The Recollection Read Online Free PDF Page B

volume. He held it out to her, smiling shyly.
    “ Real books.”
    Eyebrows raised, Kat turned the dog-eared hardback over in her hands. It was heavier than she’d expected, considering it was made of paper, and it smelled fusty, like the algae in the Ameline ’s sewage recycler. She didn’t dare open it. She had no idea how it was supposed to work. So instead, she handed it back and led the two men through the boarding gate into the shuttle’s passenger cabin. Drake took the seat next to her, and talked to her as the pilots taxied them across the ice to the runway. He had a nice voice, but he was nervous. His hands fidgeted on the arm rests. Between his stammers and pauses, she gathered he was a research scholar, a physicist attached to one of the teams studying the Gnarl at the centre of the Bubble Belt, dragged away from his studies by an unexpected summons.
    “Honestly, I don’t know what I’m doing here,” he said.
    Two days ago Francis Hind, the Acolyte, had arrived at Drake’s office carrying a handwritten invitation from the leader of an expedition planning to study the Dho Ark. The Ark was a rocky planetoid on the outskirts of the Strauli system. It had been hollowed out, coated in sheets of artificial diamond, and converted into a starship by its inhabitants, the reclusive Dho. About two metres in height, the Dho wore dark gowns similar to those sported by their human agents, the Acolytes. The gowns brushed the floor as they walked, making them appear to glide, and their heads were permanently encased in baroque, chitin-like helmets that gave them the appearance of stylised stag beetles. According to Toby Drake, no-one really knew where the helmets ended and the Dho began.
    “It’s a hell of an opportunity,” he said. “Apart from the Acolytes, this is the first time humans have been allowed into the interior of the Ark. I—I just don’t understand why I’ve been chosen. By the time I get there, the team will have been in place for fourteen years, and I don’t know what more I’ll be able to add. And besides, it’s not my area of specialty. There are at least a dozen better qualified candidates on Tiers Cross alone.”
    Kat looked across him to the window, and saw they’d reached the end of the runway and were rolling to a halt on the compacted snow, awaiting launch clearance from the tower. Beyond the glare of the spaceport lights, she could see the bubbles of the Belt sparkling like scattered sand in the darkened sky.
    “Nervous?” she asked him.
    He looked at her. “How can you t-tell?” His knuckles were white.
    “A lucky guess.”
    The noise from the engines rose to a deafening shriek. Drake closed his eyes. His forehead shone with sweat.
    “Just relax,” she said. “Why don’t you tell me about your work?”
    He gave her a sideways look. “With the Gnarl?”
    “Yes, why not? It might help.”
    “O-okay.” He took a deep breath. “Well for a start, most people think it’s a naked singularity, but it’s not. It isn’t dense enough. If it were a gravitational singularity, its mass would be huge. But as far as we can tell, it weighs less than a medium sized star.”
    Kat made a face. “I looked at it once and it made my eyes hurt. How do you study it?”
    The young man smiled, as if he heard this question all the time. His teeth were very white.
    “We do most of our analysis using computers. We try not to spend too much time looking directly at it, but you know, it doesn’t hurt to take a glance every now and then.”
    Kat said, “A breaker once told me it was artificial, built by the same race that built the bubbles.”
    Drake waggled a hand. “Iffy,” he said. “We don’t know that for sure. It could be a natural phenomena. Perhaps it was there first, and whoever built the Belt did so in order to study it?”
    Kat licked her lips. She was eager to get off the ground.
    “So,” she said, “we still don’t know what it’s for ?”
    “Maybe it isn’t for anything.