Modem Times 2.0 - Michael Moorcock [19]
In the identical midnight blue Corniche beside him, connected by her own Bluetooth, Cathy joined in the chorus. The twin cars headed over cypress swamps, bayous and swollen rivers on the way to where the Mississippi met the city.
Standing in the still, swollen ponds on either side of the long bridges, egrets and storks regarded them with cool, incurious eyes. Families of crows hopped along the roadside, pecking at miscellaneous corpses; buzzards cruised overhead. It looked like rain again.
Here and there, massive cracks and gaps in the concrete had been filled in with tar like black holes in a flat grey vacuum. Hand-made signs offered the services of motel chains or burger concessions, and every few miles they were told how much closer they were to Prejean’s or Michaux’s where the music was still good and the gumbo even tastier. The fish had been enjoying amore varied diet. Zydeco and cajun, crawfish and boudin. Oo-oo. Oo-oo. Still having fon on the bayou … Everything still for sale. The Louisiana heritage.
“Them Houston gals done got ma soul!” crooned Cathy. “Nearly home.”
10. PIRATES OF THE UNDERSEAS
At places where two road networks cross, a vertical interchange of bridges and tunnels will separate the traffic systems, and Palestinians from Israelis.
—Eyal Weizman, Hollow Land: Israel’s Architecture of Occupation, 2007
“CHRISTMAS WON’T BE CHRISTMAS without presents,” grumbled Mo, lying on the rug. He got up to sit down again at his keyboard. “Sorry, but that’s my experience.” He was writing about the authenticity of rules in the game of Risk. “I mean you have to give it a chance, don’t you? Or you’ll never know who you are.” He cast an absent-minded glance about the lab. He was in a world of his own.
Miss Brunner came in wearing a white coat. “The kids called. They won’t be here until Boxing Day.”
“Bugger,” said Mo. “Don’t they want to finish this bloody game?” He was suspicious. Had her snobbery motivated her to dissuade them, perhaps subtly, from coming? He already had her down as a social climber. Still, a climber was a climber. “Why didn’t you let them talk to me?”
“You were out of it,” she said. “Or cycling or something. They thought you might be dead.”
He shook his head. “There’s days I wonder about you.”
Catherine Cornelius decided to step in. He was clearly at the end of his rope. “Can I ask a question, Mo?”
Mo took a breath and began to comb his hair. “Be my guest.”
“What’s this word?” She had been looking at Jerry’s notes. “Is this holes, hoes or holds?”
“I think it’s ladies,” said Mo.
“Oh, of course.” She brightened. “Little women. Concord, yes? The dangers of the unexamined life?”
11. REBOOTING THE BODY
We could hear the Americans counting money and saying to the Pakistanis: “Each person is $5,000. Five persons, $25,000. Seven persons, $35,000.”
—Laurel Fletcher and Eric Stover, The Guantánamo Effect: Exposing the Consequences of U.S. Detention and Interrogation Practices.
HE HAD BUILT up his identity with the help of toy soldiers, cigarette cards, foreign stamps, all those books from the tuppenny lending library with their wonderful bright jackets preserved in sticky plastic. Netta Muskett was his mum’s favourite and he went for P. G. Wodehouse, Edgar Rice Burroughs, P. C. Wren, Baroness Orczy, and the rest. They were still printed in hundreds of thousands then. Thrillers, comedies, fantastic adventure, historical adventure. Rafael Sabatini. What a disappointing picture of him that was in Lilliput magazine, wearing waders, holding a rod, caught bending in midstream, an old gent. It came to us all.
Didi Dee seemed to feel more comfortable without her clothes, nodding