Shadow of the Mothaship(txt+pdf+epub+mobi电子书下载)

作者：Doctorow, Cory

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Shadow of the Mothaship

—

A note about this story

This story is from my collection, "A Place So Foreign and Eight More," published by Four Walls Eight Windows Press in September, 2003, ISBN 1568582862. I've released this story, along with five others, under the terms of a Creative Commons license that gives you, the reader, a bunch of rights that copyright normally reserves for me, the creator.

I recently did the same thing with the entire text of my novel, "Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom" (http://craphound.com/down), and it was an unmitigated success. Hundreds of thousands of people downloaded the book — good news — and thousands of people bought the book — also good news. It turns out that, as near as anyone can tell, distributing free electronic versions of books is a great way to sell more of the paper editions, while simultaneously getting the book into the hands of readers who would otherwise not be exposed to my work.

I still don't know how it is artists will earn a living in the age of the Internet, but I remain convinced that the way to find out is to do basic science: that is, to do stuff and observe the outcome. That's what I'm doing here. The thing to remember is that the very *worst* thing you can do to me as an artist is to not read my work — to let it languish in obscurity and disappear from posterity. Most of the fiction I grew up on is out-of-print, and this is doubly true for the short stories. Losing a couple bucks to people who would have bought the book save for the availability of the free electronic text is no big deal, at least when compared to the horror that is being irrelevant and unread. And luckily for me, it appears that giving away the text for free gets me more paying customers than it loses me.

You can find the canonical version of this file at http://craphound.com/place/download.php

If you'd like to convert this file to some other format and distribute it, you have my permission, provided that:

* You don't charge money for the distribution

* You keep the entire text intact, including this notice, the license below, and the metadata at the end of the file

* You don't use a file-format that has "DRM" or "copy-protection" or any other form of use-restriction turned on

If you'd like, you can advertise the existence of your edition by posting a link to it at http://craphound.com/place/000015.php

—

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###

Shadow of the Mothaship =======================

It's the untethering of my parents' house that's on my plate today. The flying of a kite on a windy Toronto Hallowe'en day and the suspension of worry for a shiny moment.

And sail surface isn't even a problemette when it comes to my parents' home — the thing is a three-storey bat whose narrow wings contain the trolleycar-shaped bedrooms and storages. Mum and Dad built it themselves while I tottered in the driveway, sucking a filthy shred of blanket, and as I contemplate it today with hands on hips from the front yard, I am there on that day:

Dad is nailgunning strips of plywood into a frame, Mum stands where I am now, hands on her hips (and I take my hands from my hips hastily, shove them deep in pockets). She squints and shouts directions. Then they both grab rolls of scrim and stapleguns and stretch it loosely across the frames, and fast-bond pipes and prefab fixtures into place. Mum harnesses up the big tanks of foam and aims the blower at the scrim, giving it five fat coats, then she drops the blower and she and Dad grab spatulas and tease zillions of curlicues and baroque stuccoes from the surface, painting it with catsup, chutney, good whiskey and bad wine, a massive canvas covered by centimetres until they declare it ready and Mum switches tanks, loads up with fix-bath and mists it with the salty spray. Ten minutes later, and the house is hard and they get to work unloading the U-Haul in the drive.

And now I'm twenty-two again, and I will untether that house and fly it in the stiff breeze that ruffles my hair affectionately.

#

Firstly and most foremost, I need to wait for the man. I hate to wait. But today it's waiting and harsh and dull, dull, dull.

So I wait for the man, Stude the Dude and the gentle clip-clop of Tilly's hooves on the traction-nubbed foam of my Chestnut Ave.

My nose is pressed against the window in the bat's crotch, fingers dug into the hump of fatty foam that runs around its perimeter, fog patches covering the rime of ground-in filth that I've allowed to accumulate on my parents' spotless windows.

Where the frick is Stude?

#

The man has cometh. Clop-clip, clip-clop, Stude the Dude, as long as a dangling booger, and his clapped-out nag Tilly, and the big foam cart with its stacks of crates and barrels and boxes, ready to do the deal.

"Maxes!" he says, and I *know* I'm getting taken today — he looks genuinely glad to see me.

"Stude, nice day, how's it?" I say, as cas and cool as I can, which isn't, very.

"Fine day! Straight up fine day to be alive and awaiting judgment!" He power-chugs from the perpetual coffee thermos at his side.

"Fine day," I echo.

"Fine, fine day." Like he's not in any hurry to get down to the deal, and I know it's a contest, and the first one to wheel gets taken.

I snort and go "Yuh-huh." It's almost cheating, since I should've had something else nice to say, but Stude gives me a conversational Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free.

"Good night to tricky treat."

I concede defeat. "I need some stuff, Stude."

Give it to him, he doesn't gloat. Just hauls again from Mr Coffee and pooches his lips and nods.

"Need, uh, spool of monofilament, three klicks, safety insulated. Four litres of fix bath. Litre, litre and a half of solvent."

"Yeah, okay. Got a permit for the solvent?"

"If I had a permit, Stude, I'd go and buy it at the fricken store. Don't pull my dick."

"Just askin'. Whyfor the solvent? Anything illegal?"

"Just a project, Stude. Nothing to worry."

"What kinda project?"

"Art project. Fun-fricken-tastic. You'll love it."

"'Cause you know, they tag the shit with buckyballs now, one molecule in a million with a serial number and a checksum. You do something stupid, I get chopped."

I hadn't known. Didn't matter, my parents' house was legally mine, while they were up confabbing with their alien buds on the mothaship. "No worries."

"That'll be, uh, sixty-eight cents."

"Thirty."

"Sixty, firm."

"Fifty-four."

"Fifty-eight."

"Take it in trade?"

"Fricken Maxes! Tradesies? You're wastin' my time, lookin' for bootleg solvent, looking for trade and no cash? Get fucked, Maxes."

He starts to haw-up Tilly and I go, "Wait-wait-wait, I got some good stuff.Everything must go, moving sale, you know?"

He looks really pissed and I know it hard now, I'm gonna get *taken*. I hand him up my bag, and he does a fast-paw through the junk. "What's this?" he asks.

"Old video game. Atari. Shoot up the space aliens. Really, really antisocial.Needs a display, but I don't got it anymore." I'd sold it the month before on abored day, and used the eight cents to buy good seats behind home plate at theSkydome and thus killed an entire afternoon before Judgment Day.

There are some of the artyfarty "freestyle" kitchen utensils Mum used to sell for real cash until Dad founded his Process for Lasting Happiness and she found herself able to pursue "real art." There are paper books and pictures and assorted other crap.

Stude clucks and shakes his head. "If I just gave you the monofil and the fix-bath for this shit, it'd be a favour. Look, I can *get* real money for solvent. I *pay* real money for solvent. This just don't cut it."

"I'll get more, just hang a sec."

He haws-up Tilly but reigns her in slow, and I dash back to my place and fill a duffel with anything I lay hands to, and run out, dragging it behind me, catching the cart before it turns the corner. "Here, here, take this too."

Stude dumps it out in front of him and kicks at the pile. "This is just crap,Maxes. There's lots of it, sure, but it's still crap."

"I need it, Stude, I really need some solvent. You already *got* all my good stuff."

He shakes his head, sad, and says, "Go ask Tilly."

"Ask?"

"Tilly. Ask her."

Stude likes to humiliate you a little before he does you a favour. The word is *capricious*, he told me once.

So I go to his smelly old horse and whisper in her hairy ear and hold my breath as I put my ear next to the rotten jumbo-chiclets she uses for teeth. "She says you should do it," I say. "And she says you're an asshole for making me ask her. She says horses can't talk."

"Yeah, okay," and he tosses me the goods.

#

With stage one blessedly behind me, I'm ready for stage two. I take the nozzle of the solvent aerosol and run a drizzle along the fatty roll of the windowsills and then pop them out as the fix bath runs away and the windows fly free and shatter on the street below.

Then it's time to lighten the ballast. With kicks and grunts and a mantra of "Out, out, out," I toss everything in the house out, savouring each crash, taking care to leave a clear path between the house and the street.

On the third floor, I find Dad's cardigan, the one Mum gave him one anniversary, and put it on. She carved it herself from foam and fixed it with some flexible, dirt-shedding bath, so by the time I'm done with the third floor, my arms and chest are black with dust, and the sweater is still glowing with eerie cleanliness.

I know Dad wouldn't want me to wear his sweater now. They say that on the mothaship, the bugouts have ways to watch each and every one of us, and maybe Mum and Dad are there, watching me, and so I wipe my nose on the sleeve.

#

When the ballast is done, phase three begins. I go to work outside of the house, spritzing a line of solvent at the point where the foam meets the ground, until it's all disconnected.

And then I got to kick myself for an asshole. A strand of armoured fibre-optic, a steel water pipe, and the ceramic gas line hold it all down, totally impervious to solvent.

Somewhere, in a toolbox that I ditched out the second floor window, is a big old steel meat-cleaver, and now I hunt for it, prying apart the piles of crap with a broomstick, feeling every inch the post-

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