Ascending - James Alan Gardner [86]
In my youth, I had often contemplated how much I would like to have a brother—even when I did not always like having a sister. A brother would be different and interesting: a comrade rife with maleness, but with no lustful urges to complicate the friendship and ultimately make one sad. I would, of course, have to persuade the cloud man to view me as a sister…but were we not partway there already? Back in Starbiter he had tried to boss me around, and I had responded with instant resentment; therefore we were practically family, and all that remained was for him to acknowledge it.
Besides, if Nimbus was my brother, that would make me young Starbiter’s Auntie. The thought of that pleased me most greatly.
Auntie Oar. It had an excellent ring.
My Induction
“I shall do as you wish, Festina,” I said. “In future, I shall not suggest putting babies into fire—not even a little fire that would make the child stronger and healthier than before. However, we still need Starbiter to cry, do we not? So we must find another method of inducement. What would be more palatable to Earthling tastes? Shaking her fiercely? Jabbing her with pins? Piling weighty objects on top of her?”
Festina glared at me a moment, then broke into a grudging laugh. “All right, Oar, I see your point. I’ve been letting my human prejudices get in the way of figuring out how to treat an alien. And I should know better—I run around pretending to be a hard-headed Explorer, but you’re the one who’s unflinchingly practical.”
“I am excellent at unflinching practicality,” I told her. “I would also be excellent as an Explorer.”
As evidence for this statement, I held up the coattails of my jacket. Perhaps there is more to being an Explorer than wearing black clothes, but I have never noticed anything else. And the jacket fit very well.
“You’re right,” Festina said, “you would make a good Explorer. If nothing else, you’re bulletproof.” She took a deep breath. “By the power vested in me as a duly appointed admiral of the Outward Fleet, I hereby grant you the rank of cadet in the Technocracy Explorer Corps. That is, if you accept the position.”
“Of course I accept the position. I have been oppressed and exploited by so many Explorers, it is high time I was empowered to do the same to others. When do I receive my stun-pistol?”
“Uh, later,” Festina replied. “Much later. It’s time we got back to the others.”
So that is what we did.
The Compactification Of A Cloud
When we returned to Nimbus’s cabin, the cloud man had shrunk to a shadow of his former self…which is to say, he had compressed his little flying bits into a much tighter ball around the baby Starbiter. Father and child combined were now just the size of my fists pressed together; the outer Nimbus-y shell looked as hard and dense as quartz.
“Why is he like that?” I demanded. “What did you do?”
“Nothing,” Captain Kapoor replied. “He just suddenly clumped down around the kid as solid as a rock. Maybe to protect his daughter from getting thrown in a bonfire.” The frowzy captain gave me an accusatory glare.
“No one is getting thrown into a bonfire,” Festina said. “If that’s what you’re worried about, Nimbus, you can let the little girl go.”
We all stared at the rock, waiting for some response. Humans must have slower metabolisms than I, for they were still waiting patiently when I cried, “He is just doing this to vex me! He is acting obnoxiously as a blatant plea for attention!”
“Well, he’s got my attention,” Festina said. “He looks like an egg.”
She smiled to show she was joking, then knelt beside the chair that held both Nimbus and Starbiter. “Hey,” she said to the condensed cloud man, “we won’t hurt your daughter, I promise. But we’d like her to send a distress call, if that’s physically possible. The call doesn’t have to be loud—the Cashlings on Jalmut have some of the best communications