Enemies of the System Read Online Free PDF

window.
    â€œOh, sygygys! Look!”
    Already most of the passengers were looking. There was an obstacle of some kind on the road ahead. As the bus plunged nearer, it could be seen that there was a slash right across the smooth surface, where the road had crinkled and collapsed.
    The control systems of the bus were already automatically in operation. Its perceptions began to slow the heavy vehicle some milliseconds before the humans could respond. Brakes bit, squealing.
    Momentum carried the bus forward toward the gap. Regentop flung herself into Takeido’s arms. As the guide rushed shrieking toward the rear of the vehicle, Dulcifer grabbed her and held her close. Sygiek reached voluntarily for Kordan’s arm. Some passengers screamed. Tires burned across the tarmac as the bus slewed sideways—and slid toward the obstruction.
    The gap was no more than a meter and a half wide. The bus slid nearer, inertial systems bringing it almost to a halt. Then the front skirt went over the edge. The whole body tipped, teetered, and fell.
    It crashed on to one shoulder, rolling till it settled on its side with a high rending sound. The passengers were flung into heaps along the right-hand side of the bus.
    Dulcifer was among the first to recover. He saw that Constanza was unhurt and then began calling in a firm voice, saying that the danger was over and that everyone should climb out who could manage to do so. From the back of the bus, an older man, an underwater hydraulics technician called Lao Fererer, shouted out that he had the emergency exit open and would help anyone who needed help.
    â€œMy knee—it’s so painful I don’t dare move,” gasped Kordan.
    â€œTry,” said Sygiek. She bit her bottom lip to stop it trembling.
    One by one, helping and encouraging each other, the passengers climbed out. They gathered together on the road or sat dazedly on its verge. There was a little blood, but nobody was seriously hurt.
    They looked about them, shocked by the unexpected accident, stunned by the heat outside the air-conditioned bus. Kordan, Lao Fererer and the woman with him, an interplanetary weather co-ordinator called Hete Orlon, and one or two other passengers, climbed to the upper side of the bus to gain a vantage point from which to survey the territory. It did not appear promising. Despite the great distances, the sunlight gave everything a cottony aspect, making seeing difficult and contributing to a dismal feeling of claustrophobia.
    A thunderous silence reigned, punctuated by the ticking of the metal of the bus. A herd of two-legged animals, shaggy-maned and blunt of snout, gazed at them from a distance of a hundred meters. All stood in more or less identical poses of alertness. In the river, things swam, turning their seal-like heads toward the scene of the crash. Everything waited. Movement hung suspended in the damp, leathery air.
    â€œWelcome to Lysenka II,” said Ian Takeido. He laughed, but nobody else did.

IV
    Kordan climbed down to stand with sober face beside Sygiek. The ongoing nature of a land vehicle; the whisper of air-conditioning; the long-familiar experience of hearing a voice electronically transmitted; listening to mildly tedious lectures; promise of an hospitable destination; all those things had vanished which, while they existed, had shielded the tourists from the understanding that they were but specks on an alien face, a long way from the System, vulnerable.
    Rubyna Constanza brushed down her red uniform and said, with a tolerable imitation of her official voice, “Please do not stray too far from the bus. There is no cause for alarm. We shall be missed when we do not rendezvous at the Gorge with the other buses. Although the radio is not working, they can phone to Unity by land-line, and Air Rescue will come out immediately.” As an afterthought, she added, “Normally, the bus itself is in constant radio contact with Unity …”
    â€œHow many