Bears Discover Fire and Other Stories Read Online Free PDF Page B

of light and makes the possibility of their ever making contact pretty slim. Infinitesimal, in fact.”
    “So we just pretend there’s no one home in the Universe.”
    “That’s it.”
    “Cruel. But you said it yourself, who wants to meet meat? And the ones who have been aboard our vessels, the ones you probed? You’re sure they won’t remember?”
    “They’ll be considered crackpots if they do. We went into their heads and smoothed out their meat so that we’re just a dream to them.”
    “A dream to meat! How strangely appropriate, that we should be meat’s dream.”
    “And we marked the entire sector unoccupied .”
    “Good. Agreed, officially and unofficially. Case closed. Any others? Anyone interesting on that side of the galaxy?”
    “Yes, a rather shy but sweet hydrogen-core cluster intelligence in a class-nine star in G445 zone was in contact two galactic rotations ago, wants to be friendly again.”
    “They always come around.”
    “And why not? Imagine how unbearably, how unutterably cold the Universe would be if one were all alone . . .”

Over Flat Mountain
    T HEY DIDN’T USED TO CALL LOUISVILLE the Mile High City. I know because I was raised there, in the old West End, when the Falls of the Ohio were just dry limestone flats bypassed by a canal, and the river was slow and muddy, and the summer nights were warm.
    Not anymore, though.
    It was chilly for August when I rolled into Louisville from Indianapolis, heading south and east for Charlotte. The icy mist was rising off the falls where they plunge into the gorge. It was too much trouble to dig a flannel shirt out of the back so I bought a sweatshirt in the truckstop annex, figuring I would give it to Janet or one of the girls later—they wear them like nightgowns—and rolled on out of there without a second piece of pie.
    The shirt said “Louisville—Mile High City of the South.”
    I bought a CD, 50 Truckin ’ Classics , forty-nine of which I already had. I have a library of eleven hundred CDs in my cab. Imagine how much space that would have taken in the old days when they were as big as cookies.
    I don’t generally pick up hitchhikers, but I must have felt sorry for this kid. I was an hour south and east of Louisville, just under the cloud shadow, when I saw him standing in the rain by the CRAB ORCHARD COGWAY 40M/64K sign, wearing a black garbage bag for a raincoat, and I figured, what the hell. He looked more than a little wet. It rains six days out of five south of Louisville since the Uplift.
    When we Flat Toppers run, we run. I just barely pulled over and was back in low-two before he was up the ladder and through the inside airlock lens, peeling off his garbage bag like a landlobster molting. He couldn’t have been more than sixteen. He had greasy blond hair tied back with a rubber band under a Delco cap, and under his garbage bag a windbreaker over a T-shirt. Glad to see he had a coat at least. Boots had “hand-me-down” written all over them. Carried his things in a Kmart plastic bag.
    He combed the rain off the bill of his cap with one finger and perched on the edge of the seat until I swept the CDs off the seat into my own hat and dumped them into the glove compartment.
    “Nice gun,” he said. I had a Brazilian 9 mm in the glove compartment. I closed it.
    “Wet out there,” he said.
    I nodded and popped Ricky Skaggs into the player. I hadn’t picked him up for conversation. I picked him up because I’d done some hitchhiking myself at his age. Sixteen going on twenty-one.
    “Appreciate your stopping,” he said.
    “Nice rig,” he said.
    I was pulling a two-piece articulated, with a Kobo-Jonni. The KJ is an eight-liter steel diesel with that mighty ring that engines used to have before they went to plastic. A lot of guys fall all over the new plastic mills cause they don’t need oil, but I like oil. I had built the KJ three times, and was just through breaking in the third set of sleeves. Plastic, you just throw