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Well, it amused me.I lay back.The water sparkled, the sky seemed to ring with light, and way in the
distance a black triangle or two carved the perimeter of the field the ship was laying down under the
chopping blue sea.
6: Undesirable Alien
6.1:You'll Thank Me Later
December.We were finishing off, tying up the loose ends.There was an air of weariness about the
ship.People seemed quieter.I don't think it was just tiredness.I think it was more likely the effect of a
realized objectivity, a distancing; we had been there long enough to get over the initial buzz, the
honeymoon of novelty and delight.We were starting to see Earth as a whole, not just a job to be done
and a playground to explore, and in looking at it that way, it became both less immediate and more
impressive; part of the literature, something fixed by fact and reference, no longer ours; a droplet of
knowledge already being absorbed within the swelling ocean of the Culture's experience.
Even Li had quieted down.He held his elections, but only a few people were indulgent enough to vote,
and we just did it to humour him.Disappointed, Li declared himself the ship's captain in exile (no, I never
understood that either), and left it at that.He took to betting against the ship on horse races, ball games
and football matches.The ship must have been fixing the odds, because it ended up owing Li a ridiculous
amount of money.Li insisted on being paid so the ship fashioned him a flawless cut diamond the size of his
fist.It was his, the ship told him.A gift; he couldown it. (Li lost interest in it after that though, and tended to
leave it lying around the social spaces; I stubbed a toe on it at least twice.In the end he got the ship to
leave the stone in orbit around Neptune on our way out of the system; a joke.)
I spent a lot of time on the ship playingTsartas music, though more to compose myself than anything else.
[*14*]
I had my Grand Tour, like most of the others on the ship, so spent a day or so in all the places I wanted
to see; I saw sunrise from the top of Khufu and sunset from Ayers Rock.I watched a pride of lions laze
and play in Ngorongoro, and the tabular bergs calve from the Ross ice shelf; I watched condors in the
Andes, musk ox on the tundra, polar bears on the Arctic ice and jaguars slinking through the jungle.I
skated on Lake Baykal, dived over the Great Barrier Reef, strolled along the Great Wall, rowed across
Dal and Titicaca, climbed Mount Fuji, took a mule down the Grand Canyon, swam with the whales off
Baja California, and hired a gondola to cruise round Venice, through the cold mists of winter under a sky
that to me looked old and tired and worn.
I know some people did go to the ruins at Angkor, safety guaranteed by the ship, its drones and knife
missiles but not I.No more could I visit the Potala, however much I wanted to.
We were due for a couple of months R R on an Orbital in Trohoase cluster; standard procedure after
immersion in a place like Earth.Certainly, I wasn't in the mood for any more exploring for a while; I was
drained, sleeping five or six hours a night and dreaming heavily, as though the pressure of artifically
crammed information I'd started out with as briefing - combined with everything I'd experienced
Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
personally - was too much for my poor head, and it was leaking out when my guard was down.
I'd given up on the ship.Earth was going to be a Control; I'd failed.Even the fall-back position, of waiting
until Armageddon, was disallowed.I argued it out with the ship in a crew assembly, but couldn't even
carry the human vote with me.TheArbitrary copied to theBad For Business and the rest, but I think it was
just being kind; nothing I said made any difference.So I made music, took my Grand Tour, and slept a
lot.I finished my Tour, and said goodbye to Earth, on the cliffs of a chilly, wind-swept Thira, looking out
over the shattered caldera to where the ruby-red sun met the Mediterranean; a livid plasma island sinking
in the wine-dark sea.Cried.
So I wasn't at all pleased when the ship asked me to hit dirt for one last time.
'But I don't want to.'
'Well, that's all right, if you're quite sure.I'm not asking you to do it for your own good, I must admit, but I
did promise Linter I'd ask, and he did seem quite anxious to see you before we left.'
'Oh butwhy ?What does he want from me?'
'He wouldn't say.I didn't talk to him all that long.I sent a drone down to tell him we were leaving soon,
and he said he would only talk to you.I told him I'd ask but I couldn't guarantee anything he was adamant
though; only you.He won't talk to me.Oh well.Such is life.Not to worry.I'll tell him you won't -' the small
unit started to drift away, but I pulled it back.
'No; no, stop; I'll go.God dammit, I'll go.Where?Where does he want to meet?'
'New York City.'
'Oh no,' I groaned.
'Hey, it's an interesting place.You might like it.'
6.2:The Precise Nature Of The Catastrophe
A General Contact Unit is a machine.In Contact you live inside one, or several, plus a variety of Systems
Vehicles, for most of your average thirty-year stint.I was just over half way through my spell and I'd been
on three GCUs; theArbitrary had been my home for only a year before we found Earth, but the craft
before it had been an Escarpment class too.So I was used to living in a device nevertheless; I'd never felt
so machine-trapped, so tangled and caught and snarled up as I did after an hour in the Big Apple.
I don't know if it was the traffic, the noise, the crowds, the soaring buildings or the starkly geometric
expanses of streets and avenues (I mean, I've never evenheard of a GSV which laid out its
accommodation as regularly as Manhattan), or just everything together, but whatever it was, I didn't like
it.So; a bitterly cold, windy Saturday night in the big city on the Eastern seaboard, only a couple of
week's shopping left till Christmas, and me sitting in a little coffee shop on 42nd Street at eleven o'clock,
waiting for the movies to end.
What was Linter playing at?Going to seeClose Encounters for the seventh time, indeed.I looked at my
watch, drank my coffee, paid the check and left.I tightened the heavy wool coat about me, pulled on
gloves and a hat.I wore needle-cords and knee-length leather boots.I looked around as I walked, a chill
wind against my face.
What really got to me was the predictability.Itwas like a jungle.Oslo a rock garden?Paris a parterre, with
its follies, shady areas and breeze-block garages inset?London with that vaguely conservatory air, a
badly kept museum haphazardly modernized?Wien a too severe version of Paris, high starch collared,
and Berlin a long garden party in the ruins of a baroque sepulchre?Then New York a rain forest; an
infested, towering, teeming jungle, full of great columns that scratched at the clouds but which stood with
their feet in the rot, decay and swarming life beneath; steel on rock, glass blocking the sun; the ship's
living machine incarnate.
I walked through the streets, dazzled and frightened.TheArbitrary was just a tap on my terminal away, [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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