Free The Cydonian Pyramid by Pete Hautman Page A

adjusted, she noticed several clouds, or patches of mist, drifting in midair. They moved as if they were alive, but faded when she tried to look directly at them.
    She saw no Pure Girls.
    At various points during the day, Lia had been frightened, confused, dumbfounded, and despairing. Now she felt simply numb. How had she come to this strange, incomprehensible place with this strange, incomprehensible man? Artur gazed proudly over his cluttered, filthy domain, a little smile peeking through his beard.
    “Where are the girls?” Lia asked.
    “They are waiting,” he said.
    She thought about Yar Song — what would
she
do? Probably kick Artur in the face and run. Lia did not think she could kick that high, but she could run. Artur seemed to sense the direction of her thoughts. He dropped a hand to her shoulder.
    “Come, let us greet them.” He guided her toward the far end of the barn. It was darker — more tables and benches and machinery, more filth. The floating, misty things followed. He stopped in front of a large table with a glassy top.
    “Look about and tell me what you see in the air,” he said.
    Lia shook her head helplessly. One of the floating things settled directly before her. She could see it better when she looked slightly to the side and blurred her eyes. It was person-shaped, and it seemed to be looking at her.
    “Ghosts,” she said.
    Artur laughed and touched the edge of the table. Its top flashed and glowed. Several small icons appeared, hovering above its surface. It was a larger version of the entertainment table in the Palace of the Pure Girls. One of the clouds drifted across the table and coalesced into the image of a girl, wearing a simple silvery-gray shift.
    “Hello, Lah Lia,” said the girl.
    Lia felt her heart in her throat. She could not breathe.
    “Lah Kim?” The girl looked exactly like Kim, the Pure Girl whose blood moon had preceded Lia’s, but the scarlet birthmark on her forehead was missing.
    The girl laughed delightedly. “You remember me!”
    Lia stepped forward and reached out to touch her. Her hand passed through Lah Kim’s arm, leaving behind a storm of pixels.
    “That tickles,” said Lah Kim as her image reformed itself.
    “You’re not real,” Lia said.
    “I certainly
am
real!”
    “You have no birthmark,” Lia said.
    “I did not like it. I made it go away.”
    Another misty form drifted over the table and swam into focus. A Pure Girl, but one Lia did not know.
    “Hello, Lah Lia,” said the new girl. “I am Lah Glah.”
    Lia looked at Artur. “They are like your horse,” she said.
    “No,” Artur said. “Gort — the Gort you met in the city — was a recorded projection. These girls are as real as you or I.”
    “They have no substance,” Lia said.
    “They have transcended.”
    “What are they?” she asked.
    He was smiling as proudly as a father displaying his newborn child.
    “I call them Klaatu.”

L AH K IM AND L AH G LAH WERE JOINED OVER THE TABLE by a grinning dark-haired boy in Boggsian garb. He introduced himself as Aaron.
    “We’re going feather skipping,” he said to Lia. “Do you want to come?”
    “What is feather skipping?” Lia asked.
    “She’s still corporeal, Aaron!” said Lah Kim. “She can’t skip.”
    “She could watch.”
    “What fun is that?”
    Another figure drifted into focus above the table — a woman with long reddish hair, wearing a polka-dot dress. She peered intently at Lia, then said something in a strange language.
    Lia shook her head. The woman repeated what she had said. It sounded like
inglés,
but with a peculiar accent that made it impossible to understand.
    “She wants to know if you are from Hope Well,” said Lah Kim.
    “What is Hope Well?”
    “We don’t know. She asks everybody the same question.”
    The woman in the polka-dot dress floated off.
    More Klaatu — all of them young — crowded into the space above the table, sometimes jostling the others aside to make room, sometimes