Things Fall Apart
Page 39
Beside Colin, Kelly blistered her palms applauding. Lucy Chen clapped hard, too. He lumbered to the lectern as the crowd gave him an ovation. He would rather have run in the other direction. But you did what you had to do, not always what you wanted to do. His left shoulder barked while he took his place there. Yes, you did what you had to do, all right.
“Thanks very much, folks,” he said after the noise died down. “I’m glad you think I did a decent job while I was here. We’ve had some hard times, what with the real-estate collapse and the Strangler and everything that’s come after the supervolcano. But we’re still in there pitching, doing the best we can for our families and our friends and our town. We keep going. We have to. The town will get along fine without me, and so will the department. I’m going to watch my little girl grow up, maybe raise a few chickens while I’m doing it. And I’m going to smell the roses—the weather may be rotten these days, but it’s not too rotten for them to grow. I’m sorry to be leaving a little sooner than I expected, but every other way I can think of I’m a heck of a lucky man. Thanks again.”
They gave him another hand when he stepped away from the lectern, probably not least because he’d kept it short. Kelly kissed him. Everybody else in the room shook his hand again—it sure seemed that way to him, anyhow. He drank more coffee. He ate a sweet roll or two. He stood around listening to people who mattered to him—and to quite a few who didn’t—tell him what a wonderful fellow he was. If you believed a quarter of that stuff, your hat size would swell more and quicker than Barry Bonds’.
At last, he asked a question of Kelly with one eyebrow. She nodded. Colin broke out in a broad grin. He’d spent long enough here. Now he could retire from his retirement party. A last few handshakes, and he made his getaway.
It had started raining again. “Never used to do that this time of year,” Colin grumbled, glowering at Kelly as if the supervolcano erupted because she’d studied it.
“Well, it’s doing it now,” she said, and pulled an umbrella from her purse.
They walked out to the Taurus close together, so the umbrella could keep them both dry. Colin remembered to grab a balloon off the sign in front of the car so he could make the cat’s day.
After he got in, Kelly helped him fasten his belt. She backed out of the parking space and started home. They might not see another car on the road all the way there. Colin had no idea when he’d get into this one again, either. That was as much the supervolcano’s fault as the revised weather was. But what could you do? See what Deborah’d been up to while you were gone, was what. It made a good starter, anyhow.
ALSO BY HARRY TURTLEDOVE
“The Daimon” in Worlds That Weren’t
Ruled Britannia
In the Presence of Mine Enemies
Days of Infamy
End of the Beginning
Opening Atlantis
The United States of Atlantis
Liberating Atlantis
Atlantis and Other Places
Supervolcano: Eruption
Supervolcano: All Fall Down
BY HARRY TURTLEDOVE WRITING AS DAN CHERNENKO
The Chernagor Pirates
The Bastard King
The Scepter’s Return