Earthbound Read Online Free PDF Page A

as if it were a shirt pattern. “I couldn’t be part of it anymore.”
    “You’re not going through one tenth what Paul is.” Not to mention your sister. “He’s never killed before.”
    “I know, I know. But you don’t understand.”
    “I guess I don’t.”
    He took the can off the top of the pyramid and sucked at it. “I have three physical identities. Had. The other two are completely, were completely, electronic. They could take external forms—rent-a-bodies—when it was convenient, but they didn’t have to.
    “For most of my life, when this original body became uncomfortable, I could step out of it, and automatic repair nanosystems would take over, while I stayed in one of the other two bodies.”
    “You mean if your brain makes you uncomfortable?”
    “Brain, endocrine system, gonads. The parts that generate and mediate emotional states.”
    “Well, welcome to reality.”
    He had another drink and shook his head, wincing. “Just what I’d expect you to say, Carmen. But there are all kinds of reality. This one is shallow and painful and inescapable.”
    “But this one is the real world.”
    “Not to me. Not to billions of perfectly real people.”
    We had talked about this a little on the cube two days ago. But I guess to me it was just a more vivid and time-consuming version of the VR games that had so dominated his time when he was a kid. To my great annoyance and our parents’ exasperation.
    “Sorry I’m being such a Sal the Sal,” he said, dragging a long-dead pop star from our mutual childhood, an egotistical brat. “It’s almost an automatic reflex, switching over, and my body wonders why it’s alive and suffering.”
    “You’re dead while it happens?”
    “Sure, this body. You can’t be in two places at once.”
    Creepy. “Well, I can see that it’s a terrible loss. Worse than your best friend dying.”
    “They were both me ! Dying. And I think this third me could die if I will it.”
    “Don’t even think of it, Card. You’re all the family I have.”
    “And your only native guide. It’s nice to feel wanted.”

3
     
    Nice to have a native guide, but as darkness fell, I might have traded him for a map and a flashlight. A big box of kitchen matches wouldn’t hurt. Did they still have them in this future?
    We had lined up all our gear by the door and opened it a crack to watch the light fade. The cloudless sky went from lemon to salmon to deepening gray.
    It was no surprise, of course, to see meteors crisscrossing as the sky got darker; we’d been seeing that ever since the Others blew up the moon. Really bright ones rolled across the daytime sky so often that no one commented on them anymore. But there was a new feature that we hadn’t noticed while there was still power, and the lights of civilization: night would never be completely dark.
    That cloud of debris that was the corpse of the moon was composed of trillions of pebbles and rocks that all reflected sunlight like tiny moons. The result was a dim haze that made enough light to see your hand a few feet away.
    Paul was mortified that he hadn’t predicted it, with his graduate degree in astrophysics. Of course, we hadn’t seen a night sky without city lights since we had landed on Earth four days before.
    Our plan to sneak up to the farm under cover of darkness was useless. There would be plenty of people on the road at night, avoiding the desert heat.
    Snowbird gave voice to the obvious. “You have to leave me behind. I’m like a beacon, drawing trouble. And I slow you down.”
    “We’re responsible for you,” Namir said.
    “Not really. I would as soon die here as anywhere, and I would rather not take any of my friends with me.
    “Perhaps I will just swim away until I tire out and sink. I would be the best Martian swimmer on Earth. Or anyplace.”
    “Thank you for the generosity, but we can’t abandon you.” In the dim murk, I couldn’t read the others’ expressions. “Are we in agreement