Bright's Light Read Free

used every bit of her strength to find and press another button. Any other button. As her trajectory slowed, she gritted her teeth and tried to straighten her head. But the jetpack held her in a twisted, off-kilter hover before failing entirely. She plowed into the corner like a cheap skiddle and lay in a heap on the floor, trying to catch her breath. She moved her head and limbs to make sure nothing was broken. Then she glanced up to gauge the crowd’s response. They had thirty seconds after a landing to officially register their order.
    All over the room lights winked off, until it was dark but for the dance lights.
    A moment later, the Mistress’s powerful voice pierced the throbbing music from above.
    “And now, FON!” she cried. “Put your wands in the air for FON!”
    Every order wand in the place lit up before Fon even cleared the dressing room.
    Bright crawled to her knees and convinced her wrenched neck to hold up her head. She saw Fon poised on the platform, wearing a jetpack Bright had never seen before. Fon held a microphone to her lips.
    “Let’s do the jetpack and do it right!” Fon shouted.
    The crowd roared like a single eager being. Fon leapt off the railing. She flew so fast that her halo left a light trail behind her, as though her head were on fire with pink lights. She slowed, executed three lazy, perfect somersaults followed by a precise pair of aerial figure eights, then drifted to the floor, glorious in Kevlar, her perfectly tinted legs set ablaze by the insistent illumination from the floor, where every wand was lit and bobbing frantically as the clients put in their orders, hoping they had enough credits to spend the night dancing and having a blast with Fon.
    Bright sank back down, unstrapped her jetpack, and sighed heavily. That was the last time she would ever buy a jetpack on sale.

02.00
    Grassly pushed himself away from his worktable. He felt like sweeping his tools onto the floor as a grand gesture, but he didn’t want to make a mess that he’d later have to clean up.
    Instead, he checked the surveillance feed and stared at the images of favours and clients doing the slip slide with a triple twist. He was instantly entranced and jumped up to follow along with their steps. As hard as he worked on the light, he worked even harder at his dancing, but he still couldn’t figure out how to do the triple twist. The ancestors, while perverse in countless ways, had incredible dance skill.
    He was tucked away in his workshop, hidden deep in the recesses of the House of Gear, working on the latest version of the light. Undercover among the last remnants of the ancestors, he was finding his Sending far more challenging than he’d imagined. The ancestors truly were the most annoying creatures in the Charted Territories. Trying to copy the relentless innovation and athleticism of their dancing was the only thing keeping him sane. The dancing also helped him, at least for brief periods, to forget the many complications of his two-year odyssey to save the ancestors.
    For starters, the substance he’d used to seal his ship to the skin of the Store—the seal that prevented the lingering biotoxins from the war-ravaged environment from slipping inside and killing everyone—was being eaten away by the poisons. He’d miscalculated just how polluted Earth was and how long the seal would have to last. In addition, the ancestors’ behaviours and mores were nearly impossible for a rational being to understand, even though their main communication and data system, known as the feed, was not difficult to hack. Worst of all, the light was giving him trouble.
    The idea for the light came from the ancestors’ own historical documents. When Grassly had reached low Earth orbit, he’d discovered a small group of abandoned ships endlessly circling the devastated planet. Inside one of those ships were the corpses of several ancestors and the partial remains of a single book. All that was left of
Enlightenment