Starship Spring Read Online Free Page B

pretty, but rather… striking .
    Now she transferred her attention from her lover and regarded the surrounding rainforest. Her big eyes darted, and I tried to catch what she was looking at. She smiled to herself a little later, and her rather serious face was transformed.
    Hannah had been watching her, evidently. “What is it, Kee?”
    Without turning her gaze from the rainforest, Kee said, “They are watching us, my people.”
    “I’ve noticed them,” I said. “When we were travelling up here in the cable car, and again last night.”
    “They are curious,” Kee said. “They have little contact with humans.”
    Hannah said, “I’ve heard they don’t even have much to do with the Ashentay who do mix with us humans.”
    Kee was a while replying. “They are a strange people,” she said at last. “Almost a different race. They believe that they are the True People.”
    I looked at her. “The True People?”
    She smiled again, her lips a little longer than any humans—and the expression on her face, then, with her exothalmic eyes and attenuated lips, was almost reptilian. “They claim that because we—my people—left the interior and moved to the coast, and took up a different way, that we no longer follow the true path, laid down by our ancestors, the True People.”
    Hannah propped herself up on an elbow, lifted her sunglasses and said, “What is the true path, Kee?”
    “We have two differing belief systems, Hannah. My people, the coastal people, we believe that we were created by a god who selected this planet as ours. But the interior tribes, they believe that we are descended from a mighty race that once spanned the galaxy, a race with technology even more advanced than your own—but a peaceful race which used their knowledge and power to help other, less developed races.”
    “But how did they come to live on Ashentay?” Hannah asked.
    “According to the True People’s beliefs, our great forbears evolved, decided that the technological way was not the right way, and came to Chalcedony—or Ashent—as we call it, turned their back on technology and lived in union with the rainforest.”
    “But you don’t believe that?” I said.
    Kee lifted a hand. “Perhaps it is true,” she said cryptically.
    She lay back and closed her massive eyes, and I smiled at Hannah and watched Hawk as he emerged dripping from the pool, Ella dancing in his wake.
    He flopped down beside us. “She’s exhausted me. I thought we came here for a rest?”
    I nearly said something along the lines that rest was a rarity when you had a child—but stopped myself. Hawk and Kee could not have children. I suspected, by the way Hawk took every opportunity to play with Ella, that he would relish being a father.
    We lay in silence for a while, luxuriating under the warm spring sun and listening to the insect sounds in the rainforest. Hawk’s bass rumble broke the silence a little later.
    “The odd thing is, you know, I knew we were coming here.”
    I turned my head. “What do you mean?”
    He lodged his muscled arms beneath his occipital console and stared up through the swaying rainforest canopy. “Way before Maddie contacted me and told me about Matt’s suggestion, I knew.”
    “I never had you down as psychic, Hawk,” Hannah said.
    He grunted. “It was odd—not at the time, but later, when I heard from Maddie and Matt.”
    “Are you going to tell us,” I said, “or does Hannah have to apply her interrogation techniques on you?”
    Hawk laughed, sat up and took a long swig of iced juice. “We’d just landed on El Habib, Janata IV. This was about three months ago, halfway through the tour. I was ready for home then, I can tell you. Oh, the Stardrift was spectacular, but I’d rather not have done it with a bunch of pernickety tourists.” He grunted again. “I’m really not good at playing the polite starship captain to a bunch of over-privileged millionaires.”
    “You were telling us about your remarkable