The storm didn’t roll in; there was no rolling involved. It slid, an avalanche tied to an oil slick, very quickly.
By the time Solomon realizes he shouldn’t be out in the beech copse, it’s too late. Later, he might recall that the bolt didn’t so much strike from heaven as it did leap from the earth, or he might not. The impact is about a hundred and fifty feet away. The thunder is tangible as brick. It picks him up, carries him and deposits him in a vague and pleasant dream, where friendly llamas help him stomp plums into wine.
“See?” Miles shakes his head as they leave. “These kids are hacks. You can’t earn anything deep in a ten-minute script.”
When they’re alone in the cloakroom, Dori flips open her butterfly knife. At first she hits a rib, then tries lower; this time it punches easily into Miles’s back.
He doesn’t stiffen up into a soundless rictus like in movies, though. He stumbles away, slamming into the wall, eyes wild back at her. He screams, a strange sound, pushes clumsily with his hands. His short fingernails are raking her face. Dori puts the knife into his belly, then out. Again.
Her uncle really does need a cane to get around now, so he uses an old wooden bat. No handle, no stabilizer–his only concession is a thick rubber foot on the end. As he says, “otherwise, the floors’d be hard on the Slugger.”
Jeryn has decided that this is a joke; that her uncle was once nicknamed Slugger, in some way related to his service in Japan. She’s given him a story and a life, where he wears a white GI undershirt and plays pickup games with local kids. Where he’s clean-shaven, square-jawed, full of promise: a Prometheus of baseball.
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“Which, as suspected,” Ford concludes, “is expressed exclusively in saliva glands, in concert with FB-3, to control mucus content.”
He sits back. Around the table, everybody looks for the next report.
“Oh,” says Crewett finally. “I guess that’s it?” Silence. “Then we’re done?”
“The human genome. Decoded and explained,” Bartle says quietly.
“I kind of expected fireworks,” jokes Spitz, but nobody laughs.
“Ceremony’s next week.”
“What’s next?”
“Monkeys, probably.”
“You mean apes.”
“No, actually I meant monkeys.”
“Anybody want to get a beer?” asks Crewett. Most of the other geneticists just shrug. There’s a distinct feeling of determinism in the air.
Corbin rolls up to them on a scooter. She looks about eleven, with dark hair and serious eyes.
“–In an hour,” Thierry is saying, “it won’t matter! We bet our lives!”
“We don’t have to untie it if we run–hello?” snaps Guido. “Yes, little girl?”
They’re standing over a tangled rope-pile, topped by a knot as big as her head.
“There are two ways to untie every knot,” Corbin says. Guido follows her gaze to a wall: there’s a glass-fronted firebox there, and inside, an axe. He looks back at her, astounded.
She’s already gone, rolling downhill and away.
Roxanne plays with the ice in her drink. She’s in a bar tonight. No, a tapas bar.
The bartender comes up to hmm. Do they have those in tapas bars? Anyway, a guy comes up to her and leans over her table. His nails are trimmed neatly; his shirt is olive. No, maroon.
She looks up from her gin and Coke to what? Why not? Fine. She looks up from her Jack and Coke, following the olive sleeve up to the glowing point of his cigarette–or no, it’s in his other hand. Up to…
Okay, wait. I’m trying to remember.
“Hey, handsome,” coos Lorelei. “Been waiting for me all day?”
He doesn’t respond.
“I like that,” she coos, crawling into bed.
He refrains from speech.
“I missed you,” she whispers, stroking his chest. “Missed you a lot.”
He yet remains silent. This is unsurprising. He doesn’t, after all, have a head.
Lorelei probably couldn’t say when she fell for his department-store good looks, and certainly couldn’t say why. But she can go on about how she’s so lucky; how they’re perfect for each other; how, when she’s apart from him, she pines for her perfect, sculpted 372-T/N and his styrofoam caress.
Inside the hood it’s difficult to track time, and Mateo wills himself not to count the cycles of the truck’s heavy sway. He knows better. Counting’s how they get you.
Without sight, without hearing, he’s learning his other senses. The hood smells of sour sweat and fear. His naked feet on the truck floor feel enormous, every touch magnified: he follows one indentation, slowly, cautiously–touches something.
It’s another foot. Both hesitate, but neither withdraws from the strange intimacy. Mateo is silent; he wants to weep. They are not alone, and he knows that in that moment, they love each other.
Introductions all around and hearty laughter, set to something pleasantly wandery–Davis? Coltrane? Maybe both.
Sylvia notices a man moving with an odd hesitation and cocks an eyebrow at Addie.
“Vincent,” Addie whispers in return. “He was cut in half by a samurai last Tuesday, but the blade was so sharp and the swordsman so skilled that he hasn’t yet slid into two pieces. I think he’s just trying to get used to life this way. Vincent!” She raises her voice at that last. “Come meet Sylvia!”
“A pleasure,” he says in a mellow baritone, smiling. His handshake is very gentle.