Read Online Georgia on My Mind and Other Places by Charles Sheffield - Free Book Online

dining area. His head rested on the hard table, he was snoring, and in front of him sat a cold and untouched plate of food.
    She took a seat cushion and eased it under his gaunt cheek. She did it as gently as possible but the disturbance awoke him. He stared at her, bleary-eyed.
    “Mmph. What time is it?”
    “Four hours after noon. You look terrible. Why don’t you go to bed and get some real sleep?”
    “I was going to. As soon as I’d eaten. I was coming to see you. To show you.” He was mumbling, still hardly awake, working his jaw from side to side and turning his head to ease the muscles of his stiffened neck. “I don’t have all you need. Look for more as soon as I’m rested. But I have something.”
    “You’re inside the Sigil ship?”
    “Five days ago. Not too hard. Difficult part is time-sharing the monitors. So our observations won’t be noticed. And then getting information out.” Gilden stood up, leaning against Derli for balance. “Come on, if you want to see it. Krieg, too.”
    “He’s not here. He flew to Montmorin for a meeting with a Lucidar group. I think there’s a big fight brewing with Earth. He’ll be back tomorrow.”
    “Mm.” Gilden hardly seemed interested, leading the way into his own living quarters. “Doesn’t matter. Unless you need him.”
    “For my work? I don’t. Valmar started out as a biologist, but he hasn’t done any real research or analysis for years. I don’t need him.”
    Gilden grunted. He was already at work, setting up a linked series of displays. “Take a look at this first. It’s just a summary, an overview of what we’ve got. When you see what’s here and what’s missing, you can tell me where I should concentrate my efforts tomorrow.” He stood up and gestured to his seat.
    “What about you?” But Derli sat down. The temptation was too great. A first image was already forming on the screen, of what could be an interior chamber of the Sigil ship.
    “I’m going to take a shower while you do a run-through. You don’t need me for that—probably manage better without me.”
    She said nothing. Gilden knew why. He had developed the displays slowly and painfully, over days of frustrating effort, but even that had been fascinating. For Derli the impact would be a thousand times as great.
    He stood staring at her in silence for a couple of minutes. Then he retreated quietly to the bathhouse. Derli did not even notice his departure.
    * * *
    Progress was slow, but finally overwhelming. For the first couple of minutes of display Derli saw only blurry green outlines of two Sigil, moving jerkily from place to place. Frequent incomprehensible breaks or swirls of random color provided a maddening distraction, as did passing glimpses of what seemed to be chamber ceilings and floors.
    But then, as Gilden’s mastery of the interaction technique had slowly deepened, the recorded images improved in focus, depth, color, and detail. Derli could discern odd features of the Sigil ship interior. The chamber walls had a convoluted, organic look to them, unlike anything constructed by humans. Even the control banks lacked clean, hard, functional outlines. She waited, impatient but understanding. Her interest was in the biology of the Sigil but she was not the only customer for Gilden’s magic. Others cared to know about the ship, not its occupants.
    Finally, as though responding to Derli’s impatience, the display settled down to show the Sigil themselves. Derli leaned forward. They were not wearing the suits that had cloaked every record in the Lucidar data banks. She confirmed overall structure. Both Sigil were certainly bipedal, with bilateral symmetry. Now that she could see their external colors, she learned that the legs and arms springing from the forward-curving torso were a bright orange-red. The trunk was banded, in crimson and white for the smaller Sigil and in darker red and white for the other. Only the head of each was dark. The prominent muzzles,