The 97th Step Read Online Free Page B

willing to risk it. There was a time to stand and wait, and a time to move, and he could no longer bear inaction.
    As he walked, the dust powdering up behind him in small cloudy showers, he spun fantasies about what might happen to him. He could stow away on a freighter, get to one of the densely populated planets, and find some kind of work. He was strong, not too stupid, and fairly good with mechanical things. He might get a job in a flitter repair shop. Maybe even become a mechanic and buy his own shop someday. Be a man of substance, find a woman, have a real family, with kids he didn't beat. Not play out his days a dirt raker on God's Rectum.
    At that thought, Mwili glanced skyward, again almost expecting a heavenly blast. When Kimo Mchanga had first called Cibule God's Rectum, Mwili had smothered a laugh. None of the other boys listening to Kimo's bragging about how he was going to school offworld had dared to laugh either.
    God must be otherwise occupied, for there was no rumble of lordly anger nor blazing line of high-energy flame arcing down to consume him for daring to think such blasphemy.
    He began to feel better. If God had meant to stop him, surely he would have cut him down when first the thought had come to him? God, according to his father, seldom allowed a man too much rope, even if he intended to hang himself with it.
    Mwili was not sure about God, in a lot of ways.
    Halfway to the flitter, Mwili took a break. He sat on a patch of skillweed a few meters from the road, and broke out his lunch. His mother had packed vegetable soup in a self-heater, brown bread, and soycheese, as well as the chilled flask of deepwell water. The food tasted particularly good, and he ate it slowly, savoring the blend of flavors. The skillweed crackled as he shifted his position. Not much of a seat, but it kept the ground chill from his backside.
    He thought about his mother as he ate. She would miss him, he felt. His going would leave only the two of them. There had been an older sister, Jana, but Mwili had never known her. She had died at fifteen, before he was born. Something always brought a great sadness to his mother's eyes when she spoke of his sister. There was a hint of some kind of disgrace attached to Jana, but he had never found out what.
    Once more, he wondered why his mother stayed. It must be out of a sense of duty, he thought. There was no way anybody could love his father. No way.
    He finished the meal, repacked the water flask, and started his walking again. He had enough to worry about without calling up memories.
    He made better time today than the day before. He reached the flitter in just over three and a half hours.
    It sat where he had left it, no sign that anybody else had passed by since the breakdown. Just to be sure, he checked the hidden supplies. They also were undisturbed.
    For a moment, he was tempted to take some of them. The replacement circuit boards for the watering computer were fairly expensive—he could get maybe a hundred stads for them if he sold them. And there was food, too.
    No. He wanted to leave clean. Whatever else his father might do, he wouldn't be able to have him hauled back for stealing. Even Baba could not begrudge him his clothes, and if he took nothing else, he was only a runaway, not a thief. He only planned to borrow the flitter for a little while.
    He put the rewound coil into place. The harmonics had to be retuned, and that took nearly an hour.
    When he was done, he locked the tools back into the chest and fired up the flitter. It ran. No better than before, but it would do to get him to Toilet Town. After that, well, it was his father's problem.
    He climbed into the flitter, engaged the lift, and left Three Rocks behind, choking in the ubiquitous dust.
    Choo Mji was fairly quiet when Mwili arrived in the late afternoon. He cruised past the spaceport, noting that there were six or eight freighters and the regular passenger liner to Kalk berthed. Good.
    He parked the