Allotropes (an Ell Donsaii story #8) Read Online Free Page A

of the jets gone, Sigwald’s feet settled to the roadway.
    Ell asked Allan to have Sigwald turn around, scanning the surroundings. Back a ways she could see the darker green plants Sigwald had first encountered. Distantly she noticed that the jets on Sigwald’s feet had left a trail in the dust on the road. For a moment she wondered if she should break the trail by having Sigwald fly higher for a while. Then she decided that that would be pointless. After all, she wanted to meet the inhabitants. It would be counterproductive to hide Sigwald’s presence.
    Ell asked Allan to have Sigwald reach out and pull the top of one of the plants toward himself. A tufted brown section at the top had multiple pods which, when crushed, exuded a crumbly brown paste. Without direct control over the waldo, every step of this took time as Ell verbally directed Sigwald through Allan. Then it required even more time for Ell to give instructions correcting clumsy moves and misunderstandings about what she had intended for Sigwald to do. AIs were great at moving things like cars and planes from one mapped GPS destination to another. Moving the hand on a waldo to accomplish a new 3D task remained far more difficult. An AI could repeat a move that had been done once by a human and do it perfectly over and over. But figuring out how to reach out and grab something and move it in a specific manner when told to, a simple task for the human brain, remained difficult for an AI.
    The leaves of this new type of plant began a little below the fruiting tuft. They seemed a little wider than typical wheat or oat leaves but narrower than corn leaves. Ell was about to have Sigwald try to pull a plant up and look at the roots when the door of her car opened and Shan leaned down, “Is something wrong?”
    Ell smiled up at him. He looked concerned. She held up a finger to get him to wait a second. To Allan she said, “Put a specimen in the DNA assay kit , then keep going the same direction you were going before.” She stepped up out of the car and put her arms around Shan’s neck, “Hey there Mr. Fiancé.”
    “Hey there yourself. I saw your car pull up and thought you’d be right in to give me the affection I need… Ten minutes later you’re still sitting out here in your car!” He frowned, “Something happening on Tau Ceti?”
    Ell blinked and tilted her head questioningly, wondering why he was asking about Tau Ceti.
    “You know, ‘cause you’re ‘getting DNA specimens’ and ‘going the same direction.’”
    “Oh… yeah.” Ell said, feeling guilty for letting him continue thinking that she’d been talking about Tau Ceti. She didn’t want to keep secrets from Shan, but so far she hadn’t told anyone but Emma about the Sigma Draconis ringworld. She kind of regretted telling Emma and had no idea what she’d do when people began demanding to know what she’d found on worlds around other stars. On the other hand, she trusted Shan with her life and could use someone to talk to about the ringworld and its implications. She grinned and leaned into him as they walked up the brick path to his little house. “Did you make me a nice dinner?”
     
    Shan watched bemusedly as Raquel ate three of the large fish tacos he’d made.
    “These are great!” she said, then leaned forward on her elbows to look into his eyes. “I need some advice.”
    He shrugged. “Sure. What can I give you advice on?”
    “Well, first, I apologize for letting you think I was talking about Tau Ceti out there in my car. Actually, I was talking to Allan about Sigma Draconis.”
    “Really? I didn’t know you’d reached any other stars.”
    “Well, we’ve reached a world around Alpha Centauri. It has life on it but doesn’t seem to have anything multicellular. At least not that we can see from orbit. We’ve actually got some rockets nearing several other stars that don’t even have reasonably sized planets in the liquid water zone. We’re thinking of offering those