Against the Day Read Online Free PDF

strange voices and so forth—”
    “We’d picked up a little galvanic
halo ourselves by the time we got here,” said Chick, “what with the speed and
all.”
    “Aaw that’s nothin,” cried Riley,
“next to dodgin tornadoes all day! You boys want real electricity, git on out
to Oklahoma sometime, get a treat for your ears into the bargain that will
sure’s hell drownd out any strange voices in your neighborhood.”
    “Speaking of voices,” said Penny,
“what have you heard about these . . . ‘sightings’
that keep getting reported in? Not just from crews up in the air but sometimes
even from civilians on the ground?”
    “You mean aside from the usual,”
Darby said, “fata morgana, northern lights, and so forth?”
    “Different,” Zip in a low, ominous
voice. “There’s lights, but there’s sound, too. Mostly in the upper altitudes,
where it gets that dark blue in the daytime? Voices calling out together. All
directions at once. Like a school choir, only no tune, just these—”
    “Warnings,” said Riley.
    Darby shrugged. “News to me. Inconvenience, we’re only the runts of the Organization, last at the trough, nobody ever
tells us anything—they keep cutting our orders, we follow ’em, is all.”
    “Well we were over by Mount Etna
there back in the spring,” Penny said, “and you remember those Garçons de ’71,
I expect.” For Chick’s benefit, Darby explained that this outfit had first been
formed over twenty years ago, during the Sieges of Paris, when manned balloons
were often the only way to communicate in or out of the city. As the ordeal
went on, it became clear to certain of these balloonists, observing from above
and poised ever upon a cusp of mortal danger, how much the modern State
depended for its survival on maintaining a condition οf permanent siege —through the systematic
encirclement of populations, the starvation of bodies and spirits, the
relentless degradation of civility until citizen was turned against citizen,
even to the point of committing atrocities like those of the infamous pétroleurs of Paris. When the Sieges ended, these balloonists chose to fly on, free
now of the political delusions that reigned more than ever on the ground,
pledged solemnly only to one another, proceeding as if under a worldwide,
neverending state of siege.
    “ Nowadays,” Penny said, “they’ll fly
wherever they’re needed, far above fortress walls and national boundaries,
running blockades, feeding the hungry, sheltering the sick and persecuted . . . so of course they make enemies
everyplace they go, they get fired at from the ground, all the time. But this
was different. We happened to be up with them that one day, and it was just the
queerest thing. Nobody saw any projectiles, but there was . . . a kind of force . . . energy we could feel, directed
personally at us . . . . ”
    “Somebody out there,” Zip said
solemnly. “Empty space. But inhabited.”
    “This making you nervous, Chick?”
teased Darby.
    “Nawh. Thinking about who wants that
last apple fritter there.”

    eantime Miles and Lindsay were off to the Fair. The horsedrawn
conveyance they had boarded took them through the swarming streets of southern
Chicago. Miles gazed with keen curiosity, but Lindsay regarded the scene with a
peevish stare.
    “You look kind of glum, Lindsay.”
    “I? no, not at all—beyond an
unavoidable apprehension at the thought of Counterfly with full run of the ship
and no one to supervise him, I am as cheerful as a finch.”
    “But Darby’s there with him.”
    “Please. Any influence Suckling could
exert on a character that depraved would be negligible at best.”
    “Oh, but say,” reckoned the
kindhearted Miles, “Counterfly does seem a good skate, and I bet you he’ll soon
get the hang of things.”
    “As MasteratArms,” muttered Lindsay,
perhaps only to himself, “my own view of human nature is necessarily less hopeful.”
    At length the car deposited them at