Ember Read Free Page B

had brought with them when they crashed. One still struggled to free itself, its hooklike forelegs peddling in front of its single compound eye.
    â€œNo, thanks.”
    â€œOnly He can move the stars,” she said, without offense.
    I stepped out and as soon as the glass doors opened, the heavy, humid heat hit me along with the brilliant sensory overload that was Hangfei’s Ginzho district in early evening. The border zone had been all squat military structures and arid, frozen rock. Even Lobnya, while quite large, didn’t even begin to approach Hangfei. Buildings towered all around me, monoliths of brilliant light and color stretching up past the canopy of flashing, blinking signs that extended over the congested streets from either side. Signs in hanzi, pinyin, and English filled every available space, competing for attention with sparkling light shows. Street traffic flowed around the central traffic star, floodlights in the center aimed up at the bronze statue of Military Governor Jianguo Hwong. High above, streams of air traffic painted streaks of light across the night sky as they zipped along three layers of skyway. Crowds of people milled around me as I got my bearings, in waves of pedestrian and bicycle traffic that flowed among shop fronts and street-vendor carts.
    A group of protesters, larger and more rowdy than I’d been used to seeing before my tour, had assembled on the other side of the street. I could see their signs sticking up above the mob. Down the main drag in front of me, off in the distance, the faint blue light of the haan force-field dome glowed. Behind it, looming above even the tallest buildings, sat the haan ship, a dark mountain with only a handful of flashing lights to mark its outline.
    â€œDragan Shao?”
    I turned and saw that an ad box mounted on a lamppost had targeted me, the A.I.’s logo bobbing on its screen.
    â€œExcuse me,” it said, “but it appears you have been on a military tour at the border zone for three years now.”
    â€œThat’s true.”
    It lowered its voice. “Do you know what many returning military men crave more than anything?”
    â€œWhat’s that?”
    â€œFemale companionship,” it said in a sotto voce. “My records have you down as heterosexual, is that still accurate?”
    â€œI’m all set for now, thanks.”
    One of the protesters on the other side of the street hollered something, waving his fist. They were calling on Governor Hwong to evict the haan, I thought. Or maybe to cut off their food supply or to trip the failsafe graviton lenses that surrounded their ship and destroy them. I’m not sure they knew what they wanted. They were tired of being hungry, and they were wary of the haan. I remembered what Olek had said about the haan controlling our minds, something a lot of foreigners thought. If that were true, everyone would be complacent, and docile. I wished he could have seen these people, and their anger.
    On one of the big screens above the protesters, an image of a haan appeared. They began to boo even as others slowed down to watch. The haan looked down, his big saucer-shaped eyes an interesting shade of glowing orange-yellow. He bowed his wide head a little as the three dark pupils in each one did a slow revolution.
    â€œOnly three months left until the official release of Phase Three technologies,” he said, his voice box flickering as his smooth, calm voice issued forth. “Our most exciting package yet.”
    â€œGo back where you came from!” one of the protesters screamed. Someone threw an empty can at the screen, but it fell far short of its target.
    The haan wore the same style of suit that they’d been wearing when I left several years back, with a draping jacket that hung almost like a cape. The top buttons of his shirt had been left undone to show his chest and the honeycombed cage of ribs visible beneath the skin there. Behind the