The Long Game (The Far Reaches collection) by Ann Leckie

Author:Ann Leckie [Leckie, Ann]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Publisher: Amazon Original Stories
Published: 2023-06-27T00:00:00+00:00

How did you live so long?

“I know the answer,” said the other person—the first person I’d seen in this strange, monster-filled place. “But it’s going to be complicated to explain to you.”

“You think I can’t understand?” I asked. “Because I’m not stupid. I figured out how to make people build a place that would always be wet and free of monsters. I figured out how to grow algae on purpose in one place.” Well, I hadn’t exactly figured any of that out, but I had made it happen.

The humans seemed to always be in boxes. We were in a box now, with smooth, dry floors and smooth, hard containers for things. There was a shallow container of water on the floor, and the very old person sat in it. “I’m not saying you’re stupid. You’ve hardly been alive a year, though. There are a lot of things you don’t know yet.”

“You don’t seem like anything special yourself,” I said, still stung. “You’re so small, and you hardly have any radioles at all. Small and ugly. How does someone small and ugly get to live ten years?”

“Closer to twenty,” they said. “And will you become even more angry if I tell you that smaller people are more likely to live longer?”

“That’s ridiculous. Smaller people aren’t as strong as bigger ones. You”—I poked a tentacle at them—“are smaller than anyone I’ve ever seen. I could kill you right now.”

“Probably,” they said equably. “But if you did, you’d never get your answer.”

I paced around the room awhile. I wanted to leave, to go outside, but the thought of another sharp-mouthed monster made me uneasy. Not afraid, you understand. But I had been days recovering from that attack, and I didn’t want to do it again. Entirely practical.

“Tell me,” I said finally. “Tell me why you’re still alive. Tell me why people die. Tell me how I can make it so I don’t die.”

“Everyone dies eventually. Humans live to be a hundred, a hundred and fifty years, but they all die in the end. Everything alive dies. Everything changes.” I didn’t know what to say to that, and the other person continued, “I’m called Nish. I was tiny even when I came out of the egg. I’m lucky I lived long enough to become an adult, because I might easily have been eaten or even just crushed by someone careless.

“All the people I’d hatched with grew patches of radioles all over, and those grew eggs, and those eggs hatched. I, you may have noticed, have a single small circle of radioles. Every now and then, while I was on earth, an egg would grow in them, and hatch, maybe once every couple of years or so, but the infants were always much bigger than I had been. Anyway, after a while all the people who were infants when I was, they got sick and died. But I never got sick.

“Then the humans came. It was a while before our Field Liaison noticed how different I was from everyone else.

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.