Walter Jon Williams - Wolf Time
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2024-11-23
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Wolf Time
WOLF TIME
Walter Jon Williams
Speakers in the hospital ceiling chimed a series of low, whispery, synthesized tones, tones scientifically
proven to be relaxing. Reese looked down at the boy in the hospital bed and felt her insides twist.
The boy was named Steward, and he'd just had a bullet removed that morning. In the last few days, mad
with warrior zen and a suicidal concept of personal honor, he'd gone kamikaze and blown up the whole
network. Griffith was dead, Jordan was dead, Spassky was dead, and nobody had stopped Steward until
everything in L.A. had collapsed entirely. He hadn't talked yet to the heat, but he would. Reese reached
for her gun. Her insides were still twisting.
Steward had been lied to and jacked over and manipulated without his knowing it. Mostly it had been his
friend Reese who had done it to him. She couldn't blame him for exploding when he finally figured out
what had happened.
And now this.
Reese turned off the IV monitor so it wouldn't bleep when he died, and then Steward opened his eyes.
She could see the recognition in his look, the knowledge of what was about to happen. She might have
known he wouldn't make it easy.
"Sorry," she said, and raised the gun. What the hell else could she say? Maybe we can still be friends,
after this is over?
Steward was trying to say something. She felt herself wring out again.
She shot him three times with her silenced pistol and left. The police guards didn't look twice at her
hospital coat and ID. Proper credentials had always been her specialty.
* * * *
CYA. Reese headed for Japan under a backup identity. Credentials her strong suit, as always. On the
shuttle she drank a star beast and plugged her seat's interface stud into the socket at the base of her skull.
She closed her eyes and silently projected the latest scansheets onto the optical centers of her brain, and
her lips twisted in anger as for the first time she found out what had really gone down, what she'd been a
part of.
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Wolf Time
Alien pharmaceuticals, tonnes of them, shipped down under illegal cover. The network had been huge,
bigger than Reese, from her limited perspective, had ever suspected, and now the L.A. heat had
everything. Police and security people everywhere, even in the space habitats, were going berserk.
All along, she'd thought it was friends helping friends, but her friends had jacked her around the same
way she'd jacked around Steward. The whole trip to L.A. had been pointless--they had been stupid to
send her. Killing Steward couldn't stop what was happening, it was all too big. The only way Reese
could stay clear was to hide.
She ordered another drink, needing it badly. The shuttle speakers moaned with the same tuneless
synthesized chords as had the speakers in the hospital room. The memory of Steward lying in the bed
floated in her mind, tangled in her insides.
She leaned back against the headrest and watched the shuttle's wings gather fire.
* * * *
Her career as a kick boxer ended with a spin kick breaking her nose, and Reese said the fuck with it and
went back to light sparring and kung fu. Beating the hell out of herself in training only to have the hell
beaten out of her in the ring was not her idea of the good life. She was thirty-six now and she might as
well admit there were sports she shouldn't indulge in, even if she had the threadware for them. The
realization didn't improve her mood.
Through the window of her condeco apartment, Reese could see a cold wailing northeast wind drive
flying white scud across the shallow Aral Sea, its shriek drowning the minarets' amplified call to prayer.
Neither the wind nor the view had changed in months. Reese looked at the grey Uzbek spring, turned on
her vid, and contemplated her sixth month of exile.
Her hair was black now, shorter than she'd worn it in a long time. Her fingerprints were altered, as was
the bone structure of her face. The serial numbers on her artificial eyes had been changed. However
bleak its weather, Uzbekistan was good at that sort of thing.
The last person she'd known who had lived here was Steward. Just before he came to L.A. and blew
everything to smithereens.
A young man on the vid was putting himself into some kind of combat suit, stuffing weapons and
ammunition into pockets. He picked up a shotgun. Suspenseful music hammered from the speakers.
Reese turned up the sound and sat down in front of the vid.
She had considered getting back into the trade, but it was too early. The scansheets and broadcasts were
still full of stories about aliens, alien ways, alien imports. About "restructuring" going on in the
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Wolf Time
policorps who dealt with the Powers. It was strange seeing the news on the vid, with people ducking for
cover, refusing statements, the news item followed by a slick ad for alien pharmaceuticals. People were
going to trial--at least those who survived were. A lot were cooperating. Things were still too hot.
Fortunately money wasn't a problem. She had enough to last a long time, possibly even forever.
Gunfire sounded from the vid. The young man was in a shootout with aliens, splattering Powers with his
shotgun. Reese felt her nerves turn to ice.
The young man, she realized, was supposed to be Steward. She jumped forward and snapped off the vid.
She felt sickened.
Steward had never shot an alien in his life. Reese ought to know.
Fucking assholes. Fucking media vermin.
She reached for her quilted Chinese jacket and headed for the door. The room was too damn small.
She swung the door open with a bang, and a dark-complected man jumped a foot at the sound. He turned
and gave a nervous grin.
"You startled me."
He had an anonymous accent that conveyed no particular origin, just the abstract idea of foreignness. He
looked about thirty. He was wearing suede pumps that had tabs of velcro on the bottoms and sides for
holding onto surfaces in zero gee. His hands were jammed into a grey, unlined plastic jacket with a half-
dozen pockets all sealed by velcro tabs. Reese suspected one of his hands of having a weapon in it. He
was shivering from cold or nervousness. Reese figured he had just come down the gravity well--he was
wearing too much velcro to have bought his clothes on Earth.
Some descendants of the Golden Horde, dressed in Flieger styles imported from Berlin, roared by on
skateboards, the earpieces of their leather flying helmets flapping in the wind.
"Been in town long?" Reese asked.
* * * *
He told her his name was Sardar Chandrasekhar Vivekenanda and that he was a revolutionary from
Prince Station. His friends called him Ken. Two nights after their first meeting, she met him in the
Natural Life bar, a place on the top story of a large bank. It catered to exiles and featured a lot of
mahogany imported at great cost from Central America.
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分类：外语学习
价格：5.9玖币
属性：28 页
大小：65.43KB
格式：PDF
时间：2024-11-23
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