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a red chili sauce. He ate dinner as he walked.
The buildings diminished in size. This was the old part of town now, winding
streets cut by bits of rugged terrain left in its natural state, like parks.
The people were different, livelier, probably without as much money. They
played instruments, passed bottles. Steward went into a liquor store and
bought a bottle of old genever wrapped in foam insulation that would keep it
cold for days. He drank as he walked, rekindling the fire inside him, feeling
it spread warmly to his toes, his fingertips.
The mountains were fully visible now, three peaks clothed in twilight gray. He
kept walking.
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Williams, Walter Jon - Voice of the Whirlwind
Cars hissed by on the dark street, trailing wisps of music. His leg muscles
were driving him steadily uphill. The moon rose, a narrow sickle cutting
through the fixed stars of satellites, power stations, orbital habitats.
Shining on the metal cylinder where
Natalie lived, alone with her postwar child. Cool breezes touched Steward s
face, his arms. The air smelled of pine.
In another hour he was in the foothills, still moving. He sipped the genever
whenever he felt his fires threatening to burn low.
He was surrounded by a darkness that seemed tangible, friendly, like the
inside of a tented blanket. Through the pines he glimpsed occasional glimmers,
distant houses stuck to the rising slope like limpets. He walked toward the
moon.
When he came to a place where he couldn t see any more lights above him, he
stopped. He took a couple of slow swallows of genever and turned, looking at
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the jeweled spiderweb of the city below, the flashing red lights on the upper
corners of the glass towers. Coleopter turbines moaned somewhere in the
distance.
He sat down, crossing his legs in front of him, and wondered if a telephone,
somewhere, was ringing for him. Carefully, Steward imagined the sound.
I m getting there, he thought. I m getting near the center. The cartridge, in
his back pocket, dug into his flesh. He ignored it and took another drink.
Lights guttered through a haze of rising air. Wind moved high in the pines but
failed to stir the hair on his scalp. The wind sounded like a million people
cheering, all seated around him in some dark and vast stadium. Cheering
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Williams, Walter Jon - Voice of the Whirlwind what he was becoming.
In the morning, unshaven, unbathed, reeking of juniper gin, he had some
difficulty hitching a ride back into town. He d slept on needles, under a
blanket of boughs, and there was pine sap in his hair, staining his clothes.
He filled his empty bottle with spring water and sipped it as he walked most
of the way to the hospital.
He could hear Dr. Ashraf s voice murmuring in the sound of his room s air
conditioning. Protesting. Telling him he had to forget what he thought he
knew, what he thought he cared about.
Telling him to make his own life without reference to a deformed, crippled
past.
Fuck that, Doc, he said out loud. They cut you into chunks with a knife and
I bet they never even told you why.
If you wish to find the unclouded truth, he told himself, do not concern
yourself with right or wrong. Conflicts with right and wrong are a sickness of
the mind.
The oldest Zen poem. He liked the sound of it.
He called Ardala at work and told her he was checking out of the hospital.
What happened to you yesterday? I was calling. Police again?
Can I stay with you till I get some work? She laughed.
Why not? Stop by for the key.
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Williams, Walter Jon - Voice of the Whirlwind
Thanks. I ll see you in a few minutes.
Steward showered, changed, and packed. His possessions filled one small
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