Strata by Terry Pratchett Read Free Book Online Page B

with binocular vision and a domed skull and several walruses in its ancestry. It had two tusks said to have been used originally for scraping molluscs from the beds of freezing oceans, now as useless as the vermiform appendix, and carved into status-denoting shapes. Its snout—
    ‘If you have klite fliniffed?’ she lisped reproachfully.
    There was something altogether familiar about some of those tusk carvings. Kin stuck her fingers in the corners of her mouth for tuscal effects and tried her Shandi.
    ‘I am Relative/Almost-Parched-And-Dry and the kung is – Small-stain-go-far,’ she spat. ‘I greet you in all grease, O shand of the Lower Conwexi Delta Moraine Region, unless I am very much mistaken.’
    ‘I congratulate you on your mastery of the Speech,’ said the shand graciously. ‘My name is fifty-six syllables long, but you may call me Silver. Are you coming to the flat world? Is the kung dangerous? He looks uneasy.’
    ‘I think it’s because he can’t understandShandi. On the other hand, all kung look uneasy. It’s probably something to do with the flash tides. This one’s human, by the way, don’t press the point.’
    ‘What are you talking about?’ Marco asked suspiciously.
    By the time Silver had led them into the ship’s observation cabin they had reached a compromise. Kin and Marco spoke to Silver in allspeak, which the shand understood but, because of her tusks, could not speak, Silver spoke in shandi, which she could pronounce and Marco could not understand, and Kin translated into allspeak for Marco. Eventually it was established by careful retranslation that Silver was a sociologist, comparative historian, linguist and meat-animal herder.
    ‘All of them?’ asked Marco.
    ‘I once knew a shand who was a lift-attendant, biochemist and seal hunter,’ said Kin.
    ‘I got here yesterday,’ said Silver. ‘I was working on Prediquac when this man—’
    ‘We know him,’ said Kin. ‘What did he offer you?’
    ‘I do not understand,’ said Silver blankly.
    ‘Bait,’ said Kin. ‘To go with him to the flat world.’
    ‘Oh, I see. Nothing. Should he have done?’
    Kin translated. Marco stared at the shand in astonishment, then snorted and wandered off into the depths of the ship.
    ‘There is something familiar about your name,’ said Silver to Kin.
    ‘I wrote a book called
Continuous Creation.
’
    Silver smiled politely. ‘Did you?’
    Marco had disappeared. The two females took a stroll through the doughnut hull. With every step Kin became more uneasy. This was a
strange
ship.
    It had been converted to a freighter. There were four staterooms. The rest of the torus was fuel tank.
    The ship had been designed to be a rich idiot’s toy. Only rich men and spies used ships that could stagger out of a gravity well under their own power.
    Consider: there was a Line on every useful world, and once up the Line all that was needed was a pressurized box with altitude jets and an Elsewhere matrix to get you to the top of any other Line. A few specialized trades and the tourist industry used ships capable of traversing a solar system. There were even some ships that could fly ground-to-orbit in an emergency.
No one
needed a ship that could reach orbit
and
fly across a system
and
jump via the Elsewhere.
    This one could. Kin’s unease began to be tinted with excitement. The Line and the Matrix had chopped space into mere pauses between identical Line Top arrival lounges. This ship was something else.
    There was a dumbwaiter, a big model programmed to produce anything from lobster thermidor to sawdust. It could even reproduce shand proteins.
    There was a medical room that would not have disgraced a city. There was also a deep freeze, a fact so unusual that Kin lifted the lid.
    ‘Now here’s a thing,’ she murmured. Silver peered in, and rooted around among the frosted packages.
    ‘Nothing remarkable,’ she said. ‘Meat, fish, fowl, leaves, swollen tubers – human food.’
    Kin pointed at the