Hidden in Sight Read Online Free

fragmentation, resulting in a smaller, presumably satiated adult, and a litter—literally—of tiny pre-Tumbler crystals dropped wherever that Tumbler had been roaming at the time. Somehow, during Eclipse on the sunside of Picco’s Moon, those crystals were recovered by their proud parent and given the opportunity to grow.
    Somehow. This was where Ersh grew annoyingly vague and, when pressed for details, had begun inconveniently timing my indoor tasks during the sunny side of Eclipse.
    Skalet, however, didn’t care what I learned, as long as she didn’t have to teach me.
    I bounded up the last, worn stone step to the top of Ersh’s mountain and paused to pant a moment. Usually I avoided the place, unless it was one of those times Ersh insisted the sharing of the Web be done here, but there really was no better view. Just in time. The orange rim of Picco was disappearing behind the horizon, cut into a fanged grin by the distant range of mountains. Sunlight—real, full spectrum, right from the source light—poured over the surface, losing the struggle where Picco’s reflection still ruled, but elsewhere striking the crystalline facets etched on every slope and valley in a display that explained quite clearly why this was a gem dealer’s notion of paradise.
    Gem dealers. I grinned, walking to the cliff’s edge, stopping a comforting number of body lengths short. While Ersh disapproved of irony on general principle, given how often it involved disaster for the species involved in mutual misconception, I couldn’t help but take special pleasure in this particular case. The most prized gems from Picco’s Moon? Tumbler excretions. Those legitimate dealers—hired by the Tumblers for waste removal and treatment around their shipcity, the only densely populated area—did their utmost to regulate off-Moon availability and so keep up the price of the beautiful stones, but there was, naturally, a thriving black market fed by those fools willing to try landing where level merely implied nonperpendicular.
    To their credit, the Tumblers were dismayed by this risky traffic in defecation and regularly tried to explain, but something kept being lost in the translation of their polite phrase: “ritual leavings.”
    I sat on my haunches, feeling the warmth of the Sun’s rays on my back, and looked for Tumblers engaged in Eclipse activities, feeling deliciously naughty—especially with Skalet to take the blame when, not if, Ersh found out.
    But what I saw was a midsized cargo shuttle with no markings, banking low in front of Ersh’s mountain, heading to our landing pad.
    If this wasn’t Ersh returning too soon from her mysterious trip, or web-kin with a particularly large present, Skalet was going to be in more trouble than I’d hoped.
    Â 
    The advantage of a shared secret was a mutual desire to keep it. I had no doubt Skalet knew I was nearby, but also knew this time she wouldn’t reveal my hiding place. Not to her guest.
    A non-Web guest. Hair persisted in rising along my spine. Alien. Human.
    And, most intriguing of all, male.
    I held the genetic instructions for Human within my web-mass, along with all other species the Web had assimilated, but were I or any of my web-kin to take that form, we would be female. Cycling didn’t change who we were—simply what we were. As a result, I’d never been this close to a male Human before.
    Shared memory wasn’t everything , I realized, aware this was something Ersh had despaired, loudly, I’d ever learn to appreciate.
    He was as tall as Skalet, not as whipcord thin, but gracefully built. The wind picked up curly locks of black hair and tossed them in his face—surely distracting, but he didn’t appear to notice. No tattoos. Perhaps not Kraal.
    Or not wanting to appear Kraal , I thought abruptly, enjoying this live game of strategy far more than any of Skalet’s simulations. Kraal