Read an Excerpt
From Canción Auténtica de Old Earth:
"Quietly," our guide said.
Quietly it was.
We glided over ancient asphalt, past ghost-gray buildings that glowed in the old, cold light of a ruined Moon that seemed (even though we have all seen it in pictures a thousand times) too bright, too close, too dead.
Our way was lighted by our photon shadow guide, enclosing us and the street around us in an egg of softer, newer light.
At the end of a narrow lane, four streets came together in a small plaza. At one end was a stone church; at the other a glass and brick department store façade; both dating (my studies coming through at last) from the High European.
"There's no one here," one of us said.
"Listen ..." said our guide.
There came a rumbling. A synthesizer on a rubber-tired wood-and-wire cart rolled into the plaza out of an alley beyond the department store. It was pulled by an old man in black sweaters, layered against the planet's chill, and a boy in a leather jacket. An old woman, also all in black, and a smiling man who looked to be about forty walked behind. His smile was the smile of the blind.
"They still live here?" someone asked.
"Where else could they live??
