Transcendent Read Online Free PDF Page B

were rare. Her parents, though, had never made any secret of the deep and unusual joy they had derived from their children.
    And anyhow if you didn’t like it here in this small floating village you could always escape. You could pay for passage aboard one of the
Nord
’s endless stream of FTL visitors, and head for any of the worlds of a proliferating human Galaxy. And likewise some of those visitors, charmed by the
Nord
’s antiquity and peace, chose to stay.
    Thus the
Nord
had sailed on, its crew rebuilding their ship over and over, until it had passed through the dense molecular clouds that shielded the Galaxy’s Core from eyes on Earth, and had broken into a new cold light.
    And half a million years had worn away.
             
    The sisters’ home was a cluster of bubble-chambers lodged just underneath the
Nord
’s ceramic hull. Windows had been cut into that ancient surface, so that from Alia’s own room you could see out into space. The room was small, but it was a pleasant retreat she had always cherished.
    But today there was a visitor here. An intruder.
    It was a man, a stranger. He stood quietly in the center of the floor, hands behind his back. Her mother, Bel, stood beside the visitor, her hands twisting together.
    The stranger was
tall,
so tall he had to duck to avoid the ceiling. He was dressed in a drab pale gray robe that swept to the ground, despite his angular tallness. His face was long, a thing of planes and hard edges of bone, as if there wasn’t a morsel of spare fat under his flesh. His arms were short, too stiff for climbing; he was a planet-dweller. His expression was kindly, almost amused, as he looked at her. But Alia thought he had an air of detachment, as if she were some kind of specimen. He kept subtly away from the furniture, her bed and chairs and table and Witnessing tank, all heaped with clutter and clothes.
    She didn’t like this judgmental stranger in her room, looking at her stuff. Resentment flared.
    Her mother’s face was flushed, and she seemed tense, agitated. It took a lot to get a bicentenarian so visibly excited. “Alia, this is Reath. He’s come to see you, all this way.
He’s from the Commonwealth.
”
    The man, Reath, stepped forward, arms outspread. “I’m sorry to intrude on you like this, Alia. It’s all terribly ill-mannered. And I know this will come as a shock to you. But I’ve come to offer you an opportunity.”
    She couldn’t tell how old he was. But then, you couldn’t tell how old anybody was past the age of thirty or so. He was different, however, she thought. There was a stillness about him, as if he had weightier concerns than those around him.
    She said suspiciously, “What kind of opportunity? Are you offering me some kind of job?”
    “In a sense—”
    “I don’t want a job. Nobody
works.
”
    “Some do. A very few,” he said. “Perhaps you will be one of them.” His voice was deep, compelling, his whole manner mesmeric. She felt he was drawing her down some path she might not want to follow.
    Her mother had gone, she noticed, slipped out of the room while Reath distracted her.
    Reath turned away and walked around the room, his hands still folded behind his back. “You have windows. Most people would prefer to be hidden away, buried in the human world, to forget that they are on a starship at all. But not you, Alia.”
    “My parents chose the apartment,” she said. “Not me.”
    “Well, perhaps.” With an elegant finger he traced faint shadows on the wall, a cross-hatching of rectangles, hexagons, ovals, and circles. As the occupancy patterns of the
Nord
had changed, windows had been cut here, then filled in and cut again, each repair leaving a ghostly mark. “And these usage scars? They don’t bother you?”
    “Why should they?” In fact she liked the sense of history the faint scarring gave her, the idea that she wasn’t the first to live here, to breathe this air.
    He nodded. “You don’t mind. Even though it