Ascending - James Alan Gardner [14]
The other person I had known on Melaquin was my sister, Eel. She was several years older than I, born from another of my mother’s desperate attempts to keep her brain from the Glassy Sleep. Eel was my best friend, my teacher and my second mother…until the Explorers came. Then she became my rival, always clamoring for their attention and ignoring me.
It is strange how the presence of additional people can make you feel more alone.
But Eel was gone now, murdered by a wicked Explorer—so there was nothing to keep me on Melaquin. Why should I not accompany Uclod to opaque lands, where I could astonish those worlds with my crystalline beauty? And what about my dear friend Festina? She must have been devastated believing me to be dead. Should I not go to her and lift her from the depths of despair?
Yet it was still very hard to leave my home…and to leave my ax as well. It was only an object, but it was mine: my sole possession, the thing I had held in my hands through many solitary nights of chopping trees, hoping someone would notice how I cleared land in the manner of civilized persons.
Now the test of civilization was not using my ax but abandoning it. This sounded very much like what humans call “irony”…and I do not like irony at all.
With great reluctance, I removed my ax from Starbiter’s mouth and laid it on the pavement. A snowflake fell on the blade. I did not brush it off.
“There,” I said…speaking loudly and firmly, so no one could claim my voice trembled. “I am going now; and I shall willingly leave behind my ax, though it is my sole belonging—because I am a person of peace and never kill others unless they really truly deserve it.”
Uclod rubbed his eyes as if they pained him. “You scare me, toots. You honestly do.” Then he reached to help me into the ship.
Fondling The Inner Cheek
Since my skin was already damp with snow, I could not feel the wetness of the Zarett’s mouth. However, I could see it glistening moistly beneath my feet—and it looked very slippery indeed. I resolved to walk most carefully, for fear of sliding on a slick patch and Falling Precipitously. (The fall would not damage me, but it might make Uclod think I was clumsy. I did not want that, not even a little bit.)
So I stood unmoving on the ribbed floor of Starbiter’s mouth, staring forward at the creature’s yawning throat.2 Since we had entered the Zarett at ground level, the throat ran upward, further into the center of the ball. Proceeding forward would require a difficult ascent, all slippy and slidy like scrabbling up a muddy riverbank; but the throat was too dark to see how steep the slope might truly be.
“What do we do now?” I asked Uclod.
I turned and saw the little man had gone to the side of Starbiter’s mouth, where he was rubbing a patch of the Zarett’s inner cheek. Most of the tissue around us was pale pink, but the patch he touched showed a redder tinge. I remembered the way he had massaged the creature to get it to open its lips; apparently, one communicated with Zaretts through fondling.
This struck me as most inefficient. “When a machine has buttons,” I told Uclod, “you press a button and something happens right away. That is how machines ought to work. I do not think much of a spaceship you must rub to get its attention.”
“Not to get her attention,” the little man replied. “Sweet baby girl is checking out my taste: making sure I’m her real daddy. Can’t be too careful with a Zarett this valuable. So the cells in this part of her mouth can do a complete