Cosmocopia Read Online Free PDF

with Pirkle skittering along behind her.
    The streets of Sidetrack City bustled with activity. Crutchsump’s own ghetto neighborhood, the Telerpeton district, hosted a vibrant commercial life, although admittedly the products, vendors and customers were marginal at best. The bone-scavenger had to dodge pails of slops flung into the gutter from eel-soup booths. Late-blooming or early-rising whores monopolized a stretch of sidewalk, their cauls made of shockingly thin fabric. Crutchsump crossed the unpaved street to avoid them. She passed a pottery shop where giant ornate urns used as ghost-catchers filled a display window. Hailed by a neighbor, Grippo, she waved a pleasant hello. Grippo traded in old knives and other tools.
    All the while Pirkle trotted contentedly at the heels of his mistress, darting off now and then to investigate with his delicate vibrissae one attractive bit of offal or another. Crutchsump’s hunger made even the trash look appealing.
    Entering the Bellefoyle district, Crutchsump experienced a grander surround. The streets became paved with broad mica-flecked stones, the pedestrians were better dressed and healthier, the stores more luxe, the civic scents pleasanter. Wagons and carriages, pulled by trundlebrumes and padlopes, racketed down the cobbles. A solemn Noetic seemed to float down the sidewalk. His long robe, woven with stylized Cosmocopian symbols, concealed his slippered feet, and a hat like a crown-dimpled loafcake perched atop his head. Feeling out of place, Crutchsump moved cautiously, sticking to walls and using alleys wherever possible. To live amidst such genteel splendor—what must it be like?
    An hour later, Crutchsump reached broad, curving Huid Avenue, which followed the line of the bay. The cryptic, fecund odors of the sea dominated here. The daylight from Watermilk, reflected off the nearby waters, assumed a thicker, more penetrative aspect.
    Hastening to the railing that separated the avenue from the reedy Mudflats, Crutchsump saw that the tide was high, water lapping among the reeds just yards away from the seawall of the avenue. In her haste, she had neglected to monitor the tidal conditions at Shulgin Mudflats. Now she would have to wait for the water to retreat before she could attempt a harvest. And that circumstance would not occur, she knew, until perilously close to dark. (The second sun, Zarafa, would not fill the skies again for days.)
    Return the long way home empty-handed? To an empty larder and an importunate landlord? Impossible.
    Resigned to her fate, Crutchsump settled down on her haunches at the head of a ramp that led down from the avenue and into the wasteland. The ramp was flanked by heaps of trash dumped there illegally by lazy refuse carters unwilling to make the long trip out to the Kossuth Middens. Pirkle began to root among the garbage, looking for anything good to eat. For lack of a better activity, Crutchsump joined her pet.
    She turned up a handleless drinking cup; a two-scintilla coin; a long scarf of cheap fabric, quite dirty of course but still useful for patching her caul; and a knife with no handle which she could sell to Grippo. All into the sack.
    Then Crutchsump excavated a discarded sex toy. The rubber model of an introciptor, freakishly large, embarrassed, disgusted and compelled her. She tossed the thing away. Pirkle lunged after it across the mud, as if playing a game.
    “Pirkle! Stop! Get back here!”
    Obedient but unchastened, Pirkle returned to the side of his mistress. He cleaned all the mud from his legs with his strigil organ, then folded his many limbs beneath himself as he lowered his body, completely concealing them. His true eyes closed, leaving his many false ones mounting their standard protective charade. Chirring noises soon emanated from the lumpish form.
    Crutchsump sat, bringing her knees up to her chin, clutching her legs and staring morosely but not unhopefully out to sea.
    Watermilk was biting into the aquatic horizon,