The Dave Brewster Series by Karl Morgan

Author:Karl Morgan [Morgan, Karl]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Published: 2015-07-06T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter 46

Lia Lawson sat at a small table with Silva Odeen in a coffee shop on Earth Prime. The Narta neighborhood on the planet was home to most of the Ela who worked here. The shop fronted a wide boulevard where shuttles zipped by a few inches off the ground. The buildings rose several hundred stories over their heads, making the street a massive canyon of steel and glass. The Ela of Earth Prime managed trade routes throughout the Society. They also controlled traffic through the star ports and landing sites around the planet. That was why Silva Odeen had been the contact for Nightsky. A smaller group of Ela also managed the museums around the planet, which housed the finest collections in the Society.

The coffee shop was very large with two hundred tables and fifty baristas and waiters. At this late hour in the morning, only a few patrons were present. Silva had chosen a table near the front of the shop so they could watch the street and people passing by. “So, Lia, I heard your ship visited Narta Ela, the planet this neighborhood is named after. What did you think of it?” a very nervous Silva asked.

“Well, unfortunately, I did not have an opportunity to visit the surface, Silva,” Lia said. “My dad told me it was magnificent though.”

“Your father is on the Nightsky?” he asked. “That’s interesting. What does he do?”

“He is Admiral Brewster’s second in command,” she smiled. “He and my dad were born more than a thousand years ago and came to this time to find new planets to settle and new cultures to engage.”

“You’re kidding, right?” Silva asked. “You people travel in time. That’s amazing. Time travel is extremely rare here. There’s too much danger of affecting the past.”

“The same is true in my time. My mom and my stepmother were both in the Temporal Command. That’s how they met my dad,” she replied.

“So, you are not like other modern humans, since you have one parent from the past. Is that right?” Silva asked.

“Actually, I look very much like everyone else in my time, except for the blue eyes. That’s the one obvious thing I got from my dad,” she replied.

Silva reached over and put his hand on top of hers. “Lia, I must confess your eyes were one of the things I noticed most. I’m still sorry about embarrassing you the first time I saw you. I guess I got carried away.”

She smiled and giggled. “What else did you notice, Silva?”

He pulled his hand away and withdrew a small tablet from his satchel. He tapped the screen for several seconds while Lia sipped her coffee. He turned the screen around and held it out to her. On the screen were images of several humans who looked as though they stepped off any street on Earth in the thirty-second century. “Isn’t the resemblance uncanny, Lia?” he said. “The third from the left could be your twin sister, don’t you think?”

“That is amazing, Silva. Which of the fifty species of human are they?” she asked.

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