The Deadly Sky Read Free Page A

the house.
    The kitchen was a glittering, empty cavity. Instead of switching everything out, my father had waited for me.
    “Good morning, Dad,” I said.
    “Good morning, Ashlin. How are you?”
    “Fine. And you?”
    “Very well.”
    My toe on a floor disc brought out the chairs from the wall. He sat on one while I did the things that had to be done, table switched out, coins fed into food slots, coins fed into napkins-glasses-salt-pepper-flatware slots. Father had cocoa, toast, juice and a boiled egg. I had everything imaginable.
    He sat on one side of the table eyeing me over his cup while I sat on the other side and eyed him over my fork. At eighty he was still a vigorous man in good health who could expect thirty or forty more years of life, barring disaster. He hadn’t lost his hair, which was thick, white and wavy. Looking at it made me think of my mother who had had a sandy thatch like my own; not a wave or motion in the strands anywhere. Father had china-blue eyes and so did I. He had a classical nose whereas my own was common and somewhat small. At least I was a bigger man than he but that was probably because he was a bit shrunken with age.
    “What time did you get home last night?” he said, staring at me with eyes the color of the morning sky.
    “Didn’t Sargoth tell you?”
    “He said he didn’t know.”
    “Early. I needed to catch up on some sleep.”
    “I think you were mountain climbing yesterday.”
    “I try to keep busy.”
    “Are you well?”
    “Yes, why?”
    “You’ve a tic under your left eye.”
    When we left the kitchen it was a glittering, empty cavern.
    “Who were you with yesterday?” he said. “Not that Willmett ruffian?”
    “He’s all right.”
    “He drinks and drugs.”
    “Only occasionally. Most of the time he’s as straight as you are.”
    Mrs. Pelf from next door came over five minutes after my father went to work.
    “You just missed him,” I said.
    “Oh? Well, I came to see you, you know.”
    “Really?”
    “Don’t I do that quite often?”
    “Of course.”
    “Been climbing the mountain again, haven’t you? Maude Lape saw you on the train at dawn. Said you looked like a dirty rat.”
    Sometimes I thought Mrs. Pelf would have been better off pursuing Sargoth rather than my father. She and the drell were two of a kind.
    “Tell Bruner I stopped by, will you?” she said and left.
    I went down into the lab. When Sargoth followed, I said, “Go to the library and hook your learning lead into the bird bank.”
    “Is this a clumsy ploy to get rid of me?”
    “Big birds. Like horses.” As he reluctantly turned to leave, I added, “The history bank, too. Just about the mountain.”
    He paused. “Which mountain?”
    I kept forgetting Emtra wasn’t the world. “Our mountain. The one out the window.”
    My father allowed me to have free run of his lab because he didn’t know how to handle my anxieties. The place was large and furnished with the very latest in scientific equipment. I didn’t know what ninety-five percent of it was or what it was used for. All I cared about was my supply of glass chips, slabs, slices, globes, shards, plates and the tools used to cut and shape them.
    In his younger days my father worked with the space program but now he was in semi-retirement. Five days a week he went to his office and dabbled in genealogy, advised small businessmen, created economic plans, made suggestions about satellites and did similar things. When he wasn’t doing any of that he was running from Mrs. Pelf or trying to cope with me. Not that I was a delinquent or hard to get along with, but it had been too many decades since he was a young man and he simply didn’t know what made me tick.
    Sargoth returned from the library, let himself into the house and came down to where I was working.
    “Do you really expect to make a million dollars before you’re twenty-five?” he said.
    “I do.”
    “Mr. Merrik has all the money you need.”
    “I don’t agree.