Ventus by Karl Schroeder

Karl Schroeder / Ventus / Page 70
He nodded. He didn't want to talk about Armiger; even
in daylight, he vividly remembered the embalming tent and the
slot in the hillside, and the disturbing implication that he had
been looking through the eyes of a corpse.
Calandria debated how much to tell the youth. There was
no law as such against revealing galactic news to the isolated
and backward people of this world. At worst, the various
anthropological groups that studied Ventus would be furious at
her for muddying their data.
There was little, however, that Jordan Mason could do
with anything she might tell him about the wider world. He
was a prisoner of this place, like all his countrymen. There was
no prospect of rescue, or escape, for the people of Ventus;
compassion dictated that she not even hint that Mason’s life
could be other than it was.
She was going to have to tell him something, though. It
might as well be the truth, as far as he was able to understand
it.
They skirted the edge of an escarpment for a while. This
path gave a great view of the endless, rolling forest, and of the
towering thunderheads that were bearing down on them.
Calandria sniffed at the air, feeling it change from dry and still
to charged, anticipatory. There was no way they were going to
get to the manse in time.
It was ironic, she thought. In idle time before landing she
had stood at the window of her ship, the Desert Voice, and
contempated this world. Gazing down at Ventus, the human
eye lost itself in jewel-fine detail. Her eye had followed the
sweep of the terminator from pole to pole, gaining a hint of the
varieties of dusk of which this world was capable. Sombre
polar greys melted into speckled brown-green forests, along a