Ascending Read Online Free PDF Page B

Life.
    “Why is it like this?” I asked Uclod, who was following at my heels. “Why is it all stringy and damp? The spaceships of the human navy are not so awful—I have heard they are big long batons, covered with pleasantly dry ceramics. They are also white…which is not as good as being clear, but much better than a sodden gray.”
    “Well, missy,” he said, “when humans joined the League of Peoples, they were given a different FTL technology than my ancestors. Humans got baton-ships; we Divians got Zaretts.”
    “This is a Zarett?”
    “It is indeed.” He reached up to pat the ball’s gluppy exterior. “A sweet little filly, only thirty years old…but smart as a whip and twice as frisky.”
    I stepped back a pace. “It is alive?”
    “Absolutely. The daughter of Precious Solar Wind and Whispering Nebula III…which would impress the nads off you if you knew anything about thoroughbred Zaretts. This baby is worth more than a minor star system; I’d be the squealing envy of rich men and gorgeous women, if only I could tell the world what I’ve got. Which I can’t: Starbiter wasn’t exactly born with the blessing of the Bloodline Registry Office. A slight irregularity in the breeding procedure.”
    “In other words, you did something criminal to procure her.”
    “Not me personally,” he replied. “Someone else pulled the actual heist: a load of fertilized ova went missing under unconventional circumstances. My family simply acted as go-betweens, finding buyers who’d provide good homes for the misplaced little tykes…and we took several ova off the top as our consulting fee.” He patted the ship again. “You can’t imagine how long I had to suck up to Grandma Yulai before she let me have this one.”
    I continued to stare at the Starbiter creature. Uclod called it smart and frisky, but I could see neither quality in evidence. It did not frisk at all ; and one does not display much intelligence by sitting in the middle of an intersection. “If this is an animal,” I said, “what does it eat?”
    “Oh, this and that. We feed her a mix of simple hydrocarbons, calcium nitrate, small quantities of heavier elements. She doesn’t have much of a digestive system for breaking down complex nutrients, so you need to keep the diet pretty basic.”
    “I am not so much interested in what she can digest as what she might swallow .”
    “Well, as to that…”
    Uclod walked farther around the base of the Zarett, then reached up to touch a bleached-out spot on the creature’s skin. He planted his palm firmly and began to rub with strong circular motions, the way one scours hard at one’s body when one has slipped and got grass stains. The goop beneath Uclod’s fingers made soft slurpy sounds as his hand moved; slowly, the sounds grew louder, until he pulled back and the slurping continued without him. The skin bulged in and out, like a person’s jaw as she chews. Moments later, an enormous patch of the Zarett’s gooey exterior opened wide to reveal a dark throat leading into a darker gullet.
    A giant mouth loomed before me, big enough to gobble me up!
    Facing A Hellish Maw
    The Zarett’s breath smelled exactly like the breath of an animal that eats simple hydrocarbons, calcium nitrate, and small quantities of heavier elements. It was particularly hydrocarbony…and I suspect many of those hydrocarbons had not been sufficiently fresh. Starbiter’s breath was, in short, quite the Fetid Reek. My stomach lurched at the odor, and the only thing that prevented a regurgitory incident was that I had not eaten solid food in the past four years.
    Uclod gestured to the creature’s mouth. “After you, toots.”
    “You wish me to go inside?”
    “There’s plenty of room. A big girl like you should scrunch down going past the epiglottis; but it’ll be clear sailing after that.”
    As far as I could see, he was telling the truth: the Zarett’s mouth was big enough for me to enter, provided I ducked under