The Many Deaths of Joe Buckley Read Online Free Page A

Porky?”
    “Fish from the pond for protein and jams for energy, which is quite adequate. Pormel were designed to be flexible in their food sources.”
    “Designed? Pigs were designed?”
    “Yes. They are not actually pigs. The pormel is a genetically engineered animal primarily based on the domestic swine, but with horse and camel genes, as well as wholly artificial gene structures included in its makeup. They can eat almost anything, even derive some nourishment from dirt.”
    Sam laughed and got out of bed. “That’s true enough. I’ve seen pigs do it. What’s a horse?” On the wall screen opposite Sam’s bed there appeared an image of a horse standing next to a picture of Porky. “Now that is a funny looking critter.”
    Then Sam considered the implications. “Porky is tech?” Sam started laughing. “The firsters must not have known that. They’d have killed them all.”
    “I don’t understand,” the AI said. “Why would the firsters object to pormels being engineered?”
    “Well, Old Carter didn’t really know why. Just that in the early days it was believed that using tech, even knowing how to read, would call down demons on you and they would throw lightning at you or burn you up.”
    The conversation was interrupted as Sam went through his morning routine and resumed when he arrived at the dining niche.
    “So had I been discovered in the early days, the firsters would have objected.”
    “They’d have burned you down then taken axes to what was left.” Sam grinned. “’Course, there was no one living out here then. Everyone lived near the coast.”
    The AI projected a map on the table and Sam resisted the urge to tell it to stop doing things like that. He figured if he told it to stop it would and he figured he needed to get used to this sort of thing.
    He looked at the map that the AI had put on the table. It was like looking down at the world from a great height. At the same time, the map was wrong. “That place there, where you show a city by the ocean. There’s no city there, never has been. That bay extends inland ten miles or so and there are cliffs all around it.” Sam pointed to the most obvious error in the map.
    The map changed, zooming in on the place he was pointing. Then a circular bay appeared. “Like this?” the AI asked.
    “Sort of.” He and the AI refined the image. Sam drew with his finger and the AI corrected the map as he indicated, until they had it pretty much the way Sam remembered from when he was a boy.
    “Sam, what you have described here looks like the results of a kinetic strike.”
    Sam sighed. “What’s a kinetic strike?”
    “In this case, a rock about four hundred feet across was dropped out of the sky on Landing. It would have hit the city so hard there would have been nothing left but the hole you describe. It would have filled with water, making that round bay.”
    Sam looked at the map again. “Uh. That ain’t the only hole like that near the coast. There must be over fifty of them. I grew up in that part of the world.”
    The AI drew other dots along the coast. “There?”
    It looked mostly right, but he pointed at one dot. “There wasn’t one there. He said that’s where they found the how-to books about two hundred years ago. Old Carter was crazy for those books.” Sam considered. “Sounds like the firsters might have had a point. It sure looks like the demons hit those places hard. So why didn’t they get you?”
    “In all probability they didn’t hit the Buckley homestead for three reasons. First, the strike was only a few years after the colony was established and the Buckley homestead was located farther away from Landing than any other homestead. Second, the homestead systems were partially shut down while Mr. Buckley was on business in Landing. Finally, the homestead was built into the rock and effectively shielded from casual detection.”
    “That explains why the demons didn’t hit you then. What about now?”
    “It is