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It was late September, the trees shedding their useless leaves, stripping down for the winter with the aid of a hurried, anxious wind. A man and a boy were walking along the river bank. The river was dark and turbid, and despite the waves fluttering its surface it seemed heavy and sluggish. The banks on either side, where the frail trees still eked out their lives despite the shadows which hid them from the sun for most of the day, were flanked with high, smooth faces of concrete. The living city, where windowed buildings blossomed from the roofs of the labyrinthine catacombs, was high in the sky. Its sounds filtered down into the deep crack where the river ran, but they were distant, muted. The place where the man walked with his son was part of an older, forgotten world: a world where privacy remained.
The man wore a coat, and his hands were buried in his pockets as he cowered from the chilly gusts. His head was held at an angle, turned away from the dust which the wind picked up and threatened to hurl into his eyes. The boy was more lightly dressed, but he seemed accustomed to the wind, oblivious to its hostilities. He walked with a lighter step, but slowly—as though uncertain of his direction.
.....
“But our wings aren’t made of wax and feathers,” said the man—still to himself rather than to his son. “And in any case, the name has nothing to do with that particular myth. It’s another classical joke. Daedalus was the first genetic engineer—the man who made the Minotaur...another exercise in co-adaptation, you see....”
“Forget it,” said the boy. “Just forget it.” His weariness was deliberate, overacted.
.....
