A Succession of Bad Days Read Online Free PDF Page A

though, scattered throughthe soil, anything from head-sized to bigger-than-houses, and sometimes you had to hack them up to get them out of where you wanted to put a post-hole. If you just dig, you get a post-pit, and even more work. Did quite a bit of that before I joined the collective. It’s kid-work; energy and stubborn would get the job done, skill not required.
    The thought of trying to hack a foundation into a hugechunk of the stuff doesn’t appeal.
    “If it’s a volcano, can we try to put a gas bubble in? Big one, so we’ve got the cellar?” Everyone looks at me, Wake rather intently. “Digging a basement in basalt would take a long time, I don’t think any of us are going to be just making the rock move any time soon.”
    “If we’re being silly, I want some limestone, or some chalk, or something. Something so wecan have an actual garden without two generation’s lead time, composting sand.” I don’t know if Chloris is just playing along or has decided that it’s clearly socially expected to be crazy today.
    “None of these things is impossible.” Wake is being utterly serious. “The alteration of possibilities does not permit one to be extremely specific, but priorities may be set.”
    “How big is this thinggoing to be?” Dove, sounding speculative.
    “I should not like to see you five attempt something greater than thirty hectares at this stage of your studies.” Totally straight-faced from Wake.
    “
Thirty?
That’s not a garden, that’s a
farm
.” Chloris sounds indignant. “Why don’t people do this instead of weeding?”
    “People have done this instead of weeding; all of the north-western corner of the Creeksis geologically discontinuous from the lower Westcreek watershed, the three eastern Creeks are each distinct from the eastern barrens, all are distinct from the southern swamplands. You don’t always get something you can farm, and sometimes it has worse weeds when you do. It’s a matter of odds, not certainty.” Wake sounds patient. My head hurts, this is too much like trying to make the Bad OldDays return.
    “Like fixing the teapot.” Kynefrid sounds stunned.
    Everybody looks at Kynefrid, uncertain how the landscape is like a teapot.
    “One of my aunts had a favourite teapot, and it broke, and an Independent who was there to talk about soil properties in the orchards and what we should add fixed it, fixed it so that it had never been broken.” Kynefrid takes a deep breath. “It wasn’t exactlythe same colour after.”
    “Just so,” Wake says. “It is an alteration of which past shall manifest itself in the world.”
    “Wasn’t there only one past?” My head hurts, and I don’t think the answer is going to help. At least let my head hurt for the correct reasons.
    “At any point in time, there is only one past.” Wake scuffs one sandalled foot across dirt or rock, it’s hard to tell the difference,gestures. There’s a floating green and blue rectangle thing, taller than Wake and full of crosshatching and squiggles. Someone has made a sandwich out of engraver’s styles for filling space. My brain wants to make the basic crosshatches boxwood, but I don’t think whatever it really is makes good drawer pulls.
    Wake points at this glowing stack of lines. “What we are standing on. Every layer, everygeological period, was an accumulation of chance. Most of those chances are scarcely relevant; precisely where the footsteps of some ancient behemoth passed has little effect on what we are standing upon. Yet that accumulation of chances made all the wide earth.”
    “It’s really that hard to control?” Zora, sounding worried.
    “It is impossible to control. It can be reliably predicted.”
    Zora sitsdown, head in hands. “I don’t see how those are different.”
    “Is this like dice?” Dove doesn’t sound especially doubtful.
    Wake nods.
    Dove looks at Zora. “Remember school? Honest dice, you don’t know what they’re going to roll, but roll enough of