John Brunner – Jagged Orbit

“That’s one thing which doesn’t worry me,” Conroy said with perfect composure. “But I grant there’s a chance of it not being a waste of time in a way which we are too shortsighted to figure out, and if that hapyou certainly won’t be the only one who’s annoyed.”

America’s Time-Bomb by Colin Legum

. ‘I don’t believe in nothin’,’ says a Negro youth in a riot city. ‘I feel like they ought to burn down the whole world. Just let it burn down, baby.’.

He’s not unique.

The clock said sixteen-ten and they sat among a welof empty beer- and milk-cartons and multicolored sandwich wrappings.

“It doesn’t make sense.” Pedro Diablo said in an agtone, as though the world were conspiring to hide the secret from him. “It just keeps fanning out and fanning out, and every time it branches into some crazy new absurdity. I need to recapitulate-I have this feeling that I haven’t taken in everything I’ve been told because my subconscious thinks so much of it is silly.”

“Is there anything which does make sense?” Conroy demanded.

“Ah.” Diablo hesitated. “Well, odd bits, I guess. But even those are so buried in among other things which sound ridiculous!”

“For instance?”

“Oh.” Another moment of doubt; then: “No, damn it! The things I want to take seriously are all wrapped up in garbage! Like what Harry’s supposed to have said after he’d finished chopping down those macoots of Mikki Baxendale’s.”

“How do you mean?” Lyla put in.”How’s this supto be ‘wrapped in garbage? Don’t you believe me?”

“I’d believe Harry much more readily,” Diablo said. “No offense. But on your own admission you’d had a sub-critical dose of a very powerful drug, and you can’t have been functioning properly on all mental levels. And Harry won’t or can’t remember saying what you tell us he said, so.” He spread his hands. “By the way, how does it happen that after throwing a man out of a forty-five story window Harry Madison is here instead of in the Undertombs?”

Reedeth sighed, leaning back in his chair to let his legs stretch out straight “What do you think I was doing before Flamen and Conroy came to collect him from the hospital? I was just about perjuring myself to prethat, snowing the busies under with so many fully-comped reports of the effect on a man of swallowing a 250-milligram sibyl-pill they had to grant bail on grounds of temporary derangement. I’m used to dragging Ginspatients out from under, and nowadays it’s secnature for me to slam in counter-charges, whether or not they’re as well documented as the kidnapping charge against Mikki Baxendale and her macoots. All I’ve done is postpone the reckoning, though. It may be for weeks because I know for a fact that the courts are thirty days behind schedule even on their first-degree murder hearings, but the crunch will come sooner or later.”

“Did you lay on lawyers?”

“On a Saturday? You’re joking! But the Ginsberg rea computerized legal aid service we can plug into direct over the regular comweb lines. I used that”

Diablo shook his head wonderingly. “It really is a different world out here, you know. I mean, regardless of whether or not he’d been drugged, someone who threw a man off the top of the Zimbabwe Tower back in Blackbury would be in jail and more than likely in chains for however long it took Judge Dennison to reach his case. Your way may be more tolerant, but it sure as hell doesn’t seem to be so efficient. He doesn’t even have to go into court before he gets this bail, huh?”

“Not if he has a record of mental instability,” Reedeth said wearily. “But the bail is automatically doubled.”

“It’s a system, I guess,” Diablo sighed

Reaching for another carton of beer, Conroy tore the plastic opener strip and cursed as the pressure of gas inside sprayed him with fine drops. He wiped his beard and took a swig.

“If you’ve finished the sociological survey, I’d like to follow up the point you were about to make when you wandered away from the subject,” he said to Diablo. “What would have made you take this prophecy of Harry’s seriously?”

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129

Leave a Reply 0

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *