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He looked at Spassky.  You have my Starbright? Spassky nodded. He moved his
chair back.  Let s go to my place. I have it there.
Steward shook his head.  We do this in a public place. That s the agreement.
Spassky gazed at him in an odd way, as if he was dialing new settings on his
spectacles, looking at Steward in as many ways as possible.
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Williams, Walter Jon - Voice of the Whirlwind
 I don t have the money on me.
 Maybe I don t have the package, either, Steward said.
The boy on stage was beginning to breathe hard. The pain grew raw in his
voice.
 You and Griffith, said Spassky,  are both too old to be in this business.
 Do you have the money or don t you? Steward asked.
 Come to my place and I ll give it to you.
 Fuck you, Steward said. He pushed his chair back. So did the two big boys.
Steward stood up, gazed into their flat tattooed faces.
Spassky was still looking at him in his strange way, as if
Steward were a vid show he didn t quite understand.
 It s my city, buck, he said.
Steward turned and walked away. Lightning danced through his nerves. A surge
of adrenaline hit him, and his hand trembled as he reached for his chit,
walked through the detectors, and then put it in the machine.
No cabs in this town. No time to call one. He looked behind, through the open
door.
The fat boy and the skinny boy were following, taking their time. It was their
town after all. He could see chits in their hands, ready to reclaim whatever
was being held at the door.
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Behind them the pastel blue boy was sobbing onstage as he tried to put a
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needle through his foreskin.
The machine coughed up Steward s tote. He took it and ran.
Griffith was pale. He seemed drained of blood, emotion, feeling.
 The Powers came then, and it was all over. A whole lot of them on the move.
Hundreds of ships, big ones. The Gorky ships in-
system didn t dare to try anything against them, just pulled out and ran. Left
us on the ground. His hands were trembling again.
He reached for a tissue, blew his nose, then stood up and walked into the
bathroom. Steward heard water running. When Griffith came back, he seemed
better; his color was back. He sat in the chair by the silent video and took a
few long breaths.
 That was when the Captain and the Icehawks had their showdown. The Captain
didn t want to come in, didn t want to admit it was over. We told him this was
the end, that we weren t going to fight against a whole alien species. He was
like a crazy man, fighting to keep the war going. He had become the whirlwind
and he didn t want the whirlwind to stop. I thought it would be Major Singh
all over again, that we d fight it out then and there, But then I figured out
how to bring him over, to make him see reason. I told him that if we went on
fighting, he d never see Natalie again. Griffith took a breath, let it out
slowly.  That brought him over, he said. Griffith hung his head.  He put
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Williams, Walter Jon - Voice of the Whirlwind down his pistol and walked away,
back into his little command center. I could see he was crying. A few minutes
later he came back out, told us to destroy our codes and break our weapons.
We took our transport to where the Powers were waiting. He gave a short
laugh.  De Lopez was there. The guy with the atom bomb on the moon. He d just
sat in his tunnel for months and listened to the war on the radio. He was fat,
healthy, laughing...
He looked at us like we were some other species.
 I don t know why the Powers didn t just wipe us out like a bunch of bugs,
especially after what we d done to their planet. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]