Foster, Alan Dean Cyber Way

[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

apartment. Fading images clung tenaciously to his retinas: a hyperat-mospheric shuttle, a dark shape
rising high above a basket, an eagle inspecting a single spire of towering sandstone. All soaring, as
children dream of soaring.
He rolled out of bed and sought his pants, not bothering with a shirt. Belly hanging over his belt, he
tiptoed into the living room. It was silent and empty, the earthtones asleep in the moonlight that entered
through the terrace doors.
He examined a pot, a piece of sculpture: cool, reassuring fragments of Mother Earth carried thirty stories
into the air to remind the sky dwellers of the real world that existed beneath their feet.
Out on the porch Ooljee's boys lay still in slumber, secure in their sleeping bags, their internal springs
finally at rest. It took him a moment to realize they really were motionless. Lying in the soft glow of
moonlight they looked like utterly different beings, the darting black eyes shut tight, tiny fists curled tight
against half-parted lips. Under his gaze they slowly metamorphosed into die young men they would
someday become.
"I can't sleep either."
Moody glanced backwards. Ooljee stood in die shadows clad only in his briefs, gazing at his offspring.
"That's twice you've snuck up on me," Moody whispered. "I don't like it."
'' You are pretty quiet for a big ol' Southern boy yourself. I didn't hear you get up."
"Then why'd you come out?"
Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
"Like I said, I could not sleep either. Too much frybread, maybe. Too many thoughts, maybe."
Moody decided to say nothing about his unsettling dreams. His host might only be talking to help his
guest relax. For lack of anything better to say, he repeated the phrase he'd been taught.
"Doo ahashyaa da."
"That's for sure." Ooljee looked back into the living room, where muted colors and traditional designs
held back the intrusions of a homogenizing technology. "Look, maybe something has come in since the
last time I checked. Want to take a drive? Check out the office?''
"I don't like to bother night staff," Moody protested. "They might be busy with something."
"Like what? A floating card game? Ganado's big and busy, but this is not Tampa. If you would rather go
back to bed, that is okay too."
Moody didn't have to think long. "As a matter of fact, I'd rather not. Once I'm up, I'm up. Lemme get a
shirt and throw some water on my face."
"Good. We will take a roundabout. There is plenty of town you have not seen."
They ended up in one of those neighborhoods common to every large city; a place where cheap
residential housing, manufacturing, commercial offices, and lowlife entertainment facilities came together.
Not surprisingly, the focus of all this activity was a major university.
"Actual campus is up Keet Seel Street about a mile." Ooljee pointed out his window. "Lot of rich kids
up there, plenty of poor ones hanging around the fringes looking to activate some action. Real interesting
mix."
Ooljee was overstating. There was much here that was kin to similar parts of Tampa and St. Pete,
though the ethnic soup was far more exotic. Moody recognized the same youth hangouts, noted the same
furtive whisperings as ideas, concepts, goods, drugs, and information were exchanged. Much of the
Hispanic insignia and posturing was familiar to him. The Amerind and Asian influences he found utterly
foreign.
For example, you would not see in Tampa someone wearing a headband and fringed blue jacket
decorated with rainbow figures called Na'a-tse-elit (according to Ooljee). The characters dripped blood,
a most untraditional representation. The jacket was belted with silver and turquoise above cream-colored
pantaloons tucked into water-buffalo-hide boots inscribed with indecipherable Asian symbols.
What struck Moody strongest was the realization that the locals be they Navaho, Hopi, Zuni,
Hualapai, or Apache blended in better with the Asians than they did with the Anglos or Hispanics.
Ooljee slowed the truck as they cruised past a nondescript building. Twin doors fashioned of black
composite gleamed in a small setback below street level. Glowing rainbow symbols, red and blue split by
a thin strip of yellow, guarded both sides of the entrance as well as the lintel above the doorway. At each
upper comer of the portal were a pair of heavily stylized neon birds.
"Golden eagle and black hawk," Ooljee informed his companion. "Guardian symbols borrowed from
sandpaint-ing, just like the rainbows. You do not usually see eagles and hawks used as guardians. That is
what happens when people try to adapt old traditions to modern uses. Also, in a sandpainting you do not
Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
see eagles copulating." [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

Podstrony