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

coffee-stained couch wrapped me warm and we climbed the grav-

slope away from Greenball to the point where we could cut. With

interest, with politeness, with thoughtful readiness to pull a new

point of view over his head like a woolly jum per he inquired about

Kolissa, then about our travels, our purposes, our means of support. Over the jagger with the catcrap on his faceplate he laughed like a horse. ‘But,’ he said, suddenly changing direction, ‘you come

in here, you climb out of your life support and send it into the bay

for a free refill of all the things it needs, fuel, concentrates, oxygen

. . . Doesn’t that embarrass you? Isn’t it begging?’ He was a strange

jack. I told him what he already knew: that sleezies are programmed to seek the bays at every opportunity, so I didn’t have to send it, though I accepted responsibility for it; that once he was

making the trip and had his can in motion the cost of flight modification to pick me up, of carrying me, of feeding my sleezy was less than one hundredth of a percent of the tripcost; and that usually a

pilot would not pick up a jagger unless he expected the return in

company, conversation, or the pure altruistic inner glow (I did

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Anthony Peacey

smear that a bit) to repay him well. Amused, he agreed.

He had not mentioned the revolution. He’d been on Greenball

three days to pick up some kind of tagged juice for some weird

experiments so I supposed he didn’t know, and I was reluctant to

tell him, but did in the end. And this jack, Claudian Fainey-Juveh

(he had introduced himself), did a strange thing with his mouth,

pursed his lips while making the upper one tall, and said ‘I wonder

if it will alter things much.’ And then, Are you sure?’

‘Yeah, oh yeah. The pilot who lifted me into ring said. Spacevine

is always accurate, no one says more than they actually know, kind

of tradition.’

‘Ah yes. I’m not actually on Otzapoc — I’ll take you there,

though — your life support will take you down, won’t it? — I’ve

been on Trivash for a couple of years. The last time I was on

Otzapoc itself was more than a year ago. I hardly heard anything of

Jahenry — I rather got the impression that he was out of favour

with most people.’

‘Would you have heard, though?’ I said, perhaps because he’d

questioned the morality of jagging.

‘W hat do you mean?’ Still the polite interested inquirer.

‘Well, people often don’t hear about things they’re not interested

in.’

He chuckled. ‘Quite so. I’m not very interested in politics. As a

m atter of fact I see the whole business as predetermined, as

organic, like ocean currents for example. The demagogues that

arise are mere opportunists taking advantage of the currents,

riding them. When they can no longer hang on, or when they try to

alter their courses, they are swept aside.’

Right, right, right. And ocean currents bring storms and ocean

currents bring sunshine and we the bathers the beachcombers the

surfers — we take what comes. We were bound, this Fainey-Juveh

and me, in beautiful understanding and agreement.

Trivash, then. I had heard the name. Yes, he explained, one of

the twenty-seven moons of Bubutap, great raging storming

whirling gas giant of the Bennet-Kenny system. Bubutap of giant

lightnings like that old seagod’s fork, Bubutap of the vortex-edged

speeding methane-ammonia hurricane belts, Bubutap of the

orange angry skewed thunderous eyes. (I knew there was some

weird passion at the core of his life, even from when he looked at

that list off-camera before he picked me up — I could see the list

now, pale brown fax skin stabbed over a knob, curled and awkward

Jagging

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to read. Now, stepping from great god globe Bubutap he submerges in his private ocean current.) Ages ago pioneers from Otzapoc’s neighbour Heljring terra-formed Trivash and founded an empire that lasted for ten thousand

years. Most of the other planets and satellites in the system were left

natural, but the empire colonised them all — with