Foreigner by Robert J. Sawyer Read Free Book Online Page A

see the little array of glass inlays that had caused the flashing.
    A shallow closet had been revealed. Inside were three metal boxes. Each had embossed on its side the same word Garios had traced out on the wall panel. The boxes had handles sticking out of their sides. Novato pulled on one of the handles, and the box came out of its holder. A tail of flexible clear strands stuck out of its back connecting it to the rear of its holding compartment, but as Novato pulled a little harder, the strands came loose. At the end, they were bundled together in a little plug, as if they’d been designed to come out this way.
    The box itself had clamps on its side, holding the lid securely on. Novato had seen clamps like this several times aboard the ark. They required an uncomfortable backward bending of the fingers to undo, but she’d gotten the hang of it over time. She opened the box.
    Inside was orange dust.
    Garios loomed in for a peek. “Rust,” he said. “Whatever was in there decayed long ago.” He backed away.
    Novato put her hand in the box and wiggled her fingers, looking for any fragment that hadn’t completely decayed. The orange dust felt strange. Warm. A lot warmer than it had any right to be. And it wasn’t sharp like iron filings. Rather, it was soft, like talcum, and slightly heavier than it looked, as if the material was very dense. Novato didn’t bring it too close to her face; she was afraid of inhaling the powder.
    Just dust, that’s all it was. Ancient dust.
    She knelt down and upended the box onto Garios’s floor plan, hoping there would be something inside all the dust. But the orange grains just sifted out; it seemed to be a uniformly fine grade. The dust made a good-sized mountain in the center of the plan. Individual grains spilled toward the sheet’s edge.
    Disappointed, Novato turned her attention to the two boxes still embedded in the wall. The second one had apparently been damaged in the ark’s crash and its contents had long since escaped through a crack in the container’s bottom. The third box was rusted or fused to its holder. They tried again and again for an extended period, but no amount of tugging by either her or Garios could dislodge it.
    Novato sighed and turned around.
    What the — ?
    The mound of orange dust was no longer centered on the floor plan. In fact, the center of the plan was completely clear and the mound was now half on and half off the sheet of leather.
    It must be flowing downhill, thought Novato.
    And then she realized that wasn’t right at all.
    The dust, the ancient orange dust, was flowing, all right, but it was flowing uphill, heading toward the corridor that led to the double-doored room.
    “They weren’t just dumb animals, were they?” said Captain Keenir of the Dasheter, his tail swishing back and forth across the beach. “They were people.”
    Toroca pointed at the body of the Other, lying in a pool of blood. “That one was wearing copper jewelry,” he said.
    “And the one we, ah, encountered was also sporting jewelry,” said Babnol, who had removed her sash and was using it to wipe her face clean of blood.
    “The braincases were bigger than those of any animal,” Toroca said. “So, yes, they were people, of a kind. Thinking beings.”
    “And we’ve killed two of them,” said Babnol, shaking her head. “I — I don’t know why I reacted the way I did. It was as though the sight of the — the thing was enough to trigger dagamant. I felt as if my territory had been invaded. My claws popped out, and then everything became a blur. Next thing I knew, Spalton and I were standing over the dead body.” She paused. “What was left of the body, that is.”
    “You didn’t feel the same thing?” Keenir said to Toroca, almost imploringly, as if seeking absolution.
    Toroca’s tail swished. “No. The appearance of the Other was startling, but it didn’t trigger any rage in me.”
    “You’re unusual, of course,” said Babnol matter-of-factly.