“He shook his head, remembering how he’d come to Dog Solitude. And Gentry started talking faster, taking the gesture for refusal. Gentry was saying Slick had to go under, he said maybe just for a few seconds, while he got a fix on the data and worked up a macroform. Slick didn’t know how to do that, Gentry said, or he’d go under himself; it wasn’t the data he wanted, just the overall shape, because he thought that would lead him to the Shape, the big one, the thing he’d chased for so long. ... Slick remembered crossing the Solitude on foot. He’d been scared that the Korsakov’s would come back, that he’d forget where he was and drink cancer-water from the slimed red puddles on the rusty plain. Red scum and dead birds floating with their wings spread. The trucker from Tennessee had told him to walk west from the highway, he’d hit two-lane blacktop inside an hour and get a ride down to Cleveland, but it felt like longer than an hour now and he wasn’t so sure which way was west and this place was spooking him, this junkyard scar like a giant had stomped it flat.MoreLessRead More Read Less
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