（外文电子版资料）Swanwick, Michael - Radio Waves.pdfVIP

file:///C|/3226%20Sci-Fi%20and%20Fantasy%20E-books/Michael%20Swanwick%20-%20Radio%20Waves.txt RADIO WAVES by MICHAEL SWANWICK [VERSION 1.1 (Apr 22 04). If you find and correct errors in the text, please update the version number by 0.1 and redistribute.] First published in Omni, Winter 1995. I was walking the telephone wires upside-down, the sky underfoot cold and flat with a few hard bright stars sparsely scattered about it, when I thought how it would take only an instants weakness to step off to the side and fall up forever into the night. A kind of wildness entered me then and I began to run. Electric Motors-Controls-Parts. Then, where the slope steepened, along the curving snake of rowhouses that went the full quarter mile up to the Ridge. Twice I overtook pedestrians, hunched and bundled, heads doggedly down, out on incomprehensible errands. They didnt notice me, of course. They never do. The antenna farm was visible from here. I could see the Seven Sisters spangled with red lights, dependent on the earth like stalactites. Where are you running to, little one? one tower whispered in a crackling, staticky voice. I think it was Hegemone. Fuck off, I said without slackening my pace, and they all chuckled. Cars mumbled by. This was ravine country, however built up, and the far side of the road, too steep and rocky for development, was given over to trees and garbage. Hamburger wrappings and white plastic trash bags rustled in their wake. I was running full-out now. About a block or so from the Ridge, I stumbled and almost fell. I slapped an arm across a telephone pole and just managed to catch myself in time. Aghast at my own carelessness, I hung there, dizzy and alarmed. The ground overhead was black as black, an iron roof, yet somehow was as anxious as a hound to leap upon me, crush me flat, smear me to nothingness. I stared up at it, horrified. Somebody screamed my name. I turned. A faint b