The Shift Key (28 page)
‘Oh, wow,’ Steven whispered. ‘I hope that’s true!’
‘So do I!’ said Jenny fervently.
‘It isn’t going to be much fun for Ced,’ Stick observed. ‘I mean, living with those bastards that he has for parents and all the time bombarded with demands to gimme, gimme – as
though they were the kids and he the daddy! But you know something?’
He fixed them with a serious gaze under his bushy eyebrows.
‘If anything can make that guy grow up, this’ll be it. And there are more people on his side than he imagines … Well, I best get home. I promised Sheila and the kids a special lunch and left it in the oven.
Au revoir!’
All of a sudden Weyharrow felt like not too bad a place to be.
Though something would have to be done, eventually, about the distinction between the patrons of the pub and those of the hotel …
Time enough for that, though. Time enough, if in the world of the information explosion enough people could be told often enough about the horrors being conceived beyond their personal horizon, and learn to stand up and shout aloud, ‘You stop that! Stop it now! And that means
NOW
!’
Later, the weather at Weyharrow turned cold again. In Wearystale Flat Sheila complained to Stick about the way he left wide open the windows that overlooked the Chap. She was shivering, she said; so were the kids.
Sighing, resigned, he closed out the dense autumn mist that was gathering along the valley.
‘Shame …’ he murmured into his beard.
‘What do you mean?’ Sheila demanded.
‘They say there aren’t going to be any more leaks.’
‘You think that’s a shame?’
‘Well, it was cheaper than pot, wasn’t it? No trouble about growing it. No hassles with the fuzz, either!’
Sheila erupted into a noise between a giggle and a gurgle; she was in bed, sipping a mug of Ovaltine.
‘Stick, how often do I have to tell you? Don’t make me laugh while I’m eating – I mean drinking!’
‘Ah, it’s because I plan to do away with you and wreak my wicked will on your two lovely albeit not-yet-nubile daughters!’
His boots he had already kicked aside; now he peeled off his sweater. He was pushing down his jeans when he realized Sheila was staring at him strangely.
‘Did you say “daughters”?’
‘Sam and Hilary, who else?’
‘Daughters?’ She set her empty mug aside.
‘Yes, of course!’
‘But Hilary and Sam are boys … Stick, how much have you been smoking lately?’
He only grinned at her, and scrambled into bed. As she
turned her mouth up to greet his, he thought:
No more leaks, hmm? You could have fooled me!
I wonder what tomorrow has in store!
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A Planet of Your Own
Age of Miracles
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Catch a Falling Star
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Double, Double
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Galactic Storm
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I Speak for Earth
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Manshape
Meeting at Infinity
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Polymath
Quicksand
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Stand on Zanzibar
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The (Compleat) Traveler in Black
The Altar on Asconel
The Avengers of Carrig
The Brink
The Crucible of Time
The Dramaturges of Yan
The Dreaming Earth
The Gaudy Shadows
The Infinitive of Go
The Jagged Orbit
The Ladder in the Sky
The Long Result
The Martian Sphinx
The Productions of Time
The Psionic Menace
The Repairmen of Cyclops
The Rites of Ohe
The Sheep Look Up
The Shift key
The Shockwave Riders
The Skynappers
The Space–Time Juggler
The Squares of the City
The Stardroppers
The Stone That Never Came Down
The Super Barbarians
The Tides of Time
The World Swappers
The Wrong End of Time
Threshold of Eternity
Times Without Number
Timescoop
To Conquer Chaos
Total Eclipse
Web of Everywhere
John Brunner (1934–1995) was a prolific British SF writer. In 1951, he published his first novel,
Galactic Storm,
at the age of just 17, and went on to write dozens of novels under his own and various house names until his death in 1995 at the Glasgow Worldcon. He won the Hugo Award and the British Science Fiction Award for
Stand on Zanzibar
(a regular contender for the ‘best SF novel of all time’) and the British Science Fiction Award for
The Jagged Orbit.
A Gollancz eBook
Copyright © John Brunner 1987
All rights reserved.
The right of John Brunner to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published in Great Britain in 1987
This eBook first published in 2011 by Gollancz
The Orion Publishing Group Ltd
Orion House
5 Upper Saint Martin’s Lane
London, WC2H 9EA
An Hachette UK Company.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978 0 575 10172 2
All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor to be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.