The Trouble With Heroes.... Read Online Free PDF Page A

It doesn’t want any back, and other colonies won’t
welcome unbalancing numbers of refugees.”
    That word again.
    "So it's Gaia or nothing. That’s all right. I
couldn’t imagine leaving."
    They wove through the playground where the
swings, the slides, and the roundabout sat still, as if waiting for
ghostly children. A vision swept upon her -- of the whole of Gaia
like this. The blighters didn't destroy things, only animals and
people.
    "There's no real danger, is there? From the
blighters? I mean to Gaia."
    He didn't immediately answer, and chill
seeped into her bones. He was going to be honest, and she wished
she hadn't asked.
    "There's danger," he said at last, grabbing a
bar of the roundabout and spinning it as if doing so might whirl
something away. "People are being ashed. A lot of people, and even
more animals. But the local fixers and teams from Hellbane U should
be able to control things, especially now people are leaving the
danger areas. They've been told to kill all the large animals
before they go so the blighters won't have anything to feed
on."
    "Feed on?" She moved out of his arm, spinning
the slowing roundabout as excuse.
    "The victims are consumed, so it has to be a
kind of feeding. Of energy, we assume. The blighters are a form of
energy."
    Jenny shivered, even though it wasn't really
so shocking. It was more that she'd not thought much about
blighters before. They were nasty, but they hardly ever popped up
even near the equator, and if one did, a fixer got rid of it before
it could do more damage.
    Like pimples -- of a lethal sort.
    The roundabout had slowed again. She gave it
a running spin and jumped on. "So you're going to starve them and
that'll be an end of it?"
    "That's the plan." He spun it again and
joined her, but on the other side for balance. The world whirled,
but they were steady inside this circle.
    "What are the blighters doing, Dan? What are
they? What do they want?"
    "We don't know. Despite generations of study,
we know sod all.”
    The roundabout slowed and they both jumped
off to spin it again.
    When they were back on, Dan said, “They're
not easy to study. Until recently they were hard to find. There
have always been some Gaians who think they’re a hallucination, or
a neurosis brought on by bad air. Or by planetary contamination of
our food."
    “ Food? We brought in Earth
plants."
    "But they feed on Gaian soil, so we do,
too."
    "Blighters can't be imaginary. What about the
ashes?"
    "That's the rub, isn't it?” They were slowing
again, but they let it be.
    “ Apparently there's something called
spontaneous combustion,” Dan said. “It's been recorded on Earth.
People suddenly burst into flames and burn up, leaving acrid ash.
It doesn't really fit because Blighters cause no flames or smoke,
but we humans hate something we can't measure and
explain."
    "Like magic," she said, as the roundabout
became still.
    "Like magic."
    They both stepped off and Jenny became aware
of the late hour and the cold air. It ached in her bones and
shivering over her skin. She’d like his arm around her again, but
she kept apart.
    "How do you zap a blighter?" she asked.
    "We sense them coming and fix them. It’s a
reflex. We can’t not fix one if it’s there. We don't really
understand what we do. We just know it works."
    "So the fixers down south have been fixing
them, but they still need help from Hellbane U?"
    "There are rather a lot of blighters."
    "Why so many now?"
    "No one knows."
    "No one knows much, do they?"
    He laughed, but wryly. "No."
    She was suddenly exhausted, as much by a
sense of helplessness as by the late hour -- and the helplessness
came from Dan.
    "I have to get to bed,” she said. “I have to
go to work tomorrow. Music usually invigorates me, but tonight it
wiped me out.
    He put an arm around her as they turned to
cross the soccer pitch toward the houses beyond the hedge. "I'm
sorry. I don't need much sleep. I sometimes forget that normal
people do."
    Normal.
    On the