The Super Man and the Bugout by Cory Doctorow (best e ink reader for manga .txt) 📕

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He got to his feet, the toe of his boot squelching out more dirt pudding.

#

"Hershie?"

"Yes, Mama?" She'd caught him on the way home, flying high over the fleabag
motels on the old Highway 2.

"It's Friday," she said.

Right. Friday. He told her he'd come for dinner, and that meant getting there
before sunset. "I'll be there," he said.

"Oh, it's not important. It's just me. Don't hurry on my account -- after all,
you'll have thousands of Shabbas dinners with your mother. I'll live forever."

"I said I'll be there."

"And don't wear that costume," she said. She hated the costume. When the
Department of Defense had issued it to him, she'd wanted to know why they were
sending her boy into combat wearing red satin panties.

"I'll change."

"That's a good boy," she said. "I'm making brisket."

#

By the time he touched down on the roof of his building, he knew he'd be late
for dinner. He skimmed down the elevator shaft to the tenth floor and ducked out
to his apartment, only to find the door padlocked. There was a note from the
building super tacked to the peeling green paint. Among other things, it quoted
the codicil from the Tenant Protection Act that allowed the super to padlock the
door and forbade Hershie, on penalty of law, from doing anything about it.

Hershie's super-hearing picked up the sound of a door opening down the hallway.
In a blur, he flew up to the ceiling and hovered there, pressing himself flat on
the acoustic tile. One of his neighbours, that guy with the bohemian attitude
who always seemed to be laughing at poor, nebbishy Hershie Abromowicz, made his
way down the hall. He paused directly below Hershie's still, hovering form,
reading the note on the door while he adjusted the collar of his ski-vest. He
smirked at the note and got in the elevator.

Hershie let himself float to the ground, his cheeks burning.

Damn it, he didn't have _time_ for this. Not for any of it. He considered the
padlock for a moment, then snapped the hasp with his thumb and index finger.
Moving through the apartment with superhuman speed, he changed into a pair of
nice slacks, a cable-knit sweater his mother had given him for his last
birthday, a tweedy jacket and a woolen overcoat. Opening a window, he took
flight.

#

"Thomas, I _really_ can't talk right now," he said. His mother was angrily
drumming her rings on the table's edge. Abruptly, she grabbed the bowl of
cooling soup from his place setting and carried it into the kitchen. She hadn't
done this since he was a kid, but it still inspired the same panicky dread in
him -- if he wasn't going to eat his dinner, she wasn't going to leave it.

"Supe, we _have_ to talk about this. I mean, DefenseFest is only a week away.
We've got things to do!"

"Look, about DefenseFest. . ."

"Yes?" Thomas had a wary note in his voice.

Hershie's mother reappeared with a plate laden with brisket, tsimmis, and kasha.
She set it down in front of him.

"We'll talk later, OK?" Hershie said.

"But what about DefenseFest?"

"It's complicated," Hershie began. His mother scooped up the plate of brisket
and headed back to the kitchen. She was muttering furiously. "I have to go," he
said and closed his comm.

Hershie chased his mother and snatched the plate from her as she held it
dramatically over the sink disposal. He held up his comm with the other hand and
made a show of powering it down.

"It's off, Mama. Please, come and eat."

#

"I've been thinking of selling the house," she said, as they tucked into slices
of lemon pound-cake.

Hershie put down his fork. "Sell the house?" While his father hadn't exactly
_built_ the house with his own hands, he had sold his guts out at his discount
menswear store to pay for it. His mother had decorated it, but his father's
essence still haunted the corners. "Why would you sell the house?"

"Oh, it's too big, Hershie. I'm just one old lady, and it's not like there're
any grandchildren to come and stay. I could buy a condo in Florida, and there'd
be plenty left over for you."

"I don't need any money, Mama. I've got my pension."

She covered his hands with hers. "Of course you do, bubbie. But fixed incomes
are for old men. You're young, you need a nest egg, something to start a family
with." Her sharp eyes, sunk into motherly pillows of soft flesh, bored into him.
He tried to keep his gaze light and carefree. "You've got money problems?" she
said, at length.

Hershie scooped up a forkful of pound-cake and shook his head. His mother's
powers of perception bordered on clairvoyance, and he didn't trust himself to
speak the lie outright. He looked around the dining room, furnished with faux
chinoise screens, oriental rugs, angular art-glass chandeliers.

"Tell Mama," she said.

He sighed and finished the cake. "It's the new Minister. He won't give me my
pension unless I tell him my secret identity."

"So?" his mother said. "You're so ashamed of your parents, you'd rather starve
than tell the world that their bigshot hero is Hershie Abromowicz? I, for one
wouldn't mind -- finally, I could speak up when my girlfriends are going on
about their sons the lawyers."

"Mom!" he said, feeling all of eight years old. "I'm not ashamed and you know
it. But if the world knew who I was, well, who knows what kind of danger you'd
be in? I've made some powerful enemies, Mama."

"Enemies, shmenemies," she said, waving her hands. "Don't worry yourself on my
account. Don't make me the reason that you end up in the cold. I'm not helpless
you know. I have Mace."

Hershie thought of the battles he'd fought: the soldiers, the mercenaries, the
terrorists, the crooks and the super-crooks with their insane plots and
impractical apparati. His mother was as formidable as an elderly Jewish woman
with no grandchildren could be, but she was no match for automatic weapons. "I
can't do it, Mama. It wouldn't be responsible. Can we drop it?"

"Fine, we won't talk about it anymore. But a mother _worries_. You're sure you
don't need any money?"

He cast about desperately for a way to placate her. "I'm fine. I've got a
speaking engagement lined up."

#

There was a message waiting on his comm when he powered it back up. A message
from a relentlessly cheerful woman with a chirpy Texas accent, who identified
herself as the programming coordinator for DefenseFest 33. She hoped he would
return her call that night.

Hershie hovered in a dark cloud over the lake, the wind blowing his coat
straight back, holding the comm in his hand. He squinted through the clouds and
distance until he saw his apartment building, a row of windows lit up like
teeth, his darkened window a gap in the smile. He didn't mind the cold, it was
much colder in his fortress of solitude, but his apartment was more than warmth.
It was his own shabby, homey corner of the hideously expensive city. On the
flight from his mother's, he'd found an old-style fifty-dollar bill, folded
neatly and stuck in the breast pocket of his overcoat.

He returned the phone call.

#

The super wasn't happy about being roused from his sitcoms, but he grudgingly
allowed Hershie to squirt the rent money at his comm. He wanted to come up and
take the padlock, but Hershie talked him into turning over the key, promising to
return it in the morning.

His apartment was a little one-bedroom with a constant symphony of groaning
radiators. Every stick of furniture in it had been rescued from kerbsides while
Hershie flew his night patrols, saving chairs, sofas and even a scarred walnut
armoire from the trashman.

Hershie sat at the round formica table and commed Thomas.

"It's me," he said.

"What's up?"

He didn't want to beat around the bush. "I'm speaking at DefenseFest. Then I'm
going on tour, six months, speaking at military shows. It pays well. Very well."
Very, very well -- well enough that he wouldn't have to worry about his pension.
The US-based promoters had sorted his tax status out with the IRS, who would
happily exempt him, totally freeing him from entanglements with Revenue Canada.
The cheerful Texan had been _glad_ to do it.

He waited for Thomas's trademark stream of vitriol. It didn't come. Very
quietly, Thomas said, "I see."

"Thomas," he said, a note of pleading in his voice. "It's not my choice. If I
don't do this, I'll have to give Woolley my secret identity -- he won't give me
my pension without my Social Insurance Number."

"Or you could get a job," Thomas said, the familiar invective snarl creeping
back.

"I just told you, I can't give out my SIN!"

"So have your secret identity get a job. Wash dishes!"

"If I took a job," Hershie said, palms sweating, "I'd have to give up flying
patrols -- I'd have to stop fighting crime."

"_Fighting crime_?" Thomas's voice was remorseless. "What _crime_? The bugouts
are taking care of crime -- they're making plans to shut down the _police_!
Supe, you've been obsoleted."

"I know," Hershie said, self-pitying. "I know. That's why I got involved with
you in the first place -- I need to have a _purpose_. I'm the Super Man!"

"So your purpose is speaking to military shows? Telling the world that it still
needs its arsenals, even if the bugouts have made war obsolete? Great purpose,
Supe. Very noble."

He choked on a hopeless sob. "So what can I do, Thomas? I don't want to sell
out, but I've got to _eat_."

"Squeeze coal into diamonds?" he said. It was teasing, but not nasty teasing.
Hershie felt his tension slip: Thomas didn't hate him.

"Do you have any idea how big a piece of coal you have to start with to get even
a one-carat stone? Trust me -- someone would notice if entire coalfaces started
disappearing."

"Look, Supe, this is surmountable. You don't have to sell out. You said it
yourself, you're the Super Man -- you have responsibilities. You have duties.
You can't just sell out. Let's sleep on it, huh?"

Hershie was so very, very tired. It was always hardest on him when the Earth's
yellow sun was hidden; the moon was a paltry substitute for its rejuvenating
rays. "Let's do that," he said. "Thanks, Thomas."

#

DefenseFest 33 opened its doors on one of those incredibly bright March days
when the snow on the ground throws back lumens sufficient to shrink your pupils
to microdots. Despite the day's brightness, a bitterly cold wind scoured Front
Street and the Metro Convention Centre.

From a distance, Hershie watched demonstration muster out front of the Eaton
Centre, a few kilometers north, and march down to Front Street, along their
permit-proscribed route. The turnout was good, especially given the weather:
about 5,000 showed up with wooly scarves and placards that the wind kept
threatening to tear loose from their grasp.

The veterans marched out front, under a banner, in full uniform. Next came the
Quakers, who were of the same vintage as the veterans, but dressed like elderly
English professors. Next came three different Communist factions, who circulated
back and forth, trying to sell each other magazines. Finally, there came the
rabble: Thomas's group of