|
|
Paul Harland (1960-2003) has won the national Dutch award for best Science Ficton story four times. He is the author of some fifty anthologised stories and novellas, the Dutch collection Remote Control, three SF novels among which the Dante-esque Water To Ice, and the critically acclaimed english-language story collection Systems Of Romance (with Paul Evenblij). He also designed and built furniture.
|
We hope you’ll enjoy this short on-line excerpt from Paul Harland’s Aeon Press novel ‘’The Hand That Takes’.
Inside the great marble hall of Tokyo station, Rose stepped up to an old man vending snacks. “A number six, please.”
The vendor wore the embroidered white robes of the Shoji sect. They favoured physical enhancement for its own sake; the man sported Hitachi eyes and ears, and when he spoke Rose saw a hideously segmented metal tongue that was an early Matsushita effort. “I have peppermint, aniseed or strawberry.”
“Peppermint,” Rose said.
The vendor’s fingers rattled over code keys. “News, manga or documentary.”
“News please.”
The vending machine rattled and clunked. Rose parted with New Yen, received a clear plastic box with seven jelly lozenges in a yellow sauce.
He entered the corridor that led to the trains. The ticket reader recognised his presence, and the admission barrier slithered aside to admit him. A green plastic snake appeared, its quicksilver core popping and boiling. It sniffed his bag, his face, his boots. Then the inner barrier disappeared, and Rose emerged onto the platform.
He looked around hesitantly. The green and yellow bullet train stretched before him into the distance, half a mile of it in deep perspective.
“Well,” he thought. “This is it. Best get it over with.”
A jelly carpet the size of a doormat nudged his boots. He boarded; the carpet accelerated and decelerated, finally depositing him by the entrance to his carriage. A family of six was already hoisting their luggage inside, bulky matching suitcases in yellow and grey.
They took minutes to install themselves, chattering like locusts all the while. Rose stashed his backpack in a locker and took his reserved seat. He broke the seal on the snack container, and the first lozenge pulsed into life. Sounds bloomed inside his ear phone.
“Work commenced today,” the newscaster spoke from the surface of the snack, “on further clearing of the wreckage from yesterday’s shuttle disaster. Seventeen more victims have been identified. A further sixty-three are still unaccounted for. A spokesman for the airline…”
Rose lifted the lozenge and bit neatly into the footage of the shuttle crash. The sound never faltered as the image was taken over by the second lozenge. “…may have been completely evaporated by the force of the impact, and the resultant fire.”
A bite, and another; then the third lozenge showed the immense burn star on the snow-covered flanks of Mount Fuji.
(c) 2003 by Paul Harland. All copyrights retained.
|
