The Scavenger Door by Suzanne Palmer

Author:Suzanne Palmer [Palmer, Suzanne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780756415150
Google: 6cD5zQEACAAJ
Amazon: B08LYV1HC7
Publisher: DAW
Published: 2021-08-16T23:00:00+00:00

* * *

—

The ferry from Kalaallit Nunaat was a welcome few hours of peace and boredom. As Isla napped in the seat across from him, the ferry passed alongside the rising structure of the Arctic rail bridge, a dozen orange-and-yellow automated construction vehicles crawling under, over, and around it in a synchronized dance, and he found himself tempted to wave out the window to them, in case one was Akio’s.

Instead, he leaned back in his ferry seat and checked in with Ignatio and Whiro. “Isla is not sickened of you yet?” Ignatio said.

“Getting there, I think,” Fergus said.

“Hmm. I have more physics things for her when she is ready. You will tell her, yes? Math is the best of all funs.”

“I’ll have to take your word on that,” Fergus said, then lowered his voice. “She seems to love it all, but remember a lot of this is new for her? Give her a chance to catch up and maybe ask if she has questions? Uh, but don’t tell her you’re doing that or that I said so. In the meantime, I have two, er, packages for you and I’m not sure how to deliver them. Whiro, you were working on something?”

“I have sent down a small delivery drone with our larger autonomous supply drone, Constance. We are officially here conducting business to restock our garden ring, which requires transactions at multiple points on Earth,” Whiro said. “I had originally directed my drone, once free of Constance, to intercept you at the Kangerlussuaq Shuttleport on Kalaallit Nunaat, as we all expected Ms. Ferguson to have gotten over the idea that you are more interesting to spend time with than us, but you appear to both be on a ferry. You are heading toward Reykjavík?”

“Yeah. Should be there in a few hours,” Fergus said. “Going to find our next core piece and then get a room for the night, I think.”

“My drone should catch up with you before nightfall,” Whiro said. “It is bringing you two more modified cans so you can send up both the Qeqertarsuaq fragment and the Reykjavík one when you acquire it.”

“Good,” Fergus said. “I don’t like carrying even one of these around unshielded, much less two, so the less time I have to do so, the better.”

“Neither do I like it,” Ignatio said. “It is bad, very, very bad, but I am sure it will somehow be fine, yes?”

“Sure it will. I’ll check in when we’re settled down,” Fergus said. He disconnected and glanced over at his lightly snoring sister. He’d been in everything is very bad–level trouble before, but what worked out fine for him—minus inconveniences like getting shot in the leg with a harpoon gun, and stuff like that—didn’t always work out fine for people around him.

You can’t make choices for other people, he reminded himself, and then spent the rest of the ferry ride trying to figure out if he could somehow trick Isla into leaving of her own volition in a way that didn’t involve being a jerk.

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.