squaredopf.blogg.se - Daddy's World by Walter Jon Williams

Practically all the other guests, Severin assumed, were Peers, the class that the conquering Shaa had imposed on humanity and other defeated species.

They were dressed formally, and Severin began to hope that his uniform was sufficiently well tailored so as not to mark him out. People strolled along the verandahs and on the expansive lawns. Beyond was a large house, two storeys wrapped with verandahs, painted a kind of orange-rust color with white trim. Overhead arced a series of formal gateways, all elaborate wrought-iron covered with scrollwork, spikes, and heraldic emblems, and each with a teardrop-shaped light that dangled from the center of the arch and cast pale glow on the path. Severin drove through an underpass, then up a long straight alley flanked by live oaks, twisted black limbs sprawled like the legs of fantastic beasts. The vehicle issued a series of warning tones, and Severin took the controls as the car left the highway. The silver river turned scarlet in the light of the setting sun. Overhead, stars began to glow on either side of the great glittering arc of Laredo’s accelerator ring. As long as he stayed on the highway the rental car, which knew Laredo better than he did, implemented its own navigation and steering, and Severin had nothing to do but relax, to gaze through the windows at the thick, vine-wrapped trunks of the cavella trees, the brilliant plumage of tropical birds, and the occasional sight of a hovercraft on the river, fans a deep bass rumble as it carried cargo south to the port at Punta Piedra. The Rio Hondo was on Lieutenant Severin’s right, a silver presence that wound in and out of his perceptions. The car sped south in the subtropical twilight. With thanks for technical assistance to Michael Rupen, Kristy Dyer, Bob Norton. The Green Leopard Plague and Other Stories

Investments (Set in the world of Dread Empire’s Fall) The First Books of the Praxis (Dread Empire’s Fall)