Don’t Bite the Sun by Tanith Lee (little red riding hood ebook free .TXT) 📕

“I apologize,” I said at once. It didn’t matter to me. I couldn’t resist, though, once his image was gone, making that sign again and hissing:

“No I don’t. I meant every syllable.”

Childish, but slightly satisfying.

4

Thinta told me I was zaradann to go, Kley laughed raucously, Hatta just looked repulsively sad. I wished he looked handsome and sad, and then I could gratify my impulse to cuddle him and say “Oh, ooma, don’t!” without being sick immediately afterward. He didn’t, though, so I didn’t and wasn’t.

I was amazed when Danor came to see me. There were about eleven males and even a couple of females hanging around her, with a glittery, predatory look of waiting in their sequined eyes.

“They have a running bet,” said Danor, drawing me aside, “to see which one I’ll succumb to first.”

I was startled by Danor; once so dashing, now she seemed … serene?

“That sounds pretty drumdik,” I said. “Have you tried changing to male to shake them off?”

“Yes, actually I did,” whispered Danor. “They all promptly suicided and came back as girls.” She gave a giggle and I saw a ghostly, sad little hint of mischief in her eyes. “Anyway, ooma,” Danor said, “have fun in the ruins.” And she kissed me so sweetly I made an abrupt mental note that, next time I was male and Danor female, it might be an idea to try the floaters again and see if we could do any better that way. As for the hangers-on, they went every shade of green and puce, wondering if I’d beaten them all to it.

Glar Assule signaled me again and said the team was going to meet in five units outside—guess!—the Robotics Museum.

“How derisann!” I glowed, and he gave me a dirty look.

He said he had some urgent things to attend to for the next three or four units, hence the delay, but I think he was just procrastinating, hoping a few more people would call him and ask to go. No one did, though, and five units later there we were, feeling beastly and conspicuous, with this rotten little robot bee buzzing around us, getting snippets of information for the flashes. I told it to something off, and everyone looked disapproving.

The three other volunteers were an absolute catastrophe. They weren’t even pro-Jang either, at least not here. They thought I should be having love or ecstasy, etc., well out of their range of reception. They insisted on calling me “dear” all the time too, with a sort of undertone that showed they’d really like to call me lots of other things, like Scruff-Bag, and Intolerable-Pest-for-Coming-and-Spoiling-Our-Chance-to-Get-at-the-Glar. They were all female.

He turned up late and bloated with himself; he took us to a private sand-ship he’d hired specially and had reprogrammed to get to the right place. It was full of his equipment, his robots, and his idea of how to furnish a sand-ship—which meant orange hairy drapes and blinding bronze—and him. The females twit-twittered around him. “Yes, Glar,” and “No, Glar,” they smarmed. And was the Glar comfortable? And could they tell the robot to get the Glar anything? I was so glad I’d brought the pet. They cringed whenever it went near them, which it didn’t actually, if it could avoid them. Glar Assule wasn’t too bad, though. He looked as if he was repressing a seizure, patted the pet’s head and nearly got bitten, and said he was glad I’d taken an interest in the desert wildlife. I agreed the pet was pretty wild.

Anyway, we eventually got started and—joy and delight!—there was this Transparency Tower, clear all the time. We went to sit in it, but pretty soon the three females got uneasy; they went off to rustle up some desert orange on ice, or play with their light-crochet machines.

The pet and I and the Glar stayed on, and he looked quite impressed by the way the desert mesmerized me. Once I saw a troop of purple animals with long, long fur, burrowing around some dunes, and he was actually able to tell me what they were.

I began to feel lighthearted. Don’t ever do that; it tempts some dark and evil force abroad in the universe.

In the night, I gather, the three females had a fight as to which one was going to have love with dear old Assule, and then, when they’d practically killed each other and the victor staggered along to his cabin with torn plumage and smeared eyelids, it turned out he was stoned with sleep and threw her out when she protested. It really made a din, all this, but the pet and I got a good laugh out of it.

Dawn came and we were there. The females were very upset because they’d arranged this elaborate first meal for the Glar and he refused to take time to eat it.

He was very good at getting us organized, though. I suppose his domineering streak helped. We had hot wine and four oxygen tablets each.

“When you get there,” he said, “remember to breathe normally and not strain to get extra air; you won’t need it. And it’s not like swimming underwater when you don’t breathe at all,” he added to me. I shrugged. All right, so all Jang swim underwater. So. Then the robots got our equipment and went out through the small air lock, and we went out afterward, and oh—

It’s all real out there.

It’s all beautiful and real, and throbbing and singing and alive!

I staggered; he grabbed me and snapped: “I told you you had to breathe, didn’t I? Why don’t you pay attention?”

But I had breathed. I’d more or less gasped my lungs inside out.

It was all so—

And so—

I shook as I stood there.

It was dawn and red this time from some ooma mountain bursting flames, and greener near the top of the sky, and velvet dark above that, with a last sugar-sprinkle of stars. All around, the tall shapes—not buildings but mountains—craned up and up as