Ascending - James Alan Gardner [55]
Which makes you feel an unworthy friend for letting such thoughts enter your mind. You become most angry with yourself; and the next thing you know, you have stepped back abruptly, and you fear you might even be scowling.
Why does one behave like that? It is a great infuriating mystery. But perhaps I should blame the Shaddill who created my race. They gave us defective brains, not only prone to becoming Tired, but also subject to floods of embarrassment at times we should not be embarrassed at all. I am sure persons of natural origin do not turn shy and standoffish during hugs with old friends.
But I did. Perhaps I had even upset poor Festina by pulling abruptly out of her arms…so I forced myself to squeeze close again, then lowered my lips to the top of her head and kissed her hair. “I told you,” I said in a voice that sounded overloud, “I am not such a one as can die. You were very most foolish to believe I could be killed by a silly little fall.”
Festina made a noise that might have been either laughter or weeping—I could not tell because she had buried her face in my coat. A moment later she stepped back, wiped her sleeve across her eyes, and gave a beaming smile. “You’re right. I should have known better.”
It was pleasant to see her smile so happily, though Festina was exceedingly ugly, even for an opaque person. She had a large violet blemish on her right cheek: what she called a port-wine birthmark. When last I saw her, she had concealed the blemish under a patch of artificial skin…but now the great blotch was open to the world again, exposed for all to see. Perhaps she had removed the patch in mourning for me—which made me feel proud and throbby inside, though it also brought tears to my eyes.
She was such a good friend.
See No Evil
“So, Oar,” Festina said with a laugh, “you’re alive and causing trouble again. Do you mind explaining what you’re doing in the middle of nowhere? And why your Zarett self-destructed a few minutes ago?”
“We were fleeing the evil stick-people,” I said, hurriedly wiping my tears. “Starbiter died with great heroism, striking the enemy vessel and rendering it impotent.”
“Enemy vessel? We haven’t seen any other ships.” Festina raised her eyes to the window at the rear of the room. “Lieutenant, did we register anything like that?”
A disembodied voice answered, “Negative, Admiral.”7
Behind me, Uclod snorted. “It’s time to repair your scanner, folks. The damned ship was hard to miss. Just before you showed, it was close enough to see with the naked eye.”
“There’s the problem,” Festina said. “Our navy ships can’t see anything with the naked eye—we’re limited to cameras and sensor arrays. I once asked a navy construction contractor if it would really be impossible to build a nice simple porthole into every ship. She nearly had a stroke, laughing at the dimwit Explorer who knew nothing about preserving hull integrity.”
“So you didn’t see the Shaddill ship?” Uclod asked.
“We saw your Zarett whizzing along at the most godawful speed ever clocked. The bridge crew couldn’t believe their readings; they decided your beast must be suffering some cataclysmic flame-out, burning energy way beyond safety limits. They predicted she’d explode any second…and sure enough, she expelled your escape pod, then zipped away and blew herself to space dust.”
“You didn’t see her