PeriAndry's Quest by Stephen Baxter

Author:Stephen Baxter [Baxter, Stephen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2011-04-09T00:56:32+00:00

* * *

It took Peri just ten days to ride back to Foro. Each day he drove on as long as he could, until exhaustion overtook him or his mounts.

When he got home, he spoke to his mother briefly, only to reassure her of the safety of the rest of the hunting party, then retired to his room for the night.

His sister BoFeri insisted on seeing him, though, and she briskly extracted the truth of what he intended.

“Listen to me,” she said. “We’re different stock, we folk of the Shelf, from the brutes of the Attic, and similar lofty slums. Time moves at a stately pace here — and that means it has had less opportunity to work on us.” She prodded his chest. “We are the ones who are truest to our past — we are the closest to the original stock of Old Earth. The Attic folk have been warped, mutated by too much time. Think about it — those rattling hearts, the flickering of their purposeless generations! The Attic folk aren’t human as we are. Not even the pretty ones like Lora. Good for tupping, yes, but nothing more…”

“I don’t care what you say, Bo, or Maco.”

Her face was a mixture of his mother’s kindness with Maco’s hard mockery. “It is adolescent to have crushes on Attic serving girls. You are evading your responsibilities, Peri; you are escaping into fantasy. You are so immature!”

“Then let me grow up in my own way.”

“You don’t know what you will find up there,” she said, more enigmatically. “I’m afraid you will be hurt.”

But he turned away, and would not respond further.

He longed to sleep, but could not. He didn’t know what the next day would bring. None of his family, to his knowledge, had ever climbed the cliff before, but that was what he must do. He spent the night in a fever of anticipation, clutching at shards of the elaborate fantasy he had inflated, which Maco had so easily seen and punctured.

In the morning, with the first light, he set out in search of Lora — if not yet his lover, then the recipient of his dreams.

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