The Worthing Saga Read Online Free PDF Page A

we understand is your understanding of them. What you don't know, we can't know.
    “Then why don't you learn our language, if you're so wise?”
    “Don't be fresh,” said Mother from the kitchen, where she was grinding the dried pease for the pot.
    Lared was angry. She understood nothing of the conversation, but still could tell when Lared was doing something wrong. Jason reached out and touched him on the knee. Be calm. It's all right. The words weren't put in his head, but he understood them all the same, from the gentle hand, from the calm smile.
    Jason will learn your language, said the voice in his mind. But Justice will not.
    “Justice?” said Lared, not realizing at first that this was the woman's name.
    She touched herself and echoed his word. “Justice,” she said. Her voice was uncertain and soft, as if little used. “Justice,” she said again. Then laughed, and said an incomprehensible word in a language Lared had never heard before.
    That is my name, said the voice in his mind. Justice. Jason's name is mere sound, the same no matter what language you speak. But my name is the idea, and the sound of it changes A from language to language.
    It made no sense to Lared. “A name's a name. It means you, and so what if it means something else besides?”
    They looked at each other.
    Tell us, are there words about any place named...
    And Justice said a word: “Worthing.”
    Lared tried out the name on his tongue. “Worthing,” he said. Then he wrote down the name in the dirt, so he would be sure to know the sign for it, if he met it in the book.
    He did not notice that at the saying of the name Mother's eyebrows rose, and she slipped out of the kitchen without so much as an I'll-be-back.
    He found Worthing at the end of the book. “It was believed for thousands of years that two of Doon's Arks had gone astray, or their colonies had failed. Indeed, if Rivethock's Ark resulted in a colony, it remains unfound to this day. The world called Worthing, however, from Worthing's Ark, was found at last, by a Discoverer IV-class ship in the Fifth Wave, whose geologer marked the planet as habitable—and then, to the shock of the crew, was inhabited.”
    This time, where the words were hard, brief explanations often came into Lared's mind, using ideas that he was familiar with. Doon's Arks were huge starships equipped with everything that 334 passengers would need to start a world. A colony was a village in newly cleared land on a world without human beings. A Discoverer IV of the Fifth Wave was—a starship sent by the government to chart the inner reaches of the galaxy some five thousand years ago. Ageologer was a machine, or a group of machines, that looked at a world from far away and saw where lay all forests and oil and iron and farmland and ice and ocean and life.
    And if we read at this rate we'll get nowhere, said the voice in his mind. The impatience on Justice's face matched the words, and for the first time it occurred to Lared that it might be only Justice who spoke to him. For Jason only smiled at whatever she silently said to him, and when he answered her it was in words from their strange language, spoken aloud.
    “Who are you?” demanded Father.
    He stood at the door that led into the kitchen shed, his strong arms and massive shoulders filling door, silhouetting him against the light from the kitchen tire.
    “They're Jason and Justice,” said Sala.
    “who are you?” asked Father again. “I'll not be answered by my children's voices.”
    The words came into Lared's mind, and he spoke them. “You'll not be answered any other way. Don't blame us, Father— they only speak to me because they don't know another way. Jason plans to learn our language as soon as he can.”
    “Who are you?” asked Father a third time. “You dared to cause my child to say the dark name, the hidden word, and him not yet sixteen.”
    “What hidden name?” asked Lared.
    Father could not force himself to say it. Instead