The Apex Book of World SF 2 Read Online Free PDF Page A

robot cameras and guns
continued to track them.
    Mr Goop did not stop
when it made the safety of the tracks, or when Tamuka flailed to be let down,
or even when its own breathing became ragged and its footfalls heavy. Tamuka
lay helpless in its strong grip, wondering at Mr Goop's reaction. Surely they
were safe now.
    Still, he had been
twelve seconds from a fate possibly worse than death; the faster they went and
the further they were, the better for him. Tamuka then had a flash of what
might have happened had he not been with Mr Goop. What use would a normal
kid's Geneform have been , he thought? He would certainly have been
arrested, or worse.
    Mr Goop set Tamuka
gently down by the front entrance to their apartment block before collapsing in
a heap. It gasped for air like a stranded fish, but just as Mr Goop did not
speak, it did not sweat either—none of the Geneforms ever did. Digging for the
remote digikey in his schoolbag, he looked upwards and squinted at the thin
clouds whipping past floor one hundred and twelve. Their apartment was one of
ten thousand in the government housing block. They were on the ninety-second
floor. Just below the cloud-line , Tamuka thought grumpily, not that they
could have seen anything anyway, set right in the middle of the block as they
were, with no external windows. Their block was officially called Tsvangirai
Heights, after some ancient, long dead prime minister, back when this was a
country, not a state, called Zimbabwe.
    Tamuka found the
digikey, pulled it out, and waved it at the thick glass doors. They swung
silently open to the air lock chamber beyond. Tamuka ambled in slowly, giving
the tired Mr Goop enough time to rise and join him. If Mr Goop was locked
outside it would be denied access until a registered owner came to fetch it.
     
As usual, there was
no-one home when they arrived. After tending to Tamuka's cuts and scratches, Mr
Goop opened a cup of Instacook noodles and set it out on the kitchen counter.
Then it climbed into its capsule in the adjoining scullery and closed the
hatch. It wanted to be left alone then. Tamuka stood in the kitchen and munched
on the now-steaming hot noodles, while absently staring out of the fake
windows.
     
    Out there, if you
believed the windows, it was a late summer's day and a brisk wind blew leaves
around silently. The wind swooped down from the thick European pine forests
just past their back-garden fence. You could turn the sound on, even the smells
with some of the newer models he had seen on display in the mall. You could
also change the scene with those new ones. Not these ones though; these were
all standard issue and came with the apartment. They had one built-in scene:
Remote European Countryside. Throughout the whole apartment all you could see
were these damn forests, cows in rough-walled fields and the odd blackbird. Not
forgetting, never forgetting, the damn scarecrow in a wheat field outside
Tamuka's bedroom window.
    Ever since he could
remember, he had been absolutely terrified of that damn scarecrow. That was
before he was old enough to realise that none of it was real, or could ever be
real anymore, not even in Europe itself. However, even when he had finally
caught on, the irrational fear remained and he was even more scared than
before. Eventually, against government policy, he had pinned up a large picture
of an extinct puppy over the window. The picture was still there, and his
parents let it stay, even though it would mean a fine if it was ever
discovered. Tamuka vaguely remembered that the "windows" had something to do
with the psychological-well-being of the approximately thirty thousand
inhabitants of Mbare, which was his block's informal name.
    Tamuka knew the unofficial
name used to belong to a high-density suburb that existed here once, when this
had been the capital city—not just the state capital city—Harare. The current
Mbare was the first of the really big housing blocks to be built in the United
Federation