To Trade the Stars (2010)
To Trade the Stars
“Hull breach alarms. The too-short shriek in the night as one of the herd is taken. I heard them all and knew they weren’t real.
My mind, what remained of Sira Morgan, played games to keep itself alert and alive, pretending emergencies and imagining rescue. Rescue from what? The question splintered away another part of me, spinning into the abyss until something swooped upward to meet and consume it . . .
The Singer. Waiting, ready, hungry.
. . . But I was ready too, and dove into the safer pain... of memory . . .
“These—numbers.” Distaste twisted Jarad’s lips, but I gave him credit. He’d listened. “You claim they prove this assertion of yours?”
“That we’re doomed?” I drawled, putting my feet up on the table and grinning at my father. “Oh, there’s no doubt at all.”
He sank into a chair. We were in my bedroom, which was more a library and office these days. My computing needs had dictated the elaborate interface discreetly built into an otherwise unremarkable table, but there was no hiding stacks of plas sheets or the pre-Stratification era chests bursting with the rolled, permanent parches used by the M’hiray before they’d met Humans and taken to newer technology.MoreLess
My mind, what remained of Sira Morgan, played games to keep itself alert and alive, pretending emergencies and imagining rescue. Rescue from what? The question splintered away another part of me, spinning into the abyss until something swooped upward to meet and consume it . . .
The Singer. Waiting, ready, hungry.
. . . But I was ready too, and dove into the safer pain... of memory . . .
“These—numbers.” Distaste twisted Jarad’s lips, but I gave him credit. He’d listened. “You claim they prove this assertion of yours?”
“That we’re doomed?” I drawled, putting my feet up on the table and grinning at my father. “Oh, there’s no doubt at all.”
He sank into a chair. We were in my bedroom, which was more a library and office these days. My computing needs had dictated the elaborate interface discreetly built into an otherwise unremarkable table, but there was no hiding stacks of plas sheets or the pre-Stratification era chests bursting with the rolled, permanent parches used by the M’hiray before they’d met Humans and taken to newer technology.MoreLess
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