Terra by Mitch Benn

Author:Mitch Benn [Benn, Mitch]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Orion
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

2.21

-. . . and the sgth-k-shffs drifted away together, to be happy for the foreseeable future.

Terra put down her slate and looked at her classmates faces.

There was a surprisingly long silence.

Even more surprisingly, it wasn’t Fthfth who broke it.

- And none of this is real? asked Pktk. None of it actually happened?

- No, said Terra. I just thought of it and wrote it down.

- Where did you get it from? asked Pktk, intensely interested.

- I just combined bits and pieces of ideas from all over the place, things I’d read, things I’d heard about and just mixed them all up into something that didn’t happen, but might have happened.

- Well, yes, except there’s no such race as Daktavarians and you can’t power spaceships with sgth-k-shff plasma, muttered Fthfth.

Pktk turned towards her. - Well, how do you know? If Terra’s invented a whole race of people called the Daktavarians, who’s to say that THEIR spaceships wouldn’t be powered by sgth-k-shff plasma? It’s kind of up to Terra, it’s her . . . it’s her . . . There wasn’t a name for it. In the Fnrrn language there was no name for the thing that Terra had just created.

- Story, said Bsht.

- What? asked Terra.

- That’s what they call them on Rrth. Stories. I’ve been looking it up while you were talking, Terra. There’s a Ymn word, ‘story’. We’ve always thought it was just another word for ‘history’ – the two words are very similar, in fact they’re the same word in some Ymn languages. But looking at these translations of Ymn broadcasts, she held up her slate and showed Terra the blocks of text, I think it has a different meaning. ‘History’ is an account of events that actually happened, ‘stories’ are accounts of events which may or may not have happened. Some of them are true, some of them are just . . .

- Thought up? Like I just thought that one up? asked Terra, her eyes wide.

- Indeed. Bsht exhaled heavily and sat down. When you get a job as a Lyceum lector you don’t expect major discoveries in the fields of xeno-linguistics and xeno-sociology to happen while you’re teaching the novice class.

- I’d better tell the Preceptor about this. This changes . . . a lot of things.

Fthfth was still mulling something over. - And sgth-k-shffs are NOT telepathic, she grumbled.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.