Black Light Express by Philip Reeve

Author:Philip Reeve
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3, mobi
Tags: Switch Press; fiction;Railhead; Rail Head; science fiction; young adult; YA; transportation--railroads & trains;science & technology; sci-fi; robots; space opera; aliens; action and adventure; 9781630790967; 9781630790981
Publisher: Switch Press
Published: 2017-06-20T04:00:00+00:00

*

Beyond the place where the Worm was turning into a landscape feature, the ground sloped downward again to meet more mirror-water. Along the shoreline there, the interface of Mordaunt 90 had been piling up round, flat stones in little towers. He was still very sad about the death of his friend Yanvar Malik. The Guardians knew that humans died, of course — a human lifetime was like the brief flaring of a match to them — but it was only now that he had become mortal himself that the interface truly understood what that meant. He was in mourning for Malik, and in shock that he too was now trapped in a fragile human shell. Piling up stones gave him something else to occupy his thoughts. It was surprisingly difficult to stack more than four or five. You had to choose your stones with care. The biggest went at the base, and the smallest at the top. The towers often fell down, but the interface was very patient, and some had already grown as tall as him.

It was all very fascinating for the small colony of Hath who lived just offshore with their stalklike legs planted in the rich silt. They liked pebbles more than anything, and good ones were passed from hand to hand for hundreds of miles between neighboring Hath in the great colonies that stretched along the shores of Yaarm’s lagoons. They had never seen anyone pile them up so elegantly before. In the few days since the interface began his work, hundreds of Hath had come wading down the coast to watch. They stood in the shallows in a wide, fluttering crowd, buzzing their appreciation each time a new pebble was added to the latest tower.

When he saw Zen, Threnody, and Chandni coming toward him, the interface said, “Oh, a visitor!” and put down the pebble he had been holding.

Zen looked at his golden skin, his golden eyes. “Is that…?”

“It was,” said Chandni. “He can hardly remember anything now.”

“That is not fair, Chandni Hansa,” said the interface mildly. “I am only a fragment of my old self and no longer connected to the great data centers of Mordaunt 90. But I can remember all sorts of things.”

“Nothing useful, though,” said Threnody. “Like why the Guardians never told us there were places like this, and how we get home again.”

“It is true that I don’t know the answers to those questions,” said the interface, looking embarrassed. Then he cheered up, as a small Hath came carefully between the pebble towers and placed something in his hands — not a pebble, for once, but a little silvery fish thing. “Oh, thank you!” he said.

“They’ve been quite kind to us, these tents,” said Threnody. “We cook the fish on an open fire. They seem edible enough.”

“They give me the runs,” said Chandni Hansa.

“I have food,” said Zen, without quite meaning to. “Aboard the Damask Rose. You’d better come and eat and tell me what’s happened. And I’ll tell you… I’ll tell you how to get home.

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