Read Online A Princess of The Linear Jungle by Paul di Filippo - Free Book Online
Authors: Paul di Filippo
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fifteen miles-per-hour with no strain. So whereas the Samuel Smallhorne needed twelve hours to traverse the hundred Blocks of a Borough (and so had set out two days ago), the motorcar could cover that same distance in under two hours. Thus, the trip from Block 70 in Wharton, through the adjacent Borough of Colglazier, and right up to the Wall at the Downtown end of Hake-light, could theoretically be traversed in under six hours. But Scoria had determined they should proceed more slowly, to allow the maximum publicity and attention from crowds along the way.
If the turnout now lining both sides of Broadway here in Wharton was any accurate indication, their slow progress would be justified. The crowds tooted horns and threw confetti and shouted good luck messages.
Dan Peart stood alongside the charabanc, straddling his beloved Calloway Tempesta. The empty seat beside Troutwine had been reserved for him, but he had declined.
“Got to stretch the old hamstrings. Won’t get a chance when we’re wading through those damn weeds.”
Mayor Milorad Hastings of Wharton gave a brief, albeit pompous speech, President Ogallala fired a compressed-air starter’s pistol with a loud pop! , and the expedition was off!
Merritt considered how her departure from Wharton compared to her arrival, and was not displeased with what she had accomplished so far in her young life.
Arturo Scoria was standing up in the moving vehicle, waving boisterously to the crowd. Merritt yanked him down. He boldly kissed her, evoking a tongue-clucking from Vinnagar.
Merritt turned around and stuck out a sliver of tongue at Cad Rachis.
So far, so fine!
7.
INTO VAYAVIRUNGA!
DAN PEART TOSSED ANOTHER NAIL-STUDDED WASTE PLANK into the dancing flames contained in the big battered metal oil drum, sending a gout of sparks leaping upward into the night sky. Merritt thought to see a Pompatic swooping unnaturally low over their camp. The sight made her shiver, but she tried not to interpret it as an ill omen. Death was the one unavoidable outcome for everyone, and random reminders of it meant nothing.
“Cold for April,” Peart said. “But I bet the Jungle Blocks ‘are steamier.”
The entire crew of the Scoria-Vinnagar Vayavirunga Expedition sat on wooden crates set close around the industrial-style campfire. The fire disclosed four large tents pitched in an urban interzone deliberately stripped of all other structures. This barren swatch of territory, half a Block wide across the whole Borough, intervened between Hakelight proper and the enormous Wall that protected them from Vayavirunga.
Merritt could sense the incredible mass of the Wall looming beyond their tiny sphere of illumination. The first time she had seen it up close, just this very day, she had been flummoxed. The top of the Wall seemed a thin line rulered against the blue of the sky. But the bottom of the wall, she knew, measured twenty feet thick! Composed of hewn granite blocks, so precisely shaven that no mortar had been necessary in their mating, the Wall dominated both the nearest buildings and any people daring to approach it, like a living stone creature poised to leap. Running from deep into the trashlands beyond the Tracks right up to the lapping River, the Wall cleaved the Linear City, here and, by counterpart, three ex-Boroughs distant, enclosing some seventy-five miles of unknown vegetation-fecund territory: the former Boroughs of Coconino, Fogtown and Gramercy. The base of the structure was a palimpsest of graffiti and wheat pasted posters from the ground up to about the height of one man standing on another’s shoulders. The texts varied from rude to worshipful, from germane to generic, from commercial to idiosyncratic.
Merritt had rested a hand on the cold, implacable stones. “Who built this, and how?”
Scoria replied, “Records are scanty. The period of construction was some three centuries ago, after all. The vegetable plague began, cause unknown, in the middle
If the turnout now lining both sides of Broadway here in Wharton was any accurate indication, their slow progress would be justified. The crowds tooted horns and threw confetti and shouted good luck messages.
Dan Peart stood alongside the charabanc, straddling his beloved Calloway Tempesta. The empty seat beside Troutwine had been reserved for him, but he had declined.
“Got to stretch the old hamstrings. Won’t get a chance when we’re wading through those damn weeds.”
Mayor Milorad Hastings of Wharton gave a brief, albeit pompous speech, President Ogallala fired a compressed-air starter’s pistol with a loud pop! , and the expedition was off!
Merritt considered how her departure from Wharton compared to her arrival, and was not displeased with what she had accomplished so far in her young life.
Arturo Scoria was standing up in the moving vehicle, waving boisterously to the crowd. Merritt yanked him down. He boldly kissed her, evoking a tongue-clucking from Vinnagar.
Merritt turned around and stuck out a sliver of tongue at Cad Rachis.
So far, so fine!
7.
INTO VAYAVIRUNGA!
DAN PEART TOSSED ANOTHER NAIL-STUDDED WASTE PLANK into the dancing flames contained in the big battered metal oil drum, sending a gout of sparks leaping upward into the night sky. Merritt thought to see a Pompatic swooping unnaturally low over their camp. The sight made her shiver, but she tried not to interpret it as an ill omen. Death was the one unavoidable outcome for everyone, and random reminders of it meant nothing.
“Cold for April,” Peart said. “But I bet the Jungle Blocks ‘are steamier.”
The entire crew of the Scoria-Vinnagar Vayavirunga Expedition sat on wooden crates set close around the industrial-style campfire. The fire disclosed four large tents pitched in an urban interzone deliberately stripped of all other structures. This barren swatch of territory, half a Block wide across the whole Borough, intervened between Hakelight proper and the enormous Wall that protected them from Vayavirunga.
Merritt could sense the incredible mass of the Wall looming beyond their tiny sphere of illumination. The first time she had seen it up close, just this very day, she had been flummoxed. The top of the Wall seemed a thin line rulered against the blue of the sky. But the bottom of the wall, she knew, measured twenty feet thick! Composed of hewn granite blocks, so precisely shaven that no mortar had been necessary in their mating, the Wall dominated both the nearest buildings and any people daring to approach it, like a living stone creature poised to leap. Running from deep into the trashlands beyond the Tracks right up to the lapping River, the Wall cleaved the Linear City, here and, by counterpart, three ex-Boroughs distant, enclosing some seventy-five miles of unknown vegetation-fecund territory: the former Boroughs of Coconino, Fogtown and Gramercy. The base of the structure was a palimpsest of graffiti and wheat pasted posters from the ground up to about the height of one man standing on another’s shoulders. The texts varied from rude to worshipful, from germane to generic, from commercial to idiosyncratic.
Merritt had rested a hand on the cold, implacable stones. “Who built this, and how?”
Scoria replied, “Records are scanty. The period of construction was some three centuries ago, after all. The vegetable plague began, cause unknown, in the middle
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