The Game of Worlds (David Brin's Out of Time Book 3) by Roger MacBride Allen & David Brin

Author:Roger MacBride Allen & David Brin [Allen, Roger MacBride]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: LMBPN Publishing
Published: 2021-02-19T00:00:00+00:00

Roberto stared out the massive viewport at the wondrous sky beyond. The others would be along in a minute, but he had slipped away from the conversation early. He wanted a moment or two alone with the viewport and the magnificent sky it revealed.

The countless stars and the glowing nebula were magical things, beyond all possibility. He could see farther than he had ever dreamed of. His world, his universe, had expanded beyond all reckoning. A few days before, he had been an illiterate slave living in a hovel on the grounds of a minor fazenda in a remote corner of Brazil, with only the vaguest notion that the larger world beyond the city of Fortaleza even existed.

And now…now he could read and he could write. Now he had traveled to the stars. Now he had seen the planet Neptune floating like a ball in the sky’s inky seas.

Now he was representing all of humanity in a meeting with a great and dangerous potential foe. His heart swelled with pride. He had been chosen to receive great gifts in hopes that he could do great things. He was determined to show himself worthy of all the honors he had received.

He heard a bustle and a murmur of conversation growing louder behind him as the others made their way back to the airlock vestibule. He turned and welcomed his three good friends and their four new acquaintances. He saw that the five children of the future—Ahna, Marget, Johan, Torry, and Suza—were now wearing broca amplifiers identical to his. He wondered why since his amplifier allowed him to speak their language, but then the answer—the very obvious answer—came to him: the aliens. They would need the amplifiers to comprehend the aliens’ speech.

“Ready to go?” Ahna asked.

“As ready as any of you,” Roberto said with a sly smile.

“That might not be saying too much,” Ahna said, laughing. “But we’re not going to get any more ready. Let’s do it. Do we have to cycle the airlock?”

Suza worked the airlock controls. “Nope,” she said. “We’re already matched with Bogwater’s sea-level air pressure. All we have to do is open the door.” She stabbed her finger down on a button, and the door marked NEGOTIATION ISLAND, BOGWATER swung open. A shaft of light, the clear golden light of the seashore in the morning, stabbed into the airlock chamber. The clean, salt-sweet smell of ocean air wafted over them as a warm breeze gusted into the vestibule.

At the end of the airlock’s shipboard corridor were the sea, the shore, the sandy soil of an island, thick grasses rustling in the breeze, and blue sky half-covered with thick, puffy clouds. Roberto could hear the distant thunder of waves crashing on a beach somewhere nearby.

He had almost forgotten the sounds, sights, and smells of the shore, but now he remembered and longed for them all. Roberto had to hold himself back to keep from racing down that corridor to the island beyond. They had to make a dignified entrance.

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