Moonstar by David Gerrold Read Free Book Online

deserved it. If Potto was a merciless bully, then I was a spoiled little tattletale.
    â€œFortunately, we both outgrew the worst of ourselves, although every so often that terrible child I used to be still rises up again and insists on having her way. Well, why not? She’s earned it.”
    Jobe’s body was stretching. The slightly oily plumpness of her babyhood was melting into the wiry skinniness of first youth, the innocence before the blush. She was becoming a bright child, too intelligent in some ways, mostly the things she could learn from books; oddly naive in others, the things she needed to learn from people. Sometimes introspective and studious, sometimes deliberate, sometimes impulsive—she was the child that no one would dare to predict a future for (because none of them recognized yet the adult she was to become), yet all agreed she was destined for some kind of greatness. Or the gallows. She had that kind of selfishness.
    A drying heat had crept out of the west, pushed by a wind too sluggish to deserve a name; it lay upon the islands for a triad and the only relief was under the palms, or high up on the sides of Ty-Grambly, “The Grumbler,” where cold streams bubbled from the rock. Ty-Grambly was not an active volcano; instead she got her name from the sounds the winds made as they swept across her broken cone.
    Potto decided to defy the heat and go fishing. Porro had netting to finish and declined to accompany her. Neither Kaspe nor Olin were available, so Potto asked Jobe. Potto was nearly fifteen, Jobe had just turned twelve. Both were brown as beans from the winter sun; the eclipses had been shortened to minimize the changing seasons.
    Surprisingly, Jobe said yes. On this particular morning, they went out in one of the smaller catamarans, tacking before a southeast wind around the reef to the northern spur—a tiny, nameless spit of land on the lee side of the crescent, opposite Ty-Grambly’s bay.
    The waves slapped at the pontoons, the water occasionally splashing up over them. Potto had begun the cruise in one of her taunting moods, but by now Jobe was old enough to know how to cope with her better. She remarked only that Potto was exhibiting toxic behavior and should know better than that; she was probably taking years off her life with every insult. After a while, Potto saw that she wasn’t getting any reaction out of Jobe except moral self-righteousness, which was a bore, so she stopped; it had become an unproductive game. Teasing Jobe was no longer a way to get her to react—which had been Potto’s real motives, if unsensed, all along. Potto would not have realized it herself, but she was jealous of Porro’s closeness with Jobe, the way they played together, and she wanted some of it for herself. She was not jealous of Jobe for being close to her twin-sibling; she knew no one could ever be closer than herself; she was jealous of Porro for being so close to Jobe, who was one of the (although no one ever came right out and said it) “special” children in the family. Perhaps she was special because she was Hojanna’s; no matter, she was favored.
    They beached the craft on a secluded bank. Potto jumped eagerly to the hot sand, stretching and turning in the sun. She was tall for her age—almost as tall as an Erdik child, some had said—and getting taller every day. Grandpere Kuvig liked to joke that she could watch Potto grow. “Leave her out in the sun, water her roots well and we’ll have a new flagpole.” She had become lean and rangy, and had recently stopped wearing kilts, preferring a skimpier loin cloth instead. Anvar had poked Potto once, chiding her for her exhibitionism, but Potto had only shrugged. “All the ones are retying their skirts,” she said.
    Potto had also begun wearing makeup—another affectation that Anvar chided. This day, she had painted three small red V-stripes on her sternum. Jobe, in