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Christ, I thought. And then: Of course—P.K.: Preacher’s Kid. Should’ve caught that earlier. I finished off the Yanjing, then opened the cooler and unscrewed a jar of whiskey. I’d heard of harrowers before, but never met one alive.
Of course we moved into the cities of the planet we now know we must call Zobranoirundisi when Worlds Federated finally permitted a colony there.
I fell asleep in Dr. Olga’s big room, in the red university building by the Botanical Garden. I had a helmet on my head stuffed with wires. There were lots of lights and noises.
“It’s only a career,” said Tsuyoshi, sitting up on his futon and adjusting his pajamas. “You worry too much.”
The fog crawled out of the water and over his body, colonizing his pores, permeating bone and tissue, bleeding off his ability to yell or fight back. He was on his side in a convulsion before the Vosth parasites took his motor functions and stood his body up.
She wears a smile. I like her smile, nervous and maybe a little scared, sweet and somewhat lonely. She wears jeans and a sheer green blouse and comfortable sandals and rings on two fingers and a glass patch across one eye.
There was a stream where I had been fetching water. A flow station was built nearby and now the stream was rank and filthy, with an oily film that reflected rainbows. Cassava and yam farms yielded less and less each year. The air left your skin dirty and smelled like something preparing to die.
Lvov looked up from her data desk, startled. Beyond the flitter’s translucent hull, the wormhole was flooded with sheets of blue-white light which raced towards and past the flitter, giving Lvov the impression of huge, uncontrolled speed.
Just the thought of my journey’s purpose already has me pining for home: of all the ways I’ve imagined meeting my father, as defense council in his murder trial does not rank high on the list.
I had…have this friend, Elena, who could make a krill and tomato sandwich with her feet, but she had that operation that changes your big toe into a thumb. I used to kid her that maybe breakaways were climbing down the evolutionary ladder, not jumping off it.
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