Beacon 23: The Complete Novel by Hugh Howey Read Free Book Online Page B

another tour, SUR!” And how later, when the high wore off, and you came down from the survivor’s rush, and your mood went back to normal, you were like, “What the fuck did I just do?”
    I felt that kind of good right then.
    After a while, Rocky starts telling me about his home planet. I listen while I gaze out at the stars and the twinkle of aluminum tinsel.
    “Your race named my planet Orvo when you found it. After the name of a physician on one of the scout ships. I think he’d died the week before or something. Anyway, you probably assume that my planet and my name sound like some gibberish series of clicks and scratchy noises, and while that’s really fucking xenophobic, you’d be right.”
    Rocky makes a series of clicks and scratchy noises. I smile. Life is really good.
    “We don’t have a moon, and our sun is a very long way away. What heat we have comes from a radioactive core, and there’s very little tectonic activity, which makes for an incredibly still planet, covered with a few meters of water in most places, except for these really shallow ledges and flat islands where most of the cool stuff takes place. That was home.”
    “So, not space-faring, I assume?” I say.
    “Yeah, asshole, not space-faring.”
    “But sentient.”
    “Smarter than you.”
    I smile. “And your anatomy? I assume something like neurons?”
    “Not quite as simple as neurons, but similar. And yeah, we’re very social. So we developed sentience. Theory of mind and all that.”
    “What’s theory of mind?” I ask.
    Rocky pauses. Like he’s wondering if teaching a monkey is within his boundaries of patience.
    “It’s me being able to guess what you’re thinking,” he says.
    My brain is already drifting to a different topic. “What do you call a small group of your kind?” I ask.
    “Say what?”
    “Well, a group of cows is a herd. What’s a group of rocks. A bag?”
    “A bag of rocks?” Rocky asks.
    I laugh.
    “Fuck you.”
    “Rocky, you’re the best friend I’ve ever had.”
    “That settles it. I used to argue with the professor that there was no such thing as hell. I was wrong. I relent. I give up. I’ve found the joint.”
    “Where did you learn English?” I ask. “And who did you used to argue about heaven and hell with? This professor?”
    “We didn’t argue. We debated . We discussed . It’s what civilized people do. You should try it sometime.”
    “Okay.” I feel a little more sober. And for some reason, I don’t mind. I sit up, away from the GWB for a moment. “Tell me about your owner—”
    “I own me,” Rocky says.
    “Yeah, sorry.” I shake my head. “About this professor you were being sent to. On Oxford.”
    “I’m his research assistant,” Rocky says. “I just finished my internship on Delphi, was heading home. I work with Professor Bockman on human studies and consciousness.”
    “So you’re a biologist?” I ask, and a new level of stunned hits me, followed by a wave of obviousness. Of course this thing has a job. This being , not thing. So many layers of biases and assumptions to peel away. Just when I think I’m almost there—
    “Not a biologist,” Rocky says. “I’ve been studying under Professor Bockman for three years. He’s a philosopher.”
    Something clicks.
    Something funny.
    “Wait,” I say.
    “Don’t—” Rocky warns.
    “Are you telling me—?”
    “Ah, hell,” Rocky says.
    “You’re a philosopher’s stone?”
    •••
    It takes a solid minute or two to stop laughing. Lying on my side, curled up in a ball, I finally get my breath back and just stay there, gazing out at the stars, feeling contentment for the first time in . . . possibly forever. I think about the passenger liner that skated through unharmed, probably safe by no more than a few seconds of desperate struggle on my part, and how no one has asked me about that. How not a single labcoat asked me how that felt. How I sat right here, exhausted and crying, but feeling something