Radiant Read Online Free Page B

Explorer Youn Suu. First in her class at the Academy." (Cohen always introduced me that way. I'd actually been second in my class, but every time I tried to correct the captain's claim, he chose not to hear.) "Youn Suu will know what's going on, you watch." He swiveled back to me. "Five minutes ago, we received a distress call from our embassy on Cashleen. There's been trouble."
    "At the embassy?"
    "No. In a Cashling city named Zoonau. The embassy sent us footage."
    Cohen turned a dial on the arm of his chair. The bridge's main vidscreen changed from an unremarkable starscape to a picture of what must be Zoonau. It looked like a typical Cashling city—enclosed in a giant glass dome and devoted to one of the five "Worthy Themes" that fascinated the ancient city-builders: water, mirrors, shadow, illusion, and knots.
    Zoonau was dedicated to knots. The buildings were made of dull gray concrete, bland and unpainted, which might have produced a drab panorama; but every skyscraper body turned in twists and bends, even full loops and elaborate braids, made possible by carefully placed antigrav fields, which prevented unbalanced weight distributions from causing structural collapse. No street ran straight—they all intertwined, circling, crossing, passing over or under each other. It was a profusely contorted labyrinth: like living in a mandala.
    Fortunately, Cashling cities had computerized voice-guides built into every streetlamp, able to direct passersby toward any desired destination. And if you didn't like the roundabout nature of the streets, you could always get above the problem. Every twenty paces, knotted ropes rose from the ground, strung all the way to the dome. Cross-cords connected from rope to rope, along with the occasional solid rope bridge and macramé walkways that offered far more direct routes than the streets below. At one time, Cashlings must have been as nimble and strong as orangutans if they found such traverses practical.
    But no longer. Even if Cashlings were physically able to clamber through rope jungles, they couldn't be bothered. In the footage of Zoonau displayed on the vidscreen, every single Cashling was down on the ground... and not doing much of anything.
    Cashlings were roughly humanoid, with two legs, two arms, and one head; but they had almost no torso, so their gawky legs reached nearly to their armpits. Though none in the vidscreen picture wore clothes, they showed all the colors of the rainbow, plus quite a few shades no self-respecting rainbow would tolerate. Cashling skins were naturally adorned with vivid swirls, stripes, and spottles. Each individual had unique coloration, and most augmented their birth appearance by adding tattoos, slathering themselves with cosmetics, and randomly juggling their pigmentation genes.
    But making themselves more eye-catching was the Cashlings' only field of expertise. Otherwise, they were laughingstocks: a race of lazy fools, practically incapable of taking care of themselves. Their species would have died out from sheer incompetence, except that less decadent ancestors had created cities like Zoonau: fully automated self-repairing havens that satisfied all the residents' needs. Cashling cities served as nannies to creatures who remained pompously infantile their whole lives.
    As I watched, flecks of red began drifting from the top of Zoonau's dome. The flecks looked like blood-colored snow. Soft. Slightly fuzzy. Floating gently. Not real snow—more like airborne seeds. I'd seen pictures of Earth thistle fields lost in blizzards of their own thistledown... and numerous nonterrestrial plants also emitted clouds of offspring, sometimes so profusely they could smother unwary Explorers. I wasn't aware of such plants on Cashleen, but I'd never studied Cashling botany. Explorers cared more about the vegetation on uncharted planets than on worlds that were safely developed.
    The red seed-fall started to settle: a dusting of crimson on the streets, soon