My stomach does a flip-flop and I put the comm down before I drop it, swill some
shandy and look out at Lake Ontario, which is a preternatural blue.
Rats-with-wings seagulls circle overhead.
"People of Earth," says the opera-singer-cum-newscaster. "It is good to be back.
"We had to undertake a task whose nature is. . . complex. We are sorry for any
concern this may have caused.
"We have reached a judgment."
Lady or the tiger, I almost say. Are we joining the bugout UN or are we going to
be vapourised? I surprise myself and reach down and switch off my comm and throw
a nickle on the table to cover the pitchers and tip, and walk away before I hear
the answer.
The honking horns tell me what it is. Louder than the when the Jays won the
pennant. Bicycle bells, air-horns, car-horns, whistles. Everybody's smiling.
My comm chimes. I scan it. Dad and Mum are home.
#
They rebuild the Process centres like a bad apology, the governments of the
world suddenly very, very interested in finding the arsonists who were vengeful
heroes at Xmastime. I smashed my comm after the sixth page from Dad and Mum.
Sometimes, I see Linus grinning from the newsscreens on Spadina, and once I
caught sickening audio of him, the harrowing story of how he had valiantly
rescued dozens of Process-heads and escaped to the subway tunnels, hiding out
from the torch-bearing mobs. He actually said it, "torch-bearing mobs," in the
same goofy lisp.
Pages:
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48