The Best of World SF by Lavie Tidhar (children's ebooks free online .txt) 📕

‘She is Kairi. They were enhanced for interstellar travel, as were our ancestors. She can withstand the seedling, and she goes where she pleases. Take care not to insult her.’

‘Damn right I go where I want,’ she added. He fought back a smile.

‘If she doesn’t come, you won’t complete your task.’

There was no way to tell how the Knight took this news. All he knew was it would inform its Grandmaster and Queen. The arrival of a Primarch – a citizen of the Kairi Protectorate – in Valencia would be unprecedented. And they would know she was coming.

The Knight bowed. ‘As you wish, Grandmaster.’

He circled her shoulders with an arm, pulling her against his side and giving the Knight their backs. So many memories and emotions churned through him at the thought of going back – dread and adrenaline made him tense. But he couldn’t deny part of him breathed easier knowing she would be with him. Knowing whatever happened, he wouldn’t be alone in the nest of vipers that was the Greatwood.

And he was not unprepared. He’d planned for this long before he met her.

‘Are you sure?’ he asked her.

She rolled her eyes at his question. ‘I’ll send a message to Sister. She’s gone adventuring.’

‘They may not allow her through the Vineyards.’

She grinned, tilted her head at him. ‘They’re welcome to try and stop her.’

*

Sister came, of course. Her primary consciousness had been traveling the Kairi networks, fighting far-off skirmishes in myriad shells, or visiting new planets with diplomats and explorers, but she returned in time, curious to see a ship and a world few had ever been invited to visit.

The Vineyard ship had been in orbit for several weeks while the Knight searched. The decision to live simply had been about not needing more than food, shelter and freedom to be content, and – once he’d met his wife – happy. But he had also considered the day his people might come looking.

In the end, all his caution had been in vain.

Sister followed on her own as they travelled to the Vineyard with the Knight in its much larger drop-ship. She landed on the polished, weathered deck of the Vineyard’s cargo hold as they disembarked behind the Knight, holding hands loosely.

His wife squeezed his fingers to get his attention before signing, ‘Smells wonderful.’

‘It’s the Vineyard,’ he explained. ‘The ship is grown around it to infuse it with the vine’s atoms. It gets into every part of the vessel and flowers. Even when they’re not flowering, the mirror Vineyard on Valencia, or other ships, might be, so ships end up smelling like this all the time.’

They were in the corridors now. Petrified carbon curved under and around them, the same colour as his wife’s startlingly light brown eyes, the whorls and rings rippling through the surface a testament to the ship’s advanced age.

This Vineyard was one of the massive fleet his people maintained to trade and lay seedlings in space to create Arbours, so that ships could travel ever further by navigating from one Arbour or Vineyard to another. No matter how far they explored, all other ships, seedlings and Arbours, remained permanently entangled with Valencia and each other, allowing Valencians to travel vast distances in an instant and trade reliably with many other colonies.

Maintaining their ability to use the Coretrees for problem solving and space travel was the only mandate of the Greatwood and the Grandmasters that ruled it. Without the Coretrees, Valencians would lack even the basics. Their world was far from established routes, discovered by accident when several colony ships were forced to land to make repairs.

He itched absently at the crook of his arm where the seedling had been implanted as they approached massive doors that stretched ceiling to floor. The panels folded back and air spilled out into the corridor, sweet with the cloying fragrance of the vine within. It was the smell of home and victory and sorrow and pain and every waking moment of his life before his exile.

He closed his eyes against the rage that tightened his chest and the bile that rose in this throat.

She gripped his upper arm and leaned her head against it, letting him know she was there. Grateful, he covered her fingers with his and opened his eyes.

The Vineyard sparkled back at him through a tinted shield. The Knight withdrew masks from alcoves just inside the open doors – standard grey models with red pinhole speakers. Eva accepted one as a courtesy rather than choosing to tint her own hood. When he activated his, it dimmed the Vineyard’s glow to a shimmer, and oxygen rushed into his lungs from the tiny pac built into the mask. They would only need it to breathe for a few seconds, until they crossed into the mirror Vineyard and Valencia’s purer atmosphere.

‘You may be disoriented when you arrive. It’s a stress on the body, the sudden shift, even with the seedlings.’

She shook her head and gave him a look that said he was fussing for no reason. She donned her mask and signed, ‘Lead the way.’

The vines were a shimmering curtain he parted to find his way forward, his wife’s hand firmly in his. He took care where he placed his feet as the smooth floor of the ship was hidden by the ceiling-to-floor plants.

The scent of them raised nausea in the back of his throat just as the world seemed to tilt, then right itself again. The surface beneath his feet went from smooth to bumpy, his wife stumbling against his back at the abrupt shift. With no warning, they were pushing through not just glittering vines but knee-high blades of grass. He saw dark shapes ahead of him, against the fall of light that was the Vineyard. The pac on his mask switched off, and air flooded into his lungs, heavy with vine-perfume.

When they broke from the Vineyards, it was in front of a row of opaque panels. He took