The Navigator by Pittacus Lore Read Free Book Online

really change much whether you were in the middle of Capital City or shoveling Chimæra dung at a Kabarak. But Earth appears to be nothing like that. It’s so much bigger and split up into different sections that are all so different from one another. There’s no ruling body directing all the planet’s people, or “humans,” as Zophie calls them. That sort of diversity sounds great in theory—it sounds like the kind of world I always imagined Lorien might turn into if we just opened our eyes—but as someone from another planet, it makes trying to get a grip on humans pretty damned difficult. Fortunately, we have a lot of free time, so learning about Earth is at least adistraction from the monotony of our journey.
    Not to mention the anxiety of watching our food stores slowly dwindle. By Zophie’s calculations we should make it to Earth just fine, but we all start eating smaller and smaller amounts of food as the months progress. We survive on dried Karo fruit and protein chews.
    Zophie insists we try to have a rudimentary knowledge of several languages before we land—enough to ask simple questions and sound like tourists or travelers from other Earth realms instead of three people who can’t speak a single Earth dialect. Again, I’m astounded by how different the people who all inhabit the same planet could be. How strange that these billions of people can’t even all communicate with each other. We start with a language called French, as its vowels are most like our native Loric tongue, then switch to others I’ve never heard of: Spanish, then English and then Mandarin. Crayton and Zophie excel at the languages, and before long they are laughing at jokes in one known as German while I’m still stumbling over “ Ich heiße Lexa.” This is probably because I spend most of my free time writing down everything I remember from my days working on Earth’s communications systems instead of studying new languages. I am more at home with the vocabulary of electronics—ones and zeros and carefully formatted lines of code. Based onmy time at the LDA, I assume Earth has reached a point in its technological evolution that means it’s interconnected by machines and relying on them in the same way we were on Lorien. The internet was one of the many gifts that the Loric brought to humans over the centuries. Not that they know it or that any of the other treasures we bestowed on them actually came from us. Or even that some of their brightest minds were not of their planet at all but Loric. I used to wonder why we’d spent any resources helping a planet so far away when there was nothing in it for us. Not even recognition of our contributions. But now I’m beginning to wonder how long the Elders knew about the Mogadorians. How much of the “secret war” was real.
    Had they been preparing for a Loric migration to this new world this whole time?
    Six months into the trek, I find Crayton hyperventilating, sitting on the ground beside the makeshift crib we’ve put together for Ella—an oversize plastic bin fastened to a side table and filled with blankets. Crayton’s face is white, and his forehead is shiny with sweat.
    “What’s wrong?” I ask, taking a few quick strides to the baby’s side. But she’s fine, sleeping without a care in the universe.
    “What am I supposed to do with her?” he asks. “I watch over animals. That’s it. I just make sure theyhave food and water and aren’t sick. I don’t know how to raise a child.”
    I stare down at him. I’m not sure if he really wants an answer or if he’s just talking to himself. He continues.
    “Even after all our studies, I feel like I hardly know anything about Earth. How am I supposed to make sure she’s okay? What language am I even supposed to speak to her in? Loric? And what if she asks about her parents? What am I supposed to tell her?”
    I glance towards the cockpit, where Zophie’s lost among the stars, staring at everything and nothing at