Free Valhai (The Ammonite Galaxy) by Gillian Andrews Page A

part of you. I feel so insignificant against such a display of age. I am seeing you as you used to be thousands, millions, even billions of years ago. It makes it hard to think that my tiny life is of any moment at all.
    Without consciously meaning to, her steps took her back to the black lake, back to where the donor apprentices were. She sat down next to the edge of the lake, and took a sip from her water bottle. It was quiet again now, there was no movement anywhere to disturb the peace of the spot.
    The orthogel in front of her was tempting in its very immobility, and she put her hand to the surface. Even though she was protected by the light bodywrap around her fingers, she could feel the substance.
    “AARGH!” She leapt back, terrified. Something had touched her hand, through the orthogel. She almost choked before she managed to get control of her breathing again, so that the mask pack could work efficiently.
    There was nothing in the lake that could hurt her. She knew that there were no vertebrate animals on Valhai, except those imported by the Sells and bound to remain under the aerated covers especially made for them. The only life which had been found on the surface of the small planet was microscopic, and the reason that the orthogel was perceived as black. It was full of tiny chemotrophs. Nothing nearly big enough to push at her hand.
    “Nothing scary,” she assured herself nervously. “So . . . that means that you have nothing to be afraid of. Which in its turn means that you can go back there and put your hand back because you probably imagined it.”
    She forced herself to go back to the shore, and to place her hand down onto the black surface again. At first nothing happened. And then, one by one, and very slowly as if to avoid scaring her again, she felt a pressure on her fingers.
    She snatched her hand back. But nothing had hurt her, had it? So after waiting for a few moments she tried again. Again she felt the pressure against her hands. She moved her own fingers, and there was an immediate response which felt almost eager. The sequence was repeated, three times, as if to congratulate her.
    The apprentices! The donor apprentices must have found a way to communicate with her! She couldn’t think how, but there didn’t seem to be any other explanation possible either. She moved her fingers again against the orthogel. No doubt about it, the pressure which was instantly returned was trying to communicate with her. She felt sure of it.
    She realized that the same fingers were being pressed insistently, in the same order. She was sure that they were trying to tell her something, whoever they were. But what? Grace returned the sequence so that they knew that she had received the communication, but she couldn’t translate it into anything.
    In the end she was forced by the bleeping of the last mask pack to leave the dark lake. She pressed both hands to the surface, imitating the Valhai way to say goodbye. The orthogel duly pressed back on all her fingertips. Whoever it was had seemed to understand.
    Grace made her way back home in a daze. What had happened was incredible, but there was nobody she could tell about it. She was outside illegally, and in any case she wouldn’t be believed. For a moment she contemplated telling Vion, but decided that even he might feel obligated to inform the authorities. She didn’t think he would, but it didn’t seem fair to put him in the position of having to choose.
    Although it was now quite late at night, the sky remained almost exactly as it always did. Variations in the light were due to the orbit of Sacras, the binary star; and small changes in the Valhai orbit around its triangular stable point. So the only thing which had changed since she had come out several hours ago was the position of the stars in the sky. The light was exactly as before. It seemed that time stood still on Valhai, because there was nothing to separate day from night, nothing to mark the