（外文电子版资料）Pat Cadigan - Life On Earth.pdf

Life On Earth by Pat Cadigan The third time Mary tells me that all the people in the nice cars and the expensive clothes are dead, I believe her. First, because Mary knows things like this for sure and second because whatever anyone tells you three times is true. But especially Mary. We were watching the regular morning inbound rush hour from the freeway graveyard, where highways go to die in the city. Every city has a freeway graveyard, Mary says. Id have to take her word for this; the freeway graveyard is the only place I can remember living in. Dont believe me? Wait around; Ill tell you two more times and then youll know for sure. Or you can just ask Mary. Shes a living truth detector. I am not so gifted, so I have to distrust everyone except Mary. But this thing about the dead people—its one of those things that Mary says are so thoroughly and consistently true at any given or random moment that they are never falsehoods, no matter who tells you. I know Mary finds this reassuring. Me, it scares. Just you think about it—if there are things so true that not even the Devil himself can lie about them, how can us mere mortals face them and live through it? Most dont. Or dont want to, Mary says as the traffic inches along the exit ramp in front of us. How do you think all these poor bastards died? Damn, Ive done it again, talking out loud and not knowing it. Id have said a plague, I tell her honestly. Mary laughs, shaking her fuzzy dirty-grey head. Itd have to have been a truth plague, she says, and theres never gonna be one of those. The truth aint catchin. But something thats killed so many people just by their getting exposed to it— Mary shakes her head again. Think of it as a natural disaster. Earthquakes can kill a lot of people, but not because they caught it from each other. Oh, I say. All right. A truthquake; I can see how that would be lethal on a grand scale. W