City of Golden Shadow Read Online Free PDF Page A

dream. Just a hallucination after a minor head wound. Paul looked at Finch's familiar face, his grayshot mustache, the weary eyes behind steel-rimmed spectacles, and knew that he was back where he was supposed to be, sunk once more in the mud and the blood. Of course. The war went on, uncaring of the dreams of soldiers, a reality so devastating that no other reality could compete.
    Paul's head ached. He reached up to rub his temple with a dirty hand, and as he did so something fluttered from his sleeve into his lap. He looked quickly at Finch, but the other man was rooting in his bag, hunting a tin of bully beef, and had not seen. He lifted the object and let it catch the last rays of the sun. The green feather sparkled, impossibly real, impossibly bright, and completely untouched by mud.

First:
UNIVERSE NEXT DOOR
----
    pity this busy monster,manunkind,

    not.  Progress is a comfortable disease:
    your victim(death and life safely beyond)

    plays with the bigness of his littleness
    -electrons deify one razorblade
    into a mountainrange;lenses extend

    unwish through curving wherewhen till unwish
    returns on its unself.

    A world of made
    is not a world of born-pity poor flesh

    and trees,poor stars and stones,but never this
    fine specimen of hypermagical

    ultraomnipotence.  We doctors know

    a hopeless case if-listen:there's a hell
    of a good universe next door;let's go
    -e. e. cummings
----

CHAPTER 1
Mister Jingo's Smile
----
    NETFEED/NEWS: Failed Chip Leads to Murder Spree
    (visual: Kashivili at arraignment in body restraints)
    VO: Convict Aleksandr Kashivili's behavioral chip suffered an unexpected failure, authorities said today after the mod-paroled Kashivili-
    (visual: scorched shopfront, parked fire trucks and ambulances)
    -killed 17 restaurant customers in a flamethrower attack in the Serpukhov area of Greater Moscow.
    (visual: Doctor Konstantin Gruhov in university office)
    GRUHOV: "The technology is still in its early stages. There will be accidents. . . ."
----
    One of the other instructors pushed open the cubicle door and leaned in. The noise of the corridor swept in with him, louder than usual.
    "Bomb threat."
    "Again?" Renie set her pad down on the desk and picked up her bag. Remembering how many things had gone missing during the last scare, she retrieved the pad before walking into the hallway. The man who had told her-she could never remember his name, Yono Something-or-other-was several paces ahead, vanishing into the river of students and instructors moving leisurely toward the exits. She hurried to catch him.
    "Every two weeks," she said. "Once a day during exams. It makes me crazy."
    He smiled. He had thick glasses but nice teeth. "At least we will get some fresh air."
    Within minutes the wide street in front of Durban Area Four Polytechnic had become a sort of impromptu carnival, full of laughing students glad to be out of class. One group of young men had tied their coats around their waists like skirts and were dancing atop a parked car, ignoring an older teacher's increasingly shrill orders to cease and desist.
    Renie watched them with mixed feelings. She, too, could feel the lure of freedom, just as she felt the warm African sun on her arms and neck, but she also knew that she was three days behind grading term projects; if the bomb scare went on too long, she would miss a tutorial that would have to be rescheduled, eating up more of her rapidly dwindling spare time.
    Yono, or whatever his name was, grinned at the dancing students. Renie felt a surge of annoyance at his irresponsible enjoyment. "If they want to miss class," she said, "why the hell don't they just skip out? Why play a prank like this and make the rest of us-"
    A flash of brilliant light turned the sky white. Renie was knocked to the ground by a brief hurricane of hot, dry air as a tremendous clap of sound shattered glass all along the school facade and shivered the windows of dozens of parked cars. She covered her head with her