Tanith Lee - 'The Beautiful and Damned' By F. Scott Fitzgerald.pdf

(49 KB) Pobierz
120633421 UNPDF
‘THE BEAUTIFUL AND DAMNED’ BY F. SCOTT FITZGERALD
by Tanith Lee
Tanith Lee’s 2007 publications included the last book in her Lionwolf
trilogy, No Flame But Mine (Macmillan), Piratica 3 (Hodder), and Indigara ,
a young-adult novella out from Firebird. She tells us two current projects on
the violent Bronze Age and Futurist Polluted Cities “are still being
researched and constructed.” Her latest tale takes a disturbing and violent
look at the effects a deadly new plague could have on human society.
* * * *
A man had collapsed in the airport. They were dealing with it in the
usual efficient way. It had taken so long to get in through the front-line tome
security, and they tried to hustle me on like the rest when I paused to see. I
blazed my PI card. They backed away then and let me watch.
God, he was a handsome guy. I mean, he was truly beautiful, the man
being lifted on to the trolley. Gold hair, unlined tan of skin, perfect
weight—looked like he could run for the Olympian at St. Max. But he was
barely conscious now, though softly whimpering, and they’d already set up
the float-drip to feed him pain relief and rehydration. His eyes were shut.
The nearest medic glanced at me. “Seen enough? Just stick around,”
she snapped. Her voice and eyes were full of controlled rage. She wasn’t
wearing a medi-mask, and she was rather special-looking herself.
I took the elevator up to the next stage of security (heightened now),
and another long wait. I was glad I’d brought a book.
* * * *
They are pretty tight, the tomes. Enclosed runway and landing area,
outer airlock, double inner airlock, frisker, and then every robo-check known
to mankind, plus all the extra ones installed during the past seven months.
Iris-reading, prints, bone-marrow stat, DNA, blood and phy stat,
skull-template. Molecular shower. Absolvement.
Going the other way, the treatment is even more complex. Four and
three quarter hours as opposed to the three needed going in. But who’s
aiming to leave? Aside, of course, from people like me.
* * * *
 
“Hi, Jack.”
Good old Edmund Kovalchy. There he was, just the same as ever,
twenty to twenty-five pounds overweight, and bald as a balloon.
He led me down the block and into the diner.
It was only around noon, not a lot of custom yet. And there wouldn’t
be, he assured me, until much later in the day, when citizens surfaced from
the haze and made it here for a dunch. Only a couple of diehards sat at
tables far off across the big shadowy room, an old woman with green hair
scribbling on a notepad, a decanter and glass beside her, and a feller in
one corner, who was working his way through the kind of breakfast I—and
Ed—used to regularly take when we were twenty-four: double steak, triple
egg, mushrooms, carrash, hashes, and a separate big bowl of fries.
“Each to his own poison.”
“Sure,” I said. The two people looked okay. “How are you doing,
Edmund, my man?”
“Fine,” he said, grinning. “Gained two extra pounds, so the
weight-winner tells me. Oh, and I reckon my very last scalp hair resigned
last night. Found it on the pillow. Marianna said that deserved a coffee cake.
So she’s baking one. You are welcome to drop by around nine tonight, if
you can make a break, sample the same.”
We paused awhile, thinking respectfully of Marianna’s coffee cake.
Funny the way little things hold you.
But his eyes were sad.
Of course they were.
It was only a couple of weeks ago.
“How’s she taking it, Ed?”
“She’s a warrior, Jack. Y’know that.”
“I know.”
The service wheeled over, and we ordered sandwiches, some rye
whiskey for Ed, and a tumbler of fresh orange for me. “Got to watch it till
 
later.”
“Sure, sure. Make up for it then.”
“Like half the city,” I said.
Maybe I shouldn’t have, should have waited. But Ed is one of my
oldest friends. We go back such a long way, sometimes I can barely count
the dips in the road between now and then. But some of them were steep.
And we made it, Ed and I, and Marianna.
“How is it?” he asked me, serious, looking up from his glass. “Any
progress?”
“Not much.”
“I thought not,” he said. We’re in the same business. His Corp
clearance is omega . No need to lie, and in fact I couldn’t. One of the
reasons I was here to see him was to link him in, put him wise. I reached
over and laid the little disc, only about the size of a quarter, next to the
bottle. “For your eyes only.”
“Yeah.” He slid it into the secure pocket. “My eyes though, Jack, have
seen a great many things in this city during the past sixteen weeks.”
“Sure.”
“What goes out on TV-wide?”
“Not a lot. They edit. To spare the Sensitive Viewer.”
He let go a loud gout of laughter which startled me. I had every
reason to think he might act unstable, but somehow Ed, of anyone—I’d
thought he would handle it. In another second he did. “Sorry, chum. Just
makes me angry.”
“It does.” And it does. Some angry, some sad, and some very afraid.
“Aren’t they doing a frigging thing?” Now his voice was soft, and his
sad eyes fixed only on the whiskey.
“They are trying. But—”
I broke off. And he, not even turning, knew at once why I did.
 
“Some of them—one of them has come in,” he said, “right?”
“That’s right.”
“Gal or guy?”
“Guy.”
“Look like trouble?”
“Not yet.”
“Christ,” he said. “He’s early. Most of ‘em don’t shift until late
afternoon—why would they? How far is he along?”
“Looks a way.”
Ed turned slowly and squinted back into the light where the doorway
gave on the sidewalk. He took a brief visual camera shot of what I had
seen, a man apparently around thirty-four, built of lean muscle, and with
black hair hung to his collar. He was dressed okay, which sometimes they
are not, some of them. Especially later, when plenty came out flaunting
naked. The man laughed when he saw us looking. Then walked, easy, to
our table.
“Hi, fellers.”
“Sorry,” Ed mumbled.
“‘S’okay. Don’t blame you. And after all, you never know. You may still
be able to stare at me next Thanksgiving.”
As he strode off to the service bar, our sandwiches arrived. Only the
woman with the green hair stood up and left, walking out with the decanter
of yellow wine half-full in her hand.
* * * *
Gane’s Journal X7
* * * *
I was never the pretty one. Ugly duckling, me. Used to upset Mom
 
more than me, I think. I think she made me self-conscious.
My nose was too big, and my mouth—fat, and my eyes not big
enough, and my hair too fine and greasy. And diet all I would, still too heavy.
The humiliation of the school scales. And then the weight-loser. Every other
kid sloughing off the fat, and poor Gane. Hey, Gane’s gained another
pound!
Lay off the Chocostars, they told me. Never believed I didn’t eat them
anyway.
Metabolic weight, they said, when I was an anorexic twenty-year-old,
losing my hair and weighing in at one hundred and seventy-six pounds.
You’re too fat, said Mel, when he ditched me and I was thirty.
You fat cow, said Martin, when he left me the day after my fortieth
birthday.
And then, last year. Fall. Then.
Just a little thing.
Hey, Ganey! You’ve finally cracked it! In fall, seven pounds fall from
me, like leaves.
“What shampoo is that, Gane? Say, your hair is brilliant .”
This, about two months before they fix on the dome.
* * * *
After Ed and I split, I took a cab over to Memphis Street. The driver
was full of it.
“Y’know what I think it is?” A prompting pause.
“What do you think it is?”
“It’s these new pump aerosols.”
“Right. How’s that?”
“Well, buddy. Ya spray the darn things all over. Some folks gonna
 

Plik z chomika:

Inne pliki z tego folderu:

Inne foldery tego chomika:

Zgłoś jeśli naruszono regulamin