Valhai (The Ammonite Galaxy) Read Online Free PDF Page B

change the mask pack, which meant that she should begin to make her way back to her home. She made the switch successfully and then got to her feet. Two things were obvious to her. Firstly, that she would never again be able to feel quite so proud of being Sellite. And secondly, that she would have to find out more about the donor program. As she made her way back her whole body felt heavier than it had done on the way out. Her steps were slower, her feet less keen to respond. The stars gently illuminated the solitary person tracking slowly back to the skyrises.
    Six rubbed his eyes with the tips of his fingers. His first night’s sleep in the bubble had not been particularly successful. He had been staring at this stupid column for over ten hours, and his eyes felt grainy. Everything kept fading in and out of focus, and his head was hurting. He had never in his whole life had to put up with anything like this. Ten hours of class. Purgatory! And it wasn’t over yet. According to this dried up old stick there were still two hours to go.
    Life, he thought grimly. Either you were bitterly cold looking for somewhere to get warm, or you were nice and warm and longed to be back on your own planet, bitterly cold or not. He glared at the three dimensional screen in front of him. He had found more interesting things under a rock on Kwaide than this so-called teacher. Old whatever-his-name had quite a knack for making things totally unintelligible. He seemed to take rather a pride in it. There, the man was droning on again.
    “Point five six, Tell me something about Kwaide?”
    It had taken Six only an hour to determine the modus operandi of his venerable teacher. It consisted in asking interminable questions which the teacher already knew the answer to. This enabled the educator to interrupt with ‘I don’t think that’s exactly how I understand it . . . perhaps we should look it up in the records,’ which led to long boring explanations that he, Six, was expected to understand and retain. Every so often his understanding was tested by little ‘problems’ the ancient slipped in ‘for a bit of fun’. If he resolved the problems the whole process was repeated again with another topic, and if he made a mistake the whole process was repeated again with the same topic. All this, surrounded by a possibly man-eating bubble under a lake of goo on a planet with an unbreathably thin atmosphere. Great! He should have known the way things were going to go when that first Elder had held up one hand and told him to stop. It was all his own fault. He should have known better. He should never have put a foot in Benefice.
    “Point five six, I believe you are not attending.” Atheron’s benign expression had slipped a little. “Just a short time more, if you don’t mind and then we can move on to the day’s exercise program.”
    Six closed his eyes. Death was beginning to look like an attractive alternative. He couldn’t care less what happened to his own planet, either. If it weren’t for his two twin sisters! He knew how hard they would be finding it to manage without him. No, if it weren’t for his sisters there was no way he would have endured all this! Gloomily, he forced himself to listen to Atheron.
    Three hours later Six was wishing his teacher at the centre of Sacras. Any faint hopes he had had that the exercise period would enable him to get out of this cage had dissipated. No. He gave a dry bark of a laugh. No. A bubble door simply opened into this bubble torture chamber and led him into another bubble room, this time devoted to exercising. Here he was to spend a merry five hours on the walking machine, running machine, cycling machine, rowing machine, hanging machine. He could think of one or two good candidates for hanging, right now. After those few delights, it appeared he would then be required to actually dance on some awful-looking coloured squares which each made a different sound according to the colour. What fun