The Braided World Read Free Page B

on his friend's shoulder. “You'll do just fine, Anton. I'll be there to help you. OK?”
    He got a smile in return. “I think I'm going to need it. Thanks.”
    Bailey rose. “This was a tough call, tough on all of us. Now, let's get some sleep, if we can.” Before she turned to go, she paused long enough to say: “So, Anton, who's down there, then?” She tilted her head toward the wall screen, wondering what the
Restorations
new captain thought the mission was facing.
    Anton's color had returned, and as he stood, he looked every bit a captain. “Humans,” he said. “Strangers.”
    The concise summary gave her pause. This expedition would soon learn how human, how strange. She was more than ready to get on with it. To do, at the end of her life, one good thing. After a lifetime of self-indulgence, it was a nice plan.
    Feeling energized, she decided to skip sleep and get her packing done instead. Time enough in the morning to inform Anton that she was going along on the ground mission.
    He was the captain, now. He deserved to know.

MONARCH OF THE RIVERS

ONE

    Deep in the night, the river flowed: a black, hot flood , here in this drowned world. Rain hurled down, peppering the thatch roof, filling the river ever higher. From the water's surface, wavering lights from electric lamps twisted back up, cut to ribbons.
    Anton Prados sat outside the screened room where Nick Venning slept in his hammock. On the narrow walkway, with the river sliding under the stilted platform, Anton waited out his guard duty shift, a precaution in this land of disturbingly familiar beings. He thought he heard a small plop—a stone or a gecko falling into the river. His hand twitched on his empty holster, where his gun should have been. Confiscated by the monarch of the rivers. For the past two weeks, they'd been guests of the royal pavilion, taking the king's lavish meals, waited upon by his servants. Prisoners in silk, as Anton thought of it.
    Still, it was a decent reception from a semi-industrial people with no concept of the galaxy, and no idea why the humans should think that anyone had called them. It could have been worse. Anton and his crew were rather likedinner guests arriving on the wrong night, on the wrong doorstep. The
Restoration
was lucky not to be turned away.
    The shuttle had landed on a rock plateau in the middle of the populated delta lands. It was soon greeted by a throng of people arriving in skiffs, men and women with bronze skin and a range of weapons from digging tools to primitive pistols. Anton walked unarmed into their midst. It was a good tactic. Not that they were entirely surprised to see him. They had telescopes. They'd known visitors were here. Anton admired their poise, since his own crew continued to be dumbfounded by the presence of what looked like human beings thirty light-years from Earth.
    Now, as he sat outside the monarch's palace, he watched the shadows of the residents pass to and fro behind the thin wall panels. The Dassa, as they called themselves. Descended, surely, from humans on Earth. Genetic diversity
sequestered
, as the Message said.
    Though not always dark-eyed, they were bronze-skinned—altered or selected for the tropical environs, Zhen had guessed. Because they had to live in the hot latitudes of the planet. Because of how they reproduced.
    Around him, the tiers of the royal compound stacked up to three stories, depending on the height of the foundation stilts. Under it all, the palace river turbines provided electricity. Across the small inlet, where the palace sprawled along the river, the women on the ground mission, Bailey and Zhen, were assigned quarters. Their light was out. Sleeping.
    A gust of wind puffed at the woven reed wall, bearing pungent odors of bloated wood and mud. Dimly, he could make out small bridges here and there, inundated by water, arched wooden trestles protruding like the backs of sea monsters.
    Geckos crawled freely up the stilts from the water to catch