Highway Patrol and surrounded on three sides

by the limestone cliffs that plunged down into the Gulf of

Mexico.

But today, after his struggle up the trail from the beach,

he saw that his car had been attacked. The driver's side

window had been kicked in.

Soma dropped his pack and rushed to his car's side. The

car shied away from him, backed to the limit of its tether

before it recognized him and turned, let out a low, pitiful

moan.

"Oh, car," said Soma, stroking the roof and opening the

passenger door, "Oh, car, you're hurt." Then Soma was

rummaging through the emergency kit, tossing aside flares

and bandages, finally, finally finding the glass salve. Only

after he'd spread the ointment over the shattered window and

brushed the glass shards out onto the gravel, only after he'd

sprayed the whole door down with analgesic aero, only then

did he close his eyes, access call signs, drop shields. He

opened his head and used it to call the police.

In the scant minutes before he saw the cadre of blue and

white bicycles angling in from sunward, their bubblewings

pumping furiously, he gazed down the beach at Nashville. The

cranes the Governor had ordered grown to dredge the harbor

would go dormant for the winter soon—already their acres-

broad leaves were tinged with orange and gold.

The Voluntary State

by Christopher Rowe

"Soma-With-The-Paintbox-In-Printer's-Alley," said voices

from above. Soma turned to watch the policemen land. They

all spoke simultaneously in the sing-song chant of law

enforcement. "Your car will be healed at taxpayers' expense."

Then the ritual words, "And the wicked will be brought to

justice."

* * * *

Efficiency and order took over the afternoon as the

threatened rain began to fall. One of the 144 Detectives

manifested, Soma and the policemen all looking about as they

felt the weight of the Governor's servant inside their heads. It

brushed aside the thoughts of one of the Highway Patrolmen

and rode him, the man's movements becoming slightly less

fluid as he was mounted and steered. The Detective filmed

Soma's statement.

"I came to sketch the children in the surf," said Soma. He

opened his daypack for the soapbubble lens, laid out the

charcoal and pencils, the sketchbook of boughten paper

bound between the rusting metal plates he'd scavenged along

the middenmouth of the Cumberland River.

"Show us, show us," sang the Detective.

Soma flipped through the sketches. In black and gray, he'd

drawn the floating lures that crowded the shallows this time

of year. Tiny, naked babies most of them, but also some little

girls in one-piece bathing suits and even one fat prepubescent

boy clinging desperately to a deflating beach ball and turning

horrified, pleading eyes on the viewer.

The Voluntary State

by Christopher Rowe

"Tssk, tssk," sang the Detective, percussive. "Draw

filaments on those babies, Soma Painter. Show the lines at

their heels."

Soma was tempted to show the Detective the artistic

licenses tattooed around his wrists in delicate salmon inks, to

remind the intelligence which authorities had purview over

which aspects of civic life, but bit his tongue, fearful of a For-

the-Safety-of-the-Public proscription. As if there were a living

soul in all of Tennessee who didn't know that the children who

splashed in the surf were nothing but extremities, nothing but

lures growing from the snouts of alligators crouching on the

sandy bottoms.

The Detective summarized. "You were here at your work,

you parked legally, you paid the appropriate fee to the meter,

you saw nothing, you informed the authorities in a timely

fashion. Soma-With-The-Paintbox-In-Printer's-Alley, the

Tennessee Highway Patrol applauds your citizenship."

The policemen had spread around the parking lot, casting

cluenets and staring back through time. But they all heard

their cue, stopped what they were doing, and broke into a

raucous cheer for Soma. He accepted their adulation

graciously.

Then the Detective popped the soapbubble camera and

plucked the film from the air before it could fall. It rolled up

the film, chewed it up thoughtfully, then dismounted the

policeman, who shuddered and fell against Soma. So Soma

did not at first hear what the others had begun to chant,

didn't decipher it until he saw what they were encircling.

Christopher Rowe - The Voluntary State.pdf

Plik z chomika:

Inne pliki z tego folderu:

Inne foldery tego chomika: