Apocalyptic fiction; Dystopias -- Fiction; Science fiction, American
We found bunches of tiny electronics parts--I think they were; spools of
magnetic tape, but nothing to play it on; reels of very narrow film with
frames much too small to see anything at all unmagnified; about three
thousand cigarettes in unlabeled transparent packs of twenty--we lit up
quick, using my new lighter; a picture book that didn't make much sense
because the views might have been of tissue sections or starfields, we
couldn't quite decide, and there were no captions to help; a thin book
with ricepaper pages covered with Chinese characters--_that_ was a
puzzler; a thick book with nothing but columns of figures, all zeros and
ones and nothing else; some tiny chisels; and a mouth organ. Pop, who'd
make a point of just helping in the hunt, appropriated that last item--I
might have known he would, I told myself. Now we could expect "Turkey in
the Straw" at odd moments.
Alice found a whole bag of what were women's things judging from the
frilliness of the garments included. She set aside some squeeze-packs
and little gadgets and elastic items right away, but she didn't take any
of the clothes. I caught her measuring some kind of transparent chemise
against herself when she thought we weren't looking; it was for a girl
maybe six sizes bigger.
* * * * *
And we found food. Cans of food that was heated up inside by the time
you got the top rolled off, though the outside could still be cool to
the touch. Cans of boneless steak, boneless chops, cream soup, peas,
carrots, and fried potatoes--they weren't labeled at all but you could
generally guess the contents from the shape of the can. Eggs that heated
when you touched them and were soft-boiled evenly and barely firm by the
time you had the shell broke. And small plastic bottles of strong coffee
that heated up hospitably too--in this case the tops did a five-second
hesitation in the middle of your unscrewing them.
At that point as you can imagine we let the rest of the packages go and
had ourselves a feast. The food ate even better than it smelled. It was
real hard for me not to gorge.
Then as I was slurping down my second bottle of coffee I happened to
look out the viewport and see the Pilot's body and the darkening puddle
around it and the coffee began to taste, well, not bad, but sickening. I
don't think it was guilty conscience. Deathlanders outgrow those if they
ever have them to start with; loners don't keep consciences--it takes
cultures to give you those and make them work. Artistic
inappropriateness is the closest I can come to describing what bothered
me. Whatever it was, it made me feel lousy for a minute.
About the same time Alice did an odd thing with the last of _her_
coffee. She slopped it on a rag and used it to wash her face. I guess
she'd caught a reflection of herself with the blood smears. She didn't
eat any more after that either. Pop kept on chomping away, a slow feeder
and appreciative.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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