Read Online City of Pearl by Karen Traviss - Free Book Online Page A

Was she back on the surface? She strained to look up as far as she could, expecting artificial illumination, bewildered at the mix of apparent high technology and simplicity.
    â€œOkay, what powers the lighting?” Shan asked.
    â€œSunlight,” said Sam.
    â€œHow?”
    â€œGathered at the surface, reflected down here.” He didn’t seem about to go into detail. So they were definitely underground. “It normally suffices.”
    â€œIs the climate that extreme?”
    â€œExtreme?”
    â€œYou live underground.”
    â€œNo, the winters get cold, but I would not say extreme.”
    His silence was sudden and complete. It was all she was getting out of him. Small talk had failed; her alternative interview technique, beating the crap out of the interviewee, was out of the question. She decided to save her questions until she met the community leaders. Sam was just the gofer.
    There were no people in the streets, and few sounds except the distant wail of a baby. She wondered if she were walking through an elaborate ruin. But there were lavender-flowered vines crawling up the walls towards the light, and the feel of life. She couldn’t smell anything through the biohaz filter, and yet she could almost taste fresh air.
    Whatever technology they had, its results were impressive for such a small colony. She stared at the circular windows and arched doorways, imagining a souk of sorts.
    And there it was ahead of her.
    A church.
    In an underground chamber, trillions of miles from Earth, a traditional Norman-style church rose up out of the rock floor with a spire that dissolved into the light above.
    â€œOh my,” she said.
    â€œSt. Francis. Out of the living rock.”
    On closer inspection the huge church was relatively modest. It had no elaborate stone ornamentation, and from the outside its stained glass looked like a craft class’first efforts. A block of stone set in the wall near the doors bore an inscription: GOVERNMENT WORK IS GOD’S WORK. .
    The entrance was a tunnel of round arches, and along the walls the space between them was taken up with a narrow wooden bench. She walked through behind Sam, an alien in a space suit, wandering into a church. From outside herself, she could see how bizarre it looked. The cool darkness swallowed her and her eyes took time to adjust again.
    What she saw revised her opinion of the glass. The leading, whatever it was, made no sense from the outside, but with the sun streaming in the images and colors were breathtaking. There were curious opal-white areas that looked as if someone had run out of ideas for halos: apart from that, the human figures—out of biblical stories, she imagined—were exquisite. Pools of brilliant emerald and violet and ruby were beginning a slow, majestic sweep across the altar.
    â€œJosh,” Sam called out, in a strained loud whisper. “It’s the task force.”
    So that was how they were seen. And maybe he was right. She had a problem: she was here with a handful of aid troops—nominally, anyway—and commercially sponsored researchers, in a world where the inhabitants clearly needed no aid and probably wanted no research.
    Josh bobbed out from behind a pillar and stood staring at her. He held a small plant tub in one hand and a bunch of pink and white hellebores in the other. No, they were artificial; very realistic, but they were paper. She noticed that before she truly noticed Josh. He was a broad and very lean man, leaner than most humans she was used to: forties maybe, wiry light hair, very pale blue eyes, a man whom other men would probably have liked to resemble. His clothing was the same utilitarian buff fabric as Sam’s, except the top buttoned up like a frock coat.
    â€œCommander,” he said politely. He put the tub down and held out his hand for shaking.
    She took it as firmly as she could in her glove, and tried again. “Superintendent. I’m a police