Free Promised Land by Brian Stableford Page B

seeing and feeling at a particular moment. I don’t like to be carrying around a whole bibleful of preconceptions and qualifications that I have to dump on every moment that passes. It squashes the moments dead, see?’
    â€˜It doesn’t make sense,’ she said.
    â€˜It makes sense to me,’ I told her.
    â€˜Do you like the Anacaona?’ she asked.
    â€˜How do I know?’ I complained. ‘Do I have to tag everything I see with plus or minus? I don’t know anything about the Anacaona. I gave one a ride in my car once. That’s all.’
    â€˜What about the Zodiac people?’
    â€˜You have to be joking. The Zodiac bunch are completely unlovable. They’re going to extremes to make themselves that way. Who am I to argue? If they want to be the biggest bastards in the galaxy, who am I to stand in their way? I think they’re making a good job of it. I don’t say I haven’t known worse people, because I’ve known people who tried harder. But I concede the Zodiac s the proper fruit of their labours. No, I don’t like them and I don’t want anything to do with them. Now wouldn’t they just love that?’
    â€˜You don’t think that their idea of Promised Land makes sense?’
    â€˜Sense?’ I queried. ‘I didn’t say anything about sense. Certainly it makes sense. It’s one of the most sensible things I’ve ever come across. You tell me that the great human surge of conquest, civilisation and culture isn’t the Promised Land syndrome. You tell me that New Alexandria isn’t playing Promised Land with all creation. You tell me that New Rome isn’t playing ideological Promised Land. You tell me that Penaflor and the company belt aren’t playing commercial Promised Land. You tell me that the Engelian Hegemony aren’t playing Communist Promised Land. The Zodiac people are by far and away the most sensible of the lot. They don’t want the whole universe. They only want one world. Isn’t that more sensible? You always stand a better chance with a narrow mind. It’s a fact of life.’
    â€˜But you don’t hate,’ she said, with more than a trace of sarcasm. ‘All that and you don’t hate. You can mix your venom with all kinds of assurances that you have to live with it all, that it’s the way of things and you have to like it.’
    â€˜I don’t have to like it,’ I said. ‘I don’t have to like it at all.’
    â€˜And you don’t,’ she said. ‘Sure, you don’t hate people. You have to live with them, don’t you? But you hate having to live with them. What’s the difference?’
    â€˜The difference,’ I said, ‘is where the hate goes. Nobody else gets hurt by mine. Not by the hate, nor by any crazy ideas I might have like Promised Land.’
    â€˜You get hurt,’ she said.
    â€˜No I don’t,’ I told her.
    â€˜You’ve set yourself up all alone,’ she persisted. ‘You’ve cut yourself off from the whole universe just because other people think it’s their playground.’
    â€˜That’s right,’ I said. ‘I’m the original alienated man.’ I spat out the vital word as if I were spitting acid.
    And I’m not alone, I added. Silently. Never again alone.
    Two years on Lapthorn’s Grave had turned me right off the galaxy and life in general. I never was one for the joys of spring and the spirit of adventure, unlike Lapthorn, but I really had sat fairly comfortably in my chosen slice of life. It was only since coming back that things had achieved their present dark conformation.
    Not since you came back, said the wind. Since you went away. You’re still living in the shadow of Lapthorn’s Grave. If you want to come out of it, you can.
    Thanks a lot, I said. Everybody wanted to welcome me back to humanity. I wondered why.

CHAPTER SEVEN
    Linda found us again