Ammonite Planets (Omnibus): Ammonite Galaxy #1-3 by Gillian Andrews Page B

you?”
    “No, Grace. I am speaking for myself.”
    “Then the orthogel is alive!”
    “If you mean as opposed to dead, decayed, yes.”
    “And you can think for yourself?”
    The orthogel hummed. “It seems so. This is very new to me. I … lived before in a different way … not interacting.”
    “But how come they never detected that you are alive?”
    Arcan made her fingers tingle again. “Parts of me are not alive … I move those parts towards any danger, withdraw the parts of me which are alive away from the danger.”
    Grace was thinking. “So when you got cross about the apprentices … yes, I see, they took all of the air out of the bubbles, and the apprentices died, and you did nothing.”
    “I was too young … not aware enough then to see what they were doing.” Arcan tried to explain. “Now, I can understand. Now I would have tried to do something to help them. But the new ones have air, and the old ones are all decayed. It is too late.” The lift flickered in colour. “Your people made me into a killer. I will not forgive them for that. I do not wish to kill.”
    “You didn’t kill. The Sellites did. My … ” she gave a short laugh, “… my caring people. Why would they kill the donor apprentices?”
    “I do not know.”
    “No, neither do I.” Grace closed her eyes, and felt a little nauseated.
    “Grace?”
    “What, Arcan?”
    “I am being used. I do not like it.”
    She thought about it. Orthogel was used in almost every aspect of life on Valhai. Its viscosity properties, its ability to flow freely uphill and other unique properties had been put to full utilization by the Sellites. “They did not know you were alive,” she said.
    “Perhaps I wasn’t then, not as you know it.”
    “Do you want me to tell them? Perhaps I must …”
    The whole lift shook, scaring her. “No,” It said. “I want you to promise you will say nothing. It is too soon, there is too much to understand. Promise!”
    “I promise, at least for the time being. I may not be able to extend that promise forever.”
    “Forever? Do your people live forever?”
    Grace laughed. “No, we live between fifty and a hundred years. I suppose the average would be about eighty. That’s eighty orbits of Coriolis about Sacras. You?”
    There was a very long pause, so long that Grace thought Arcan had left her alone again. “I have lived for about thirty thousand rotations.”
    “What? You can’t be that old!”
    “Why not? I suppose it might seem a long time to an entity as ephemeral as you, but I have only woken up now. Before was all different. Now I am beginning. Arcan is beginning. The rest, for you at least, is old.”
    “You can say that again!”
    “The rest, for you at least, is old.”
    “No, I meant … oh, never mind.” Grace was having trouble moving her fingers after such a long time signaling. “I need a break. Can we go on talking later today, in the afternoon?”
    “I am always here, Grace.”
    “Can you tell when somebody uses the lift?”
    “I am learning. These parts were forgotten. It is difficult to make my memory remember them. Once I do remember, then I am in contact again, I can feel them, speak through them, and I can feel when they are used, yes.”
    “See you later.”
    “I do not understand the word ‘see’.”
    “How do you perceive everything outside you … the stars, for example?”
    “I am aware of them through specialized cells which translate the radiation received.”
    “That is what I meant by ‘see’.”
    “Then, Grace, I will ‘see’ you later.”
    GRACE WENT BACK to the 48 th floor, and spent a few hours trying to rest. She found that pretty difficult. Her mind was buzzing with the implications. The Sellites had occupied Valhai for two thousand years! How could nobody have discovered that the orthogel was more than just a useful substance? Every thought led to a new question she needed to ask Arcan.
    She made a meal for her mother, and went to find her. That