Foreigner Read Online Free PDF Page B

but never so clearly. Most of the ship was buried in a cliff. As the day wore on, the rocks of the cliff’s face heated and expanded. Their shifting against the unyielding hull caused sounds like these. She’d never been so close to the outer hull when the shifting had occurred, but that must be it. It must be.
    She touched her teeth together and shook her head. If Afsan could only see me now …
    Afsan, so rational, so logical. Why, he’d click his teeth until all the loose ones had been knocked out if he saw Novato being so foolish…
    But then it hit her. If Afsan could see me now? Afsan sees nothing, nothing at all.
    Novato began walking again, her claws still unsheathed, although she was certain — certain! — that should she now command them to, they would slip back into her fingers, out of view.
    Out of view.
    She thought again of Afsan. Was this what it was like to be blind? Did Afsan feel the kind of fear she felt now, unsure of every step, unaware of what might be lurking only a pace away? How could one get used to this? Was he used to it? Even now, even after all this time?
    He had never seen their children, never seen the vast spaceship Novato was now within, never seen the statue erected in his honor in Capital City.
    And never, except that one wonderful time when he had come to Pack Gelbo all those kilodays ago, had he seen Novato.
    Of course he must be used to the darkness. Of course.
    She continued through the void, the image of Afsan giving her strength. She felt, in a strange way, as though he, with all his experience in navigating in darkness, walked beside her.
    Her footfalls echoed. The ship moaned again as its rocky tomb heated further.
    Suddenly her left hand was touching nothing but air. The corridor had opened into another corridor, running perpendicular to it. Novato exhaled noisily. Her teams had marked every intersection with a circle of paint on the wall, color-coding the various paths through the ship’s interior. Of course, she couldn’t see the colors — or anything else — but surely she could find the circle. She felt at shoulder-height. Nothing but smooth, uninterrupted wall, until — yes, here it was. A roughening of the wall surface, a round area of a different texture. Dried paint.
    Novato scraped the paint with her claws, catching tiny flakes of pigment on their tips. She brought her fingers to her nostrils and inhaled deeply.
    A scent, faint but unmistakable: sulfur. Yellow pigment. Yellow marked the corridor designated major-axis 2. She stopped, picturing the layout of the ship. Yes, major-axis 2 … that made sense. She had been going the wrong way, but she knew how to get out from here, although it would require more time. She would take the right-hand path here, and in what — a hundred kilopaces? — she’d come to another intersection. Another right and then a left and eventually she’d be back at the strange double-doored room that led outside.
    She paused for a moment, relaxing. Her claws slipped back into their sheaths. The panic of moments before was forgotten. She stepped…
    What was that?
    A flash of light?
    Light?
    Here, inside the ship?
    Madness … unless a firefly or glowgrub had made its way into the interior.
    She looked in the direction from which she’d seen the flickering.
    Nothing. Of course not. Why, hadn’t Afsan once said he still occasionally saw little flashes of light? The mind hated to be deprived…
    There it was again… .
    Novato brought the side of her head right up to the wall and stared into the darkness.
    The ship was old, inconceivably ancient.
    But there it was once more, a flash of greenish-white, gone almost before she’d even noticed it. A line of geometric shapes, flashing in the dark. Incredible.
    Novato wanted to mark this spot so she could find it again. She undid the neck chain that helped hold her sash on, then lifted the wide loop of leather over her head and set it on the floor in front of the flashing symbols on the wall.