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

They entered the reception room.

‘It’s strange,’ K ahr said. ‘She didn’t inform the H auptm ann.’

‘W hat?’

The Gauleiter told him.

‘Then she was as foolish as he,’ said the Sturmbannfuhrer, frowning. ‘Who can tell the ways of the mad?’

Rudolf ran; he had no time to discard his heavy boots and baggy

clothes. He threw his cloth hat away and fled through the night.

The sanctuary tree

163

In the distance there was barking.

He knew it was pointless to play their game, yet he could not help

himself. Sweat ran into his eyes, his skin felt hot and cold, his lungs

burnt from the energy of his flight.

Twigs lashed at his face. Was this the park? Flares lit up the night

sky, casting shadows across the world. He ran across the close-cut

grass, saw the bloody tree.

Trudi was on his mind. Why had she not told him? Why had she

not loved him as he had her?

The wolfhounds were closer now. He shivered and tried to ignore

the sounds of their pursuit, and the laughter of the remote crowd.

The wrath of Woden was upon him.

He approached the tree, and reached it, the Wild H unt still behind him. Its surface was coated with a glistening red. Why had Trudi rejected him, kept him apart from her? As he had been prepared, the SS officer had told him, with a sneer, that she had been three months pregnant when she died.

He had not killed her.

A dog appeared ten metres away, abruptly illuminated by the

flares. It was hot tonight, his Slavic peasant’s garb doubly

burdensome.

He gibbered but did not falter. W hen he had killed his parents,

he had killed them all, he had accepted Death.

He turned away from the trunk.

He was childless, lacking even the proof of love.

He broke off a branch, brandished it. His knees shook as the dog

approached; illusion and reality separated. He could not be what

he had done, nor was he what he had claimed to be.

He swung and missed.

The dog leapt.

On the nursery floor

©

GEORGE TURNER

We knew it would not take long for someone, somewhere, to see where

my innocent interviews were leading. From that moment on, of

course, I would never be out of danger. So The Mob (my private joke

name for them) armed me as best they could against surprise and tight

corners, and sent me off to play cat among the pigeons — though I felt

more like a domestic tabby stalking vultures.

1 An Ex-Ministerfor Science and Development

You journalists always look for someone to blame, but the facts in this

case are too public for muckrakers. After Crick and Watson the thing

was inevitable, no m atter how. The intimate touch? Is that what you

want? Laddie, you won’t print a word my legal staff hasn’t vetted.

None of your ‘insightful’ reporting! My memory is exact. I may be

ninety-five but I was known for quoting verbatim —

You ancient, useless bastard. On a crowded planet yesterday’s dinosaurs

persist because a life-greedy parliament once decreed that ex-MPs were entitled to Life Extension and anti-geriatric care as part of their grateful country's thanks —

while people who matter to the world can’t buy Extension because

the Balance Law makes even Grade One couples fight and bribe for permission to breed . . .

You might say that Barry Jones made it possible. He was Science

164

On the nursery floor

165

Minister with some Labor government seventy years back. His wasn’t

a senior portfolio but he was vocal at a time when science was making

itself felt in a population brought up on video, booze and football. The

job became more and more important until, when my time came in

twenty-oh-three, the portfolio was junior only to the Deputy PM. So

I was able to swing a lot of power. 1 was a numbers man — you know

that if you’ve done your homework — and I don’t mind saying I had

my eye on long term benefits and that Project IQ looked like being the

little monster that would help me along.

I’d had this pack of biologists and gene-topologists snapping at my

heels for months, claiming that they had all the variations of the helix

calculated, that they’d sorted out the inert sections of the chain and

mapped the most promising points of interlocation and even picked

the microsurgeons for the job — and the public was in the right mood

for some sort of great leap forward, bless its idiot heart.

So was the scientific community, excepting the astronomers. Did

you know that there’s a high percentage of religious believers among

them, overwhelmed by the majesty of the universe? They published

an open letter quoting ‘vaulting ambition which o’erleaps itself, but

my secretary knew his Macbeth and so I could answer that biology

had come a long way since the witches brewed. That got me a big

response from the cartoonists. Good publicity.

I

tried for publicity through the science fiction clubs, too, and found

out they didn’t like science. Intrusive, obscure, boring and unimaginative! In politics you learn something new and silly every day; some of it makes you wonder how we ever climbed out of the caves.

How did this vulgarian careerist ever earn his seat? He helps explain the

condition of the world.

However, I got the