Read Online Furious Gulf by Gregory Benford - Free Book Online Page B

his scalp. Back in Citadel Bishop they had lots more water, so much he had even played in
     a bath of it once. Usually baths were reserved for couples, as part of the wedding ceremony.
    He was sorry when his charge was used up and the last dribbles gurgled away. He wouldn’t have another such treat for weeks.
    He sighed, dropped into his bunk—and his caller chimed. Cermo’s voice rang in his left ear. “Report to Command, Toby.”
    Toby groaned. He and Besen had planned on “resting up” together, which was Family slang for a little mutual bunk time in the
     free-for-all quarters. Unmarried Family enjoyed a period of complete sexual freedom, before the necessity of childbearing
     closed in, and Toby had been making the most of it. This feature of shipboard life he liked best—time to indulge the animal
     within. Well, it would have to wait.
    He called Besen and explained. She groaned. “Hey, and I got us time in a zero-grav section, too!”
    “Duty calls, my Juliet.”
    “So you did check that play. See, it’s
parting
that’s such sweet sorrow.”
    “In this case, it’s staying apart.”
    “Hurry it up, Romeo. Maybe we can still use the time I booked.”
    To his surprise, only his father and Cermo were in the Command Center. The two figures seemed dwarfed by the enormous ceramic-faced
     banks of computers, the arrays of sliding phosphorescent data. Cermo said rather stiffly, “We have need of your Shibo Aspect.”
    Toby studied his father’s face in the shimmer of blue-white data displays, remembering the last time they had talked about
     Shibo, but Killeen was wearing his firm Cap’n persona. His dark eyes gave nothing away. “Uh, okay. What’s up?”
    “Two things, really.” Killeen was brisk, efficient. “That engraving from the Chandelier, remember? We’re trying to decipher
     it. Give a squint.”
    “Ummm.” Toby was mystified. He summoned up his Shibo Personality. Her cool presence paused a long moment and then said,
    This “she” must’ve been quite a woman.
    Killeen said, “We can’t make sense of some parts of this.”
    Toby frowned. “What’s it mean, that every other line is written backwards?”
    Cermo shrugged. “Some kinda code?”
    He felt Shibo meshing with his oldest Aspects, calling up shreds of memory. She summed these and reported:
    This is an ancient skill. I saw such when I was a girl with Family Knight. This was written to be read digitally. Instead
     of returning to the left to scan each line, a digital mind simply reads the characters in backwards order as its field of
     view returns, right to left.
    Toby relayed this. Cermo said, “Seems screwy.”
    It saves time. Our practice of reading only after returning to the left each time is for simple minds.
    Killeen said doubtfully, “Chandelier folk could do such?”
    Family Knight did, once. Their ancient scrolls were writ so. I saw some as a girl.
    Toby repeated this. He could see by the compression of Killeen’s face that it had great weight for him. It was the burden
     of all the Families to live out lives of flight and desperation, knowing that once their kind had strode proud and tall at
     Galactic Center. Chandelier-makers, explorers, hunters of vacuum beasts, riders of great storms. But that was so long ago
     now that even legends only whispered about the heights of such far antiquity.
    “There was none such at the Citadel of Family Bishop,” Killeen said begrudgingly.
    Toby recalled seeing a wall in the mined Blaine Arcology that held some such message on it. He started to say so but Cermo
     cut him off with a wave. “Look, however they slung their alphabet. I can see this plain. It’s a story about a woman who led
     humanity. They won. But what’s all this stuff about pearl palaces?”
    “I figure that’s the Chandelier,” Killeen said distantly.
    “Makes sense,” Toby said, quickly referring to his Isaac Aspect. “That word ‘pearl’ means a jewel—a kind of foggy one, like
     thin cat