Walter Jon Williams - Voice of the Whirlwind

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Williams, Walter Jon - Voice of the Whirlwind

eBook Version: 1.0

Voice Of The

Whirlwind

Walter Jon Williams

CHAPTER 1

Steward hung suspended beneath a sky the color of wet slate.

Below him the ground was dark, indistinct. There was the

sensation of movement, of gliding flight. Sometimes Steward’s

stomach fluttered as he dipped closer to the dark opacity beneath

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Williams, Walter Jon - Voice of the Whirlwind

him. He could feel his nerves dancing, his own readiness

building. The sky tipped and spun.

On the horizon there was flame. A ripple of deep, pulsing red,

throbbing like an artery laid bare by shrapnel, shrouded in a

drifting black cloak. Not the sun, Steward realized; something

burning...

He was never afraid or surprised when he came awake from the

dream. He woke refreshed, his limbs ready to move, dance,

fight.

He knew that whatever it was he was drifting toward in that cold

gray sky, it was something he wanted.

Dr. Ashraf had a corner office high in the hospital complex,

invaded on two sides by bright Arizona sky. Etienne Njagi

Steward could sit on a padded couch and gaze through glass

walls across Flagstaff to the mountains: three peaks cut into

fragments by rows of mirror-glass condecologies that reflected

the rising land, the sky, the hospital, the shimmering line of

bright alloy highway that cut through the towers. The mirrored

buildings reflected reality, distorted it, multiplied it. Made it

interesting.

The room was perfectly soundproofed. Even the bullet railway

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Williams, Walter Jon - Voice of the Whirlwind

below the hospital failed to do more than create a minor

vibration in the room’s glass wall. Steward could watch the

world in the mirrors, but he was insulated from it, heard only

Ashraf’s emotionless voice, the whisper of the air conditioning,

the distant vibration of the bullet train. He wondered whom

Ashraf wanted him to be.

Ashraf sat behind Steward at a desk. There were readouts on

Ashraf’s side of the desk, Steward knew, connected to monitors

in the couch, voice stress analyzers, pulse and respiration

indicators, maybe even sensors for analyzing perspiration and

muscle tension. He hadn’t seen them, but sometimes when he

turned to face Ashraf he saw the reflection of red LEDs in the

doctor’s eyes.

Steward had been taught how to defeat such machines. He

remembered long hours spent under deep hypnosis, drugs,

biofeedback mechanisms. He couldn’t think of any real reason to

use his skills, so for the most part he didn’t. He used them only

when he talked about Natalie. This, he told himself, was more to

keep himself calm than to fool Ashraf.

Once he told Ashraf about his dream. “Maybe it’s a memory of

Sheol,” he said. “A parafoil assault or something.”

“You know that’s impossible,” said Dr. Ashraf. Sometimes it

seemed to Steward that he had as many personalities as there

were reflections of the world in the condecos, that he was trying

on personalities like masks in a store, one after the other, just to

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Williams, Walter Jon - Voice of the Whirlwind

see if any of them fit. It was clear that the person who dreamed

was unacceptable to Dr. Ashraf.

Steward never mentioned the dream again.

The walls of the hospital were striped with narrow bright colors

that matched the identifying colors on the bracelets of the

patients. If a patient was lost in the bustling, scrubbed corridors,

he had only to follow the minute arrows on the wall stripes.

They would lead him to his own ward, where the walls were

painted in his own color, where he was welcomed by the

familiar antiseptic smell, and the familiar nurses. The nurses’

uniforms were pin-striped in the colors of the wards. Yellow was

for Burns, red for Intensive Care, soothing blue for Maternity.

Steward’s bracelet was a pleasant light green and signified his

home in the Psychology ward.

He wasn’t physically ill, so they let him wear regular clothes.

When he took his strolls through the other parts of the hospital,

he always wore long sleeves so that he could push the green

bracelet far up his arm, under the cuff.

He didn’t want people thinking he was crazy.

“There was a war in Marseilles between the teen gangs,”

Steward said. “They broke out from time to time. I was a

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Williams, Walter Jon - Voice of the Whirlwind

member of Canards Chronique, had been since I was twelve. We

dealt in information, mainly. Software, proscribed wetware.

Drugs, too. The whole range of what Americans call juvecrime.

We were bright kids.” He remembered sitting with a blond-

haired girl on a wrought-iron balcony, drinking whiskey and

watching the Mediterranean for the last time. Heartbreakingly

beautiful, the sea, bluer and deeper than the blond girl’s eyes,

bluer than the reflected skies he saw from Ashraf’s window. He

remembered the way distant automatic-weapons fire sounded,

echoing off the stucco fronts of the houses, the low concrete

gutters. He remembered as well his own weariness, the feeling

that he didn’t want to do this anymore. He could play the game

too well. He was tired of manipulating people.

The girl cocked her head, listened. “Sounds like the Femmes

Sauvages on turf defense,” she said. “Who’s attacking?”

Etienne had been shopping that information around in the last

twelve hours. “Skin Samurai,” he said.

The girl shrugged. There was a touch of sunburn on her cheeks,

her nose. She looked at him. “Want to go inside?” she asked.

Etienne Njagi Steward lit a cigarette. “D’accord,” he said. He

didn’t plan on seeing her again.

“I was only sixteen,” said Steward, “but I knew there were better

things in life than dying for a couple square blocks in the Old

Quarter.”

Dr. Ashraf’s oiled hair hung to his shoulders. His. fleshy,

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Williams,WalterJon-VoiceoftheWhirlwindeBookVersion:1.0VoiceOfTheWhirlwindWalterJonWilliamsCHAPTER1Stewardhungsuspendedbeneathaskythecolorofwetslate.Belowhimthegroundwasdark,indistinct.Therewasthesensationofmovement,ofglidingflight.SometimesSteward’sstomachflutteredashedippedclosertothedarkopacityben...

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Walter Jon Williams - Voice of the Whirlwind

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