Fractal Paisleys
Page 29
Think how I will feel.
We leave the mountains behind us, only Ranier continuing to look over our shoulder like a hall monitor. Around us the suburbs of the city have sprung up like cow flops. It’s past three when Route 90 carries us over a bridge onto Mercer Island, then across another and into the main part of Seattle.
When we’re on Boren Avenue, heading north, I ask, “Where are we going?”
To the Space Needle.
This does not reassure me.
Traffic is thick. There’s an accident at the intersection o£ Denny and Westlake that ties us up for twenty minutes. By the time we go under the monorail line and find a parking space near the Space Needle, it’s four o’clock.
We must hurry.
The sweater sets me running. Deep breaths bring the salty smells of the nearby Puget Sound into my lungs.
Inside there’s a line for tickets. I mutter, so that people won’t stare. “Should I cut?”
We do not want to be ejected. Be patient. Although the observation platform is a third of a mile up, the elevator ride takes a mere forty-three seconds.
“Jesus, how can you be so calm!”
I’m counting on your help.
“Great. Put it all on my shoulders!”
That is precisely the vantage point I maintain.
When we’re finally in the elevator, I step nervously from foot to foot. At least I think it’s me doing it, and not the sweater. The ride itself seems to take a week of math classes.
At last, the top!
I bull my way out of the cage onto the glassed-in observation deck. I get about five seconds to take in the spectacular view of the city and the water and the mountains before the sweater says, There she is.
Miss Ernestine Schnabel is like I was shown, except she’s wearing a long leather coat and standing by a window. I start toward her.
“Hey, Ernie!” I call, somehow knowing instinctively that that’s the nickname she’s been stuck with, just like my June.
It’s the wrong move.
She turns to look at me, a perfect stranger, with a horrified expression of distrust and who-spilled-the-beans confusion, eyes wide behind her smudged glasses. Then she opens her coat, revealing jeans, an Eightball tee shirt—
And a sawed-off shotgun.
There are definitely too many guns in this fucked-up, substandard society of ours.
I think Ernie’s gonna turn the muzzles on herself, like I wanted to. But instead she aims at the nearest window. The double blasts sound like a 757 crashing next door. People are flat on the floor, screaming their fool heads off, alarms are blaring, and the safety glass crunches as Ernie crosses it to the railing separating her from oblivion.
The subject was known to have a penchant for the melodramatic.
I’m on her faster than I think possible, but she’s already got both legs up and over, her little butt perched on the slick railing. What feels like an arctic gale-force wind blows in.
“Goodbye, whoever you are,” she says, then slides forward. I lurch and catch her under one leather armpit with both hands, the rail gouging me in the gut, my feet flailing for a hold. I can’t pull her up. I can’t pull her up! But together, the sweater and I can.
We collapse side by side on the crunchy glass-littered floor. I keep my arms wrapped around Ernie, one cuff pressed against her neck. She seems in shock. I can hear running footsteps coming closer. Guess that lame security guard finally got his act together.
The sweater’s voice is faint in my brain. Power approaching zero. Attempting to rewire subject’s neural circuitry. Results uncertain.
There’s silence, and I think it’s dead. Then the sweater from the future speaks one last time.
Mister Junius Weatherall, I entrust care of the subject to you. If she exhibits signs of her malaise, you must attempt more old-fashioned cures. The future is counting on you.
“Hey, Mister Sweater, no! Don’t go! You promised to help me! Mister Sweater!”
That is not my name. You never asked my name. My name is.… Nevermind.
And with that, Nevermind—if that was his name, and not just a last word of despair—is really gone for good.
Hands are pulling me and Ernie up and separating us, angry faces and voices are seeing if we’re okay before they start to yell and threaten us, like adults always do.
Well, Ernie and I are in for an ocean of shit. But I guess we’ll get across it eventually. And then just maybe she’ll be a little grateful to me and won’t be turned off by my zits. Ernie and June. It’s so ass-backwards it sounds good. Maybe there’s a future in it. Whatever.
Here we are now, entertain us.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
“Master Blaster and Whammer Jammer Meet the Groove Thang” ©1991 Pulphouse.
“Fractal Paisleys” © 1992 The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.
“Do You Believe In Magic?” © 1989 The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.
“Lennon Spex” © 1992 Amazing Stories.
“Mama Told Me Not To Come” © 1992 Amazing Stories.
“The Double Felix” © 1994 Interzone.
“Flying the Flannel” © 1996 Interzone.
“The Cobain Sweater” © 1997Interzone.
“Earth Shoes and Queen of the Pixies, King of the Imps” have not previously been published. © 1997 Paul Di Filippo.
Copyright © 1997 by Paul Di Filippo
Cover design by Open Road Integrated Media
ISBN 978-1-4976-2678-2
This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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