The Beauty of Destruction
Page 70
The immersion had translated his image reasonably faithfully, though his tech was era-compliant. He reached into his suit and pulled out the revolver, the immersion replacement for his tumbler pistol. He looked at it for a long time and then he threw it into the water. Slowly he removed the rest of his weapons and threw them into the water. He kept the straight-edge razor because, well, you never know. Then he knelt by the water and washed the make-up off. He thought about stripping off naked, but it was a little cold, and he suspected it was against the local social norms. You could take symbolism too far.
The immersion’s predictive routine had guided him once it had understood what Woodbine wanted. As far as he could tell it was a place where people came to ‘learn’, which was some kind of inefficient way of imparting skills and knowledge. He was walking through an area where the learners, or students as they were apparently called, met to eat and socialise.
She was sitting on her own. She was dressed similarly to how Talia had dressed, but that was where the similarity ended. She was poring over her work, and was alone. Scab was sure she was called Maude. She looked up as Scab sat opposite her.
‘I would like a friend, but I am not sure how to go about it,’ he said. Her face scrunched up in consternation. Then she smiled.
Acknowledgements
A Thanks to Dave Arnott for astrophysics advice, it is not his fault that I’ve ignored him and just made shit up.
Thank you again, for the time and effort put in by Chloe Isherwood of Chloe Isherwood Photography, and Gabriella Howson as Britha.
Thanks, as ever, to Matt Bryant for continuing support, tech and otherwise. (Finally got your prize dude!)
To Jason & Katy Wheatley and their amazing family for advice (I am listening, even if it doesn’t always seem that way!) and a refuge of strangely peaceful anarchy.
To Film Night, Cat Hallsworth, Chris Edwards (A full service postie!), the noncontributing Dan Kendall, Becky Kendall and the occasional Dave Hurst, for providing a place of respite and an often much needed break.
Continuing thanks for advice, ranting, encouragement and drinks (strange how the latter is often a theme) to M.D. Lachlan, Peter F. Hamilton, Anthony Jones, my arch-nemesis and not-a-real man (it’s a long story) Hannu Rajaneimi. To Chris Wooding and Bill Thomas for their feedback and suggestions. And to relative newcomers (though Worldcon veterans) Jon Wallace and ewok-loving Edward Cox.
Thank you to Abigail Nathan for her extensive copyediting skills.
And to the Gollancz crew: Charlie Panayiotou, Gillian Redfearn and the amazing Sophie Calder (even though she sent me to Manchester for some reason), and of course my long suffering editor Marcus Gipps. It might not seem it sometimes but I do appreciate all your hard work.
A big thanks to the hardest-working agent ever: Robert Dinsdale of AM Heath.
Thanks to all my friends, I realise I’ve mostly been a social media mate recently and not seen enough of everyone, hoping to change that and looking forward to seeing more of you all in the near future.
My family who have gone above and beyond recently providing everything from proof reading and marketing support, to concept artwork, mechanical skills and DIY: Mum, Dad, Nicola, Simon, Nell & Amelie -thank you!
(Oh and Yvonne, but the book is dedicated to her, so I’m hoping that she’ll notice that.)
And finally thank you very much to everyone who bought or loaned-out a copy of any of my books, it is always greatly appreciated. I don’t think I’m terribly good at social media (My much neglected blog!) but I particularly want to thanks to everyone who follows, contacts, comments etc. (bear with me, I’m getting better) and all those who have taken the time to review, good or bad, in print and online.
Gavin G. Smith, Woking (where the Martians landed), 2015 www.gavingsmith.com
Also by Gavin G. Smith from Gollancz
Veteran
War in Heaven
Crysis: Escalation
The Age of Scorpio
A Quantum Mythology
Co-authored with Stephen Deas, as Gavin Deas:
Elite: Wanted
Empires: Extraction
Empires: Infiltration
Copyright
A Gollancz eBook
Copyright © Gavin G. Smith 2016
All rights reserved
The right of Gavin G. Smith 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 2016 by
Gollancz
The Orion Publishing Group Ltd
Carmelite House
50 Victoria Embankment
London EC4Y 0DZ
An Hachette UK Company
This eBook first published in 2016 by Gollancz.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 0 575 12749 4
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 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.
www.gavingsmith.com
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