[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.Each time he woke and listened, theyseemed to grow more loud and distinct, until he felt as if he were closed upin the cold mechanical womb of some indifferent and unliving creature, hehimself already dead before he could be born: a stone fetus.He rolled over,and tried to concentrate on the sound of Liraun's breathing, setting thatwarm purr and bumble against the too-precise whispering of theclockwork things.After a while, he slept.Raymond Keane called in the morning, as expected.Farber felt betterby then, clearer-headed and calm, as a man may when he has irreversiblycommitted himself.Resignation was almost a relief after the long intervalof doubt and indecision.He watched without fear as Keane's flushed faceswam into focus on the phone screen he had used up all hisapprehension the day before.Indeed, he was almost amused, Keane lookedso hot and so earnestly angry.Farber had turned the volume control nearlyall the way down, but the voice of the aging putty-faced zealot in thehologram still scritched unpleasantly loud in his ears.The Director wasdefinitely not gemutlich today.Once again, Keane was demonstrating hisbasic incompetence, this time by peppering Farber with insults andthreats in a ragged voice full of personal pique and vindictiveness thatwould never be used by a good administrator.Under any provocation.Itwas plainly evocative of a lack of control, and shattered the image ofimpartial omnipotence that men of Keane's position were expected tocultivate.Another fool, Farber thought.I wonder if we all are? For amoment he had a vision of the snobbish, overbearing Earthmen as theymight appear to Cian eyes.It was not a flattering thought.He was awareof Liraun standing somewhere behind him, out of sight of the hologramcube.She made no sound.The gist of Keane's tirade was expulsion from the Terran community.Farber had dared to step across the line that Keane had drawn, and hewould be struck down for it.None of this was surprising to Farber either,although "struck down" was a rather strong way to put it.Farber hadbroken no Terran laws in fact, laws covering this situation did not as yetexist but only the directives of the Co-operative.Keane had judicatorypower over the Terrans in certain special circumstances, but they weresharply limited.He could not prosecute Farber.Nor could he exile him from Earth; as aTerran citizen he was entitled to eventual passage to Earth if destitute,although it might take him a couple of years to make the connections toget there.Nor could Keane keep from Farber a small regular stipend to bepaid toward his support.The law pushed through by Labor insisted onthis to keep the threat of firing by the Co-operative, and the possibly fatalabandonment of the discharged man in an alien society, from becomingthe undefiable weapon it could have been.But Keane did have the powerto dispose over the operation of the Co-operative on "Lisle," and he couldbar Farber from the use of any Co-operative facilities.As this included theEnclave and most of the Terran establishments on the planet, it wastrouble enough for Farber.Effectively, it cut him off from all of his own people.Now he was really an expatriate." traitor to your race," Keane was saying, pious and prissy, whenFarber finally told him to go fuck himself.Without ceremony, they left the Enclave.That afternoon, they moved up to Old City.As a member of the Thousand Families, it was Liraun's privilege to livein Old City, and, as her kin-by-marriage, it was also Farber's.He wouldhave preferred to waive privilege and live in New City, which he found amuch more pleasant place, but Liraun was uncharacteristically adamanton this point.Too emotionally drained for a fight, Farber gave in to her.They moved into the same house Liraun had vacated when she'd comedown to live with Farber it had stood unclaimed and uninhabited all theweeks she'd spent at the Enclave, there being little population pressure inAei as a whole, and none at all in Old City.The house stood just a littlebehind and above Kite Hill, fronting on a broad cobblestone alley knownas the Row.In one of the dominant architectural styles of Old City, it wasa slate-roofed oblong building of black rock, narrow across the base,consisting of three large rooms stacked directly one on top of the other,connected by stairs and ladders, with the topmost room used mostly forstorage.It was already furnished, so moving was only a matter of bringingtheir small personal possessions in, and their clothes, putting them away,and then cleaning the house.It was done to the last detail within twohours.In the morning, Liraun returned to her old job, running a lathe in aprecision machine shop in Toolmaker Way, near Cold Tower Hill in theNew City.She picked up her work as though she had never been gone.Ofcourse, no one commented on her absence, and, except for one or twopolite words of greeting, no one remarked her return.Farber was left alone in the house.He had the uneasy feeling that everything had happened too fast.That afternoon he wandered aimlessly out into the Old City, exploringthe adjacent neighborhoods in ever-widening spirals.On Kite Hill,appropriately enough, he found a group of Cian children flying anenormous, amorphous black-and-orange kite that looked, to hisEarth-trained eye, like a dragon, although it could just as easily have beena squid or a snake or a jellyfish or any of a dozen other things [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]