Spherical Harmonic Read Online Free PDF Page A

what?"
     
     
Again that image came into my mind, sticks destroying roots.
     
     
"Stick people?" I asked, bewildered.
     
     
"You ****."
     
     
"Understand not." The cavity was solidifying. The treeman looked almost human now, though his eyes still resembled moss. I could feel my breath, fast and hard.
     
     
His disquiet seeped into my mind. To him, I looked young, unprotected, and frightened. It bothered him.
     
     
He spoke again. "You claim Skolians live above Slowcoal?"
     
     
"Slowcoal?" I asked.
     
     
"The huge coal that broods in the sky."
     
     
So that was what they called the gas giant. "Yes. Skolians live on many worlds."
     
     
He snorted. "I have never seen a Skolian. I have no belief they exist."
     
     
"I exist." At least I thought I did. "You are Skolian, too."
     
     
"I am not Skolian."
     
     
"Is true." My language libraries supplied the information. "Opalite and Slowcoal are part of Skolia."
     
     
Despite his frown, he didn't object again, which made me suspect he had heard it before.
     
     
Exhausted, I closed my eyes. It was only an instant. But when I opened them, sunlight was filtering into the cavity, though a second ago it had been night. A gauzy arthrop hung from the ceiling, its wings like lace spun into a spiral, going around, round, round…
     
     
Round…
     
Round…
     
     
"—dying, are you?" He sounded closer now. Urgent. Apprehensive.
     
     
My eyes were closed. Closed? I opened them. Night had fallen, but Slowcoal light filled the cavity, augmented by embers in the fire pit. Disoriented and dizzy, I didn't try to speak. The treeman was kneeling in front of me, holding the pitcher of water to my lips. I drank, gulping, and the precious liquid soothed my throat. After I drank my fill, I bent my head over my bound hands and wiped the moisture from my lips. My arms shook.
     
     
He paled. "What are you?"
     
     
"I know not." My answer was almost inaudible, like wind over water in a far away place. "Go home… I must."
     
     
His voice hardened. "You stay."
     
     
"No."
     
     
"Yes. Manq lost you. I found."
     
     
"Not Manq. Skolian."
     
     
"You look Manq."
     
     
How did Manq look? I thought of his memory. Stick figures. I didn't look that way to him. He considered the Manq human, but his subconscious thought of them as dead sticks with no humanity at all.
     
     
"**** the sun?" he said
     
     
"Again?" I asked.
     
     
He said something about the sun and my hair. With a wrench of dismay, I recalled who else had hair like mine. An image came to my mind, a man in dark trousers and a rumpled gray sweater sitting at a console. Gleaming hardware surrounded him, lights flashing as he peered at a graph that rotated in the air. He had tousled black hair, glossy and black. Like mine.
     
     
My son.
     
     
My son.
     
     
The treeman gestured at my hair. "**** Manq is."
     
     
I tried to concentrate, but the memory of my son brought a gut-twisting dread. Something was wrong. Very wrong.
     
     
The treeman shook a length of my hair and repeated his indecipherable question. Anger leaked into his voice. And unease. He hid his apprehension well, but I felt it. He wondered if he had caught a supernatural being.
     
     
Fearing he would decide that my apparent spectral state gave him more reason to end my life, I tried to answer. "Manq hair black?"
     
     
He let go of my hair. "Yes."
     
     
"What else is Manq?"
     
     
The treeman tapped his finger next to his eye, then indicated the pitcher he held and spoke a word. He touched a copper ornament on his tunic and repeated the word.
     
     
The only similarity I could see between the pot and ornament was color. "Manq eyes brown?" That wasn't the Shay word he had used, though.
     
     
"Not brown. Some red." He repeated the other word. "Like metal."
     
     
I stored his word in my memory. "Copper?"
     
     
"Yes. Copper."
     
     
"Not copper, my eyes."
     
     
"True this is." He motioned at the walls and said another word.