Dune

TANITH LEE

ALL THE BIRDS OF HELL

Tanith Lee's most recent books include Faces Under Water and a young adult novel
that's due out in England very shortly, Law of the Wolf Tower. Her last
appearance in these pages was exactly two years ago, with her retake on the
Cinderella fairy tale, The Reason for Not Going to the Ball." She returns now
with a very different sort of story, a dark and dazzling vision of a world
locked in winter for fifteen years... 

ONCE THEY LEFT THE CITY, the driver started to talk. He went on talking during
the two-hour journey, almost without pause. His name was Argenty, but the
dialogue was all about his wife. She suffered from what had become known as
Twilight Sickness. She spent all day in their flat staring at the electric
bulbs. At night she walked out into the streets and he would have to go and
fetch her. She had had frostbite several times. He said she had been lovely
twenty years ago, though she had always hated the cold.

Henrique Tchaikov listened. He made a few sympathetic sounds. It was as hopeless
to try to communicate with the driver, Argenty, as to shut him up. Normally
Argenty drove important men from the Bureau, to whom he would not be allowed to
speak a word, probably not even Goodday. But Tchaikov was a minor bureaucrat. If
Argenty had had a better education and more luck, he might have been where
Tchaikov was.