Lemon is acceptable. But I am still milking from my parent.
“Oh, right. I keep forgetting how young you are. Do you eat solid stuff when you’re older?”
Yes. In many months away.
Jay smiled at the wistfulness carried by the mental voice. She had often felt the same at her mother’s rules, restrictions designed purely to stop her enjoying herself. “Do your parents all go out for fancy meals and things in the evening like we do? Are there Kiint restaurants?”
Not here in the all around. I know not exactly about our home.
“I’d love to see your home planet. It must be super, like the arcologies but clean and silver, with huge towers built right up into the sky. You’re so advanced.”
Some of our worlds have that form,haile said with cautious uncertainty. I believe. Racial history cosmology educationals have not fully begun yet.
“That’s okay.” Jay finished the treat. “Gosh, that’s lovely,” she mumbled around the freezing mouthful. “I didn’t have any ice cream the whole time I was on Lalonde. Can you imagine that!”
You should ingest properly balanced dietary substances. Ione Saldana says too much niceness is bad for you. Query correctness?
“Completely wrong.” Jay sat up and tossed the ice cream stick into her bag. “Oh, Haile, that’s wonderful!” She scrambled to her feet and ran over to the baby Kiint. Haile’s tractamorphic arms were withdrawing from the sand castle like a nest of snakes that had been routed. She’d built a central tapering tower two and a half metres tall, surrounded by five smaller matching pinnacles; elaborate arching fairy bridges linked them all together. There were turrets leaning out of the sides at cockeyed angles, rings of pink shell windows, and a solid fortress wall with a deep moat around the outside.
“Best yet.” Jay stroked the Kiint’s facial ridge just above the breathing vents. Haile shivered in gratitude, big violet eyes looked directly into Jay.
I like, muchness.
“We should build something from your history,” Jay said generously.
I have no intricacy to contribute, only home domes,the Kiint said sadly. Our full past has not been made available. I must do much growth before I am ready for acceptance.
Jay put her arms around the Kiint’s neck, pressing up against her supple white hide. “That’s all right. There are lots of things Mummy and Father Horst wouldn’t tell me, either.”
Much regret. Little patience.
“That’s a shame. But the castle looks great now it’s finished. I wish we had some flags to stick on top. I’ll see what I can find to use for tomorrow.”
Tomorrow the sand will be dry. The top will crumble in air, and we must start again.
Jay looked along the row of shapeless mounds that now ran along the shoreline. Each one carried its own particular memory of joy and satisfaction. “Honestly, Haile, that’s the whole point. It’s even better when there’s a tide, then you can see how strong you’ve built.”
So much human activity is intentionally wasteful. I doubt my ever knowing you.
“We’re simple, really. We always learn more from our mistakes, that’s what Mummy says. It’s because they’re more painful.”
Much oddness.
“I’ve got an idea; we’ll try and build a Tyrathca tower tomorrow. That’s nice and different. I know what they look like, Kelly showed me.” She put her hands on her hips and considered the castle warmly. “Pity we can’t build their Sleeping God altar, or whatever it was, but I don’t think it would balance, not if you make it out of sand.”
Query Sleeping God altar or whatever?
“It was sort of like a temple that you couldn’t get inside. The Tyrathca on Lalonde all sat around it and worshipped with chanting and stuff. It was this shape, really elaborate.” Her hands swept through the air in front of the Kiint, tracing broad curves. “See?”
Lacking perception, I. This is worship like your ritual to support Jesus the Christ?
“Um, sort of, I suppose. Except their God isn’t our God. Theirs is sleeping somewhere far away in space; ours is everywhere. That’s what Father Horst says.”
There are two Gods, query?
“I don’t know,” Jay said, desperately wishing she hadn’t got on to this topic. “Humans have more than two Gods, anyway. Religion is funny, especially if you start thinking about it. You’re just sort of supposed to believe. Until you get old, that is, then it all becomes theology.”
Query theology?
“Grown-up religion. Look here, don’t you have a God?”
I will query my parents.
“Good; they’ll explain everything much better than me. Come on, let’s go and wash this horrid sand off, then we can go riding together.”
Much welcome.
• • •
The Royal Kulu Navy ion field flyer swept in over Mortonridge’s western seaboard, its glowing nose pointed directly at the early morning sun. Ten kilometres to the south, the red cloud formed a solid massif right across the horizon. It was thicker than Ralph Hiltch remembered. None of the peninsula’s central ridge of mountains had managed to rise above it; they’d been swallowed whole.
The upper surface was as calm as a lake during a breathless dawn. Only when it started to dip earthwards along the firebreak border were the first uneasy stirrings visible—while right on the edge there appeared to be a full-scale storm whipping up individual streamers. Ralph had the uncomfortable impression that the cloud was aching to be let free. Perhaps he was picking up the emotional timbre of the possessed who created it? In this situation he could never be quite sure that any feeling was the genuine article.
He thought he could see a loose knot swirling along the side of the cloud, a twist of vermillion shadow amid the scarlet, keeping pace with his flyer. But when he ordered the sensor suite to focus on it, all he could see were random patterns. A trick of the eye, then, but a strong one.
The pilot began to expand the ion field, reducing the flyer’s velocity and altitude. Up ahead, the grey line of the M6 was visible, slicing clean across the virgin countryside. Colonel Palmer’s advance camp was situated a couple of kilometres outside the black firebreak line. Several dozen military vehicles were drawn up along the side of the motorway, while a couple were speeding along the carbon concrete towards the unnervingly precise band of incinerated vegetation.
Any possessed marching up to the end of the red cloud would see a predictably standard garrison operation being mounted with the Kingdom’s usual healthy efficiency. What they couldn’t see was the new camp coming together twenty-five kilometres further to the north; a city of programmable silicon laid out in strict formation which was erupting across the endless green undulations of the peninsula’s landscape. With typical military literalism it had been named Fort Forward. Over five hundred programmable silicon buildings had already been activated, two-storey barracks, warehouses, mess halls, maintenance shops, and various ancillary structures; though as yet its only residents were the three battalions of Royal Kulu Marine Engineers whose job it was to assemble the camp. Their mechanoids had ploughed the ground up around each building, installing water and sewage pipes, power lines, and datalinks. Huge drums of micro-mesh composite were being unrolled over the fresh soil to provide roads which wouldn’t turn to instant quagmires. Five large filter pump houses had been established on the banks of a river eight kilometres away to feed the expanding districts.
Mechanoids were already busy digging out vast new utility grids ready for more buildings, giving an indication of just how big Fort Forward would be when it was completed. Long convoys of lorries were using the M6 to deliver matйriel from the nearest city spaceport, fifty kilometres away. Though that arrangement would soon be cancelled as Fort Forward’s own spaceport became operational. Marine engineers were levelling long strips of land in preparation for three prefabricated runways. The spaceport’s hangars and control tower had been activated two days ago so that technical crews could fit and integrate their systems.
