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eBook Category: Science Fiction
eBook Description: Those who are 'different' often have to learn to deal with the scorn and ridicule of the rest, even when that 'difference' might allow us to do something that a 'normal' person can't. And as we go forward, technology will allow us to create more differences than we can currently imagine. How do we cope with that ... and how does it cope with us? Of the "Alliance Universe" stories I published, I think this remains my favorite...

eBook Publisher: Fictionwise.com, Published: Asimov's, 1978
Fictionwise Release Date: March 2005

7 Reader Ratings: Great Good OK Poor

Available eBook Formats [MultiFormat - What's this?]: Adobe Acrobat (PDF) [304 KB], eReader (PDB) [55 KB], Palm Doc (PDB) [44 KB], Rocket/REB1100 (RB) [40 KB], Microsoft Reader (LIT) [94 KB] - PocketPC 1.0+ Compatible, Franklin eBookMan (FUB) [112 KB], hiebook (KML) [101 KB], Sony Reader (LRF) [70 KB], iSilo (PDB) [36 KB], Mobipocket (PRC) [46 KB], Kindle Compatible (MOBI) [73 KB], OEBFF Format (IMP) [61 KB]
Words: 13015
Reading time: 37-52 min.
Microsoft Reader (LIT) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
Adobe Acrobat (PDF) Format:  Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
All Other formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED

For some strange reason, it always seems to be night when we come down.

Creatures of darkness, we: laughing and shouting to announce our unwanted presence to the night fog and empty facades about us. It is, after all, a strange sensation to walk again. We aren't the most graceful of land creatures. In our stilted and economical manner, we strode (they would call our gait 'bumbling') along the streets, slowly gaining the feeling of being ship-free. The back of my neck itched where the input jacks were grafted, and the fog enveloped us in its damp embrace. Not a fine welcome, but as friendly as ever.

For me, each new location becomes a sage setting, a two-dimensional backdrop peopled by stage characters with stock lines, stock faces, and stock mannerisms. A port is simply a few streets lines with warehouses and a few bars catering to BPs, ground crews, and port workers. They're variable only in the most superficial ways and are held away by the cities like a person holding something a dirty diaper at arm's length. You can exchange them world for world and fail to notice the difference. Here, the fog shrouded us and held us in. We moved in a contained world with shadowed hulks of buildings we felt more than saw, and when we passed under the infrequent hoverlamps, the light gilded the fog so that we walked (in our hobbling, limping way) through a bath of silver phosphorescence.

I didn't even notice the name of the bar. We went in, tendrils of fog twisting like grey scarves before us. Raj and Moret went to get drinks while Cara and I found a table in the corner of the BP alcove. It was a typical port tavern. A few longshoremen and crewmembers jostled around the main bar with excessive and grandiose gestures, talking loudly over a holotank set behind the bar. The holotank was out of kilter. A group of musicians gyrated in unison with their ghost images to a distorted and muffled song, while bands of interference sparked through and around them in an incandescent storm.