caldera to where the ruby-red sun met the
Mediterranean; a livid plasma island sinking in the
wine-dark sea.Cried.
So I wasn't at all pleased when the ship asked me
to hit dirt for one last time.
'But I don't want to.'
'Well, that's all right, if you're quite sure.I'm not
asking you to do it for your own good, I must
admit, but I did promise Linter I'd ask, and he did
seem quite anxious to see you before we left.'
'Oh but why ?What does he want from me?'
'He wouldn't say.I didn't talk to him all that long.I
sent a drone down to tell him we were leaving
soon, and he said he would only talk to you.I told
him I'd ask but I couldn't guarantee anything he was
adamant though; only you.He won't talk to me.Oh
well.Such is life.Not to worry.I'll tell him you
won't -' the small unit started to drift away, but I
pulled it back.
'No; no, stop; I'll go.God dammit, I'll go.Where?
Where does he want to meet?'
'New York City.'
'Oh no,' I groaned.
'Hey, it's an interesting place.You might like it.'
6.2:The Precise Nature Of The Catastrophe
A General Contact Unit is a machine.In Contact
you live inside one, or several, plus a variety of
Systems Vehicles, for most of your average thirty-
year stint.I was just over half way through my spell
and I'd been on three GCUs; the Arbitrary had
been my home for only a year before we found
Earth, but the craft before it had been an
Escarpment class too.So I was used to living in a
device nevertheless; I'd never felt so machine-
trapped, so tangled and caught and snarled up as I
did after an hour in the Big Apple.
I don't know if it was the traffic, the noise, the
crowds, the soaring buildings or the starkly
geometric expanses of streets and avenues (I mean,
I've never even heard of a GSV which laid out its accommodation as regularly as Manhattan), or just
everything together, but whatever it was, I didn't
like it.So; a bitterly cold, windy Saturday night in
the big city on the Eastern seaboard, only a couple
of week's shopping left till Christmas, and me
sitting in a little coffee shop on 42nd Street at
eleven o'clock, waiting for the movies to end.
What was Linter playing at?Going to see Close
Encounters for the seventh time, indeed.I looked at my watch, drank my coffee, paid the check and
left.I tightened the heavy wool coat about me,
pulled on gloves and a hat.I wore needle-cords and
knee-length leather boots.I looked around as I
walked, a chill wind against my face.
What really got to me was the predictability.It was
like a jungle.Oslo a rock garden?Paris a parterre,
with its follies, shady areas and breeze-block
garages inset?London with that vaguely
conservatory air, a badly kept museum haphazardly
modernized?Wien a too severe version of Paris,
high starch collared, and Berlin a long garden
party in the ruins of a baroque sepulchre?Then
New York a rain forest; an infested, towering,
teeming jungle, full of great columns that scratched
at the clouds but which stood with their feet in the
rot, decay and swarming life beneath; steel on
rock, glass blocking the sun; the ship's living
machine incarnate.
I walked through the streets, dazzled and
frightened.The Arbitrary was just a tap on my
terminal away, ready to send help or bounce me up
on an emergency displace, but I still felt scared.I'd
never been in such an intimidating place.I walked
up 42nd Street and carefully crossed Sixth Avenue
to walk along its far side towards the movie
theatre.
People streamed out, talking in twos and groups,
putting up collars, walking off quickly with their
arms round each other to find someplace warm, or
standing looking for a cab.Their breath misted the
air in front of them, and from the lights of the
mothership to the lights of the foyer to the lights of
the snarling traffic they moved.Linter was one of
the last out, looking thinner and paler than he had
in Oslo, but brighter, quicker.He waved and came
over to me.He buttoned up a fawn-coloured coat,
then put his lips to my cheek as he reached for his
gloves.
'Mmm.Hello.You're cold.Eaten yet?I'm
hungry.Want to eat?'
'Hello.I'm not cold.I'm not hungry either, but I'll
come and watch you.How are you?'
'Fine.Fine,' he smiled.
He didn't look fine.He looked better than I
remembered, but in big city terms, he was a bit
scruffy and not very well-fed looking.That fast,
edgy, high-pressure urban life had infected him, I
guess.
He pulled on my arm. 'Come on; let's walk.I want
to talk.'
'All right.' We started along the sidewalk.Bustle-
hustle, all their signs and lights and racket and
smell, the white noise of their existence, a focus of
all the world's business.How could they stand it?
The bag ladies; the obvious loonies, eyes staring;
the grotesquely obese; the cold vomit in the alleys