The Braided World by Kay Kenyon Read Free Book Online Page B

while searching for food. However, other local specimens were dead-on for Earth counterparts: mangrove, palmyra, mahogany, banyan. This did tend to be the case with plants more than animals.
    The ship's science team theorized that the animals, if raised up from genetic information taken from the Dark Cloud, were mutated. There would have been extensive damage to the data in the Cloud, perhaps from radiation. Some of those mutations would have been beneficial. Or they might have been intentional on the part of the beings who sent the Message. The old race, now vanished. The theory of the Quadi could be myth, but the team was treating it seriously.
Someone
had put satellites in orbit.
    If these beings had raised up the creatures of this world—from DNA code—then they might also believe that humans could do so. So they might have preserved the code
as code.
Somewhere. Presumably they would also have provided the scientific knowledge to bring the code to life— perhaps by describing some version of the Dassa variums. This was the direction of the science team's current thinking. Of course, it would all be more simple if the hoda represented a people that could mix with Earth populations, which was why Bailey liked that theory.
    “So,” Nick continued, “if the hoda have uteruses… uteri?” Zhen didn't grace the question with a response. “If the hoda have them, then we might have hit the jackpot.”
    “Jackpot? You think you're going to marry a hoda and bring her back with you? Or load up the ark full of Vidori's personal slaves and take ‘em home, like a cargo or something?”
    “No, nothing like that…”
    “Then how exactly might we have
hit the jackpot
, Lieutenant?”
    “I hadn't thought that far. If we could reproduce withthe hoda, it would be a beginning, that's all. Instead of all the damn
endings
we've had on ship, at home, you name it. That's all I'm saying—I'm not trying to solve everything, or turn this into a goddamn kung fu match.” He bit his tongue. Zhen loved to have people go off on her. It was what she lived for.
    She peeked her head out of the curtain, her eyes as hard as ball bearings. “The Dassa won't let the hoda have babies, will they? It's against the goddamn law.
Forbidden.
If that's the jackpot, then we're shit out of luck.” She yanked the curtain shut.
    That was Zhen for you. The woman would never trade ideas with someone in the soft sciences. She was oriented to data, as he was to people, so she discounted him. Like Anton, lately. So changed from the days of studies and grueling preparation at the academy, when Anton coached him in math and Nick returned the favor in linguistics. Changed since the day the old lady handed Anton the position without giving Nick a chance to argue his qualifications. She couldn't get past his background—all blue-collar, no refinement.
    Meanwhile Anton was right at home eating state dinners and hobnobbing with the privileged; it was the life he was born to before he finally severed the apron strings and struck out on his own. Now he'd gotten up a friendship with Vidori. Anton
would
start at the top of the power pyramid and work down; it was hard-wired into him, though Anton, despising his father as he did, would be the first to deny it and say he wanted to be just plain military.
But just plain military
would not by any stretch of the imagination describe Anton Prados.
    It described Nick Venning, though.
    They turned out of the Puldar byway into the great River Sodesh, where the sky and water blurred into one gray swath for as far as Nick could see. Here, the boats thinned out. Larger craft plied the giant waterway, barges and long canoes, many with thatch roofs held up by polesand bearing on top the cargoes of the braided lands. Some looked like they could not possibly remain upright, as tall and narrow as they were, but the Dassa were nothing if not water-born, and Nick gave up worrying they would tip over.
    Nick saw that the hoda woman had laid