Nebula Awards Showcase 2006 Read Online Free PDF Page A

condemned him for his audacity.
    Yet, as he looked at his audience and read on, Terzian had felt the anger growing, spawned by the sensation of his own uselessness. Here he was, in the City of Light, its every cobblestone a monument to European civilization, and he was in a dreary lecture hall on the Left Bank, reading to his audience of seven from a paper that was nothing more than a footnote, and a footnote to a footnote at that. To come to the land of cogito ergo sum and to answer, I don’t care?
    I came to Paris for this? he thought. To read this drivel? I paid for the privilege of doing this?
    I do care, he thought as his feet turned toward the Seine. Desiderio, ergo sum, if he had his Latin right. I am in pain, and therefore I do exist.
    He ended in a Norman restaurant on the Ile de la Cité, with lunch as his excuse and the thought of getting hopelessly drunk not far from his thoughts. He had absolutely nothing to do until August, after which he would return to the States and collect his belongings from the servants’ quarters of the house on Esplanade, and then he would go about looking for a job.
    He wasn’t certain whether he would be more depressed by finding a job or by not finding one.
    You are alive, he told himself. You are alive and in Paris with the whole summer ahead of you, and you’re eating the cuisine of Normandy in the Place Dauphine. And if that isn’t a command to be joyful, what is?
    It was then that the Peruvian band began to play. Terzian looked up from his plate in weary surprise.
    When Terzian had been a child his parents—both university professors—had first taken him to Europe, and he’d seen then that every European city had its own Peruvian or Bolivian street band, Indians in black bowler hats and colorful blankets crouched in some public place, gazing with impassive brown eyes from over their guitars and reed flutes.
    Now, a couple of decades later, the musicians were still here, though they’d exchanged the blankets and bowler hats for European styles, and their presentation had grown more slick. Now they had amps, and cassettes and CDs for sale. Now they had congregated in the triangular Place Dauphine, overshadowed by the neo-classical mass of the Palais de Justice, and commenced a Latin-flavored medley of old Abba songs.
    Maybe, after Terzian finished his veal in calvados sauce, he’d go up to the band and kick in their guitars.
    The breeze flapped the canvas overhead. Terzian looked at his empty plate. The food had been excellent, but he could barely remember tasting it.
    Anger still roiled beneath his thoughts. And—for God’s sake —was that band now playing Oasis? Those chords were beginning to sound suspiciously like “Wonderwall.” “Wonderwall” on Spanish guitars, reed flutes, and a mandolin!
    Terzian had nearly decided to call for a bottle of cognac and stay here all afternoon, but not with that noise in the park. He put some euros on the table, anchoring the bills with a saucer against the fresh spring breeze that rattled the green canvas canopy over his head. He was stepping through the restaurant’s little wrought-iron gate to the sidewalk when the scuffle caught his attention.
    The man falling into the street, his face pinched with pain. The hands of the three men on either side who were, seemingly, unable to keep their friend erect.
    Idiots, Terzian thought, fury blazing in him.
    There was a sudden shrill of tires, of an auto horn.
    Papers streamed in the wind as they spilled from a briefcase.
    And over it all came the amped sound of pan pipes from the Peruvian band. “ Wonderwall .”
    Terzian watched in exasperated surprise as the three men sprang after the papers. He took a step toward the fallen man— someone had to take charge here. The fallen man’s hair had spilled in a shock over his forehead and he’d curled on his side, his face still screwed up in pain.
    The pan pipes played on, one distinct hollow shriek after another.
    Terzian stopped with