Time's Chariot

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They had drugged him and now his body twisted lazily as it tumbled through the air.

Body. Somewhere in one corner of his drugged mind was a feeling of annoyance, because he wasn’t a body yet, but that was how they had referred to him. And, looking at the ground creeping closer, he felt the description would soon be accurate, which annoyed him even more. He hadn’t even been given the choice of whether or not to die.

The wind was a booming, rushing noise in his ears. He had fallen for a long time. He had fallen off a mountain, he recalled, though he wasn’t sure what a mountain was. Perhaps it was that shining blur. They may have drugged him into compliance and a fatalistic acceptance of death, he thought, but he wasn’t stupid.

Another corner of his mind wondered about the emergency agravs — necessary equipment when you lived over a mile above ground, designed for just such eventualities as this. Even now they should be picking him up and reducing his rate of descent so that he would land as smoothly as a feather. Somehow he had got past their reach.

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