Damien Broderick - Strange Attractors by Original (pdf) (no david read aloud txt) 📕

is requested to contact PANMARINE urgently. That’s Sunday

morning, Sergeant Lim. We’re onto something.

I was. We are. Right. And it’s Detective Lim.

‘I didn’t mean to stall.’

‘You don’t erzackly stall, baby—you just fuck arourf a lot.’

Childish giggles. Can’t be just because they’ve been slowed down for

nine years or whatever in deep-space. I think they really are like that.

‘Damn yo’ white hide, at least you could tell me how my wife is!’

‘Now hoi’ you on, mista, whose skin dat you’s a-damnin’? Stella’s

great, kid. I mean really great.’

Some sex in it, then. But answer the question, punch. Whose skin

just got damned?

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Norman Talbot.

‘So’s Plush. She’s marvellous.’

‘T hat right?’

A silence. A very little one.

‘Incomparable. We’re pregnant.’

PANMARINE NEWSFLASH 29, for 12.22.36, at 17.45 hours: Multiworld-record-breaking athlete Taafa Omi, who last week signed with the San Antonio Gilas for an incredible 200 MegaC transfer fee, has been admitted to

the Austin Medical Analysis Centre. His manager, Larry Bo, has released a

statement to the effect that his admission is part of his attempt to answer the

repeated allegations that his brilliant performances have been artificially aided

by the so-called Indetectable Deep-Space Drugs. IRS officials have impounded

the records of Omi’s multi-MegaG enterprises, Weightless Trainer and Weightless Weightwatcher, sine die, perhaps coincidentally with Omi’s latest move.

Deep-Space Medical experts Commodore Theodore Slatecoat and Vice-

Commodore Shawn Loftis are expected to head a wide-ranging investigation.

The former served with Omi on the history-making Beowulf Expedition.

Thanks, Vera. Sex and drugs and M ulti-MegaC rolls.

So what’s the investigator in Austin doing at Panmarine Base? Conspiracy?

‘Congratulations. But what I meant was, how’s she compare —

compare with at first?’

‘You mean in bed? In general? With Stella —no, you don’t mean

that.’

‘Guess that answer’s part of what I meant.’

‘Well, naturally, “at first” was magnificent. So confident, thoughtless

even. . . Kind of hot-coffee laughter about everything. . .

‘You likes yo’ coffee black, suh? Yeah, well, I’d say we rated honey-

colour. Honeymoon, maybe. Does your coffee stay hot?’

‘Yep.’

‘Not bitter? Reckon not. Little cloudy?’

Having a great time sloshing around in food metaphors. W hat

would Freud have said? I’ve no idea; what would he have said? A bad

sign for a criminal conspiracy, anyway, punches.

‘Plush and I have maybe been trying a little bit too hard, but we’re

learning. I can just about step out at will, now.’

W hat in hell are they talking about? It’s got to be sex. Presumed

wifeswap. But why are they confessing and laughing at the same time?

And who’s the other one? On 24-HAR-370 there was Blanchis, De-

maine (she’s dead), Filosofia, Kokkolevu, Kuman, Knight, M adan,

Munro, Omi, Robbins, Shona, Tan (most of the women seem to be

dead), Tseung, Van, Vittoria, Voronsky, Walden, Wiglaf, Wreidt,

After the B eo w u lf expedition

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Zurbaran. Will you check, please?

Check what? And with where? Your list is correct.

‘Yeah. Me too. Magnificent, but with signs, right?’

‘Like goodbye signs?’

‘Well, back-to-normal signs. Deja vu. Look, kid, did you never think

maybe Plush was getting a lot like Stella?’

‘Intensely, sometimes — but it was nice. Hey, do you mean our deep-

space magic is cooling off?’

‘More separating out, or diffusing. Adapting, could be even

infecting.’

Magic. Oh come on, guys.

‘But it doesn’t get weaker. It’s blossoming, dammit, Slatecoat. And

ours is the only one that worked, wouldn’t you say?’

I ’ve got a feeling Detective Lim, that these childish big idiots are carrying something very weird. Infectious’ did he say?

‘Maybe because we got twice the helping. Kid, this is going to be a

lot screwier than just screwing. Better brace yourself for impact.’

Indetectable Deep-Space Aphrodisiacs. Take two mis instead of

retiring. Still, that stuff about helpings sounds a bit more solid.

‘You know, Slatecoat, you’re getting into some kind of subcompulsive state, and trying to infect me with it.’

‘Now that’s an accusation you’d have been incapable of making this

side of HAR-370!’

‘Before HAR-370 I never needed words like that. Nobody ever

threw a sub-compulsive state at me!’

‘And now I do?’

‘Hell, no, not just you. I do it to me. And Plush too, in a way.’

‘And your little fireball Stella, she just does that sort of thing all the

time! But why the overkill? I ain’t in no sub-com-anything.’

‘You’re in something, no shit. Even here, you keep moving, looking

round.’

‘Jumpy, yeah. Churned up —not unhappy, just uneasy. You and

Plush, you read each other’s minds?’

‘A lot, but it doesn’t churn me up. You know, Plush and I slept from

Lunar-base to Panmarine. I never did that before, not a wink. Peace

tends towards change, as K says.’

‘Tends towards change’—That’s Kubla Wiglafs Live Toronto tape, the

‘Peace-fall’ track. And that’s another one you can cross off your list. PAN­

MARINE EDUCATIONAL 203, 7.29.36, at 19.00 hours. The meteoric

rise and sensational suicide of singer-composer, poet-translator, astro-computer

wiz Kubla Wiglaf have stimulated savage controversy throughout the literary

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Norman 'Talbot

and entertainment worlds. The violent Fijian Fundamental School of Revolutionary Criticism and the Arnold-heavis Moral Axis have now joined the Edinburgh