Читать онлайн «The Sound of Seas»

Gillian Anderson and Jeff Rovin

THE SOUND OF SEAS

Publisher’s Notice

The publisher has provided this ebook to you without Digital Rights Management (DRM) software applied so that you can enjoy reading it on your personal devices. This ebook is for your personal use only. You may not print or post this ebook, or make this ebook publicly available in any way. You may not copy, reproduce, or upload this ebook except to read it on your personal devices.

Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this ebook you are reading infringes on the author’s copyright, please notify the publisher at: simonandschuster. com/about/contact_us.

PROLOGUE

Vilu woke in dull sunlight.

With his eyes still half-closed, the young boy growled like a thyodularasi pup and stretched his bare, gangly limbs in unison. Then he deflated and lay for a moment on the narrow cot, feeling the warm new day from his fingertips to his toes. He squeezed his eyes shut then opened them wide, blinking away sleep. He snuggled down on the mattress filled with oiled sea sand and looked around the small, fragrant room. Like all the rooms in the complex, it was a tiny place, barely large enough for his bed and a standing closet for his few clothes and possessions.

The home in which he lived was shaped like a large wheel. It was constructed of heat-retaining basalt stones piled one atop the other and coated with thick plaster made from seawater and crushed jasmine petals. He inhaled the invigorating aroma deeply. Vilu once asked the house guardian, “Which wakes me first? The light of the sky or the warming of the new day?”

“Which do you think, boy?” the man asked.

“The warming,” Vilu had replied without hesitation. “Because it not only warms, it makes the jasmine and the bed oils smell stronger.

“Then it is the warming,” the man said, smiling.

“Anyway,” one of the other boys, Sahu, had said later, when they played in the courtyard after lessons, “it is always daytime during this season. There is always light. That wouldn’t wake you. ”

“It wakes the seabirds,” Vilu had replied. “I hear them. Why not us too?”

“They wake because they are hungry!” Sahu replied dismissively.

“If that were true, you would never sleep,” Vilu said, laughing.

Sahu had no answer for that other than to shrug and continue consuming the petal-flavored ice he had purchased.

But Sahu had a point. Vilu had learned in their school that at this time of the season the sun circled overhead like a block of ice caught in an eddy. Even the window shades, made of opirati skin, could not darken a room completely. Vilu would have to remember to ask their tutor if sleeping people could react to little variations in light. The Priests said that quiet minds were actually wiser than those that were fully awake. But the Technologists disputed that idea, as he understood it.

If adults cannot agree, then why bother learning anything? the boy wondered. Then he smiled. I wondered that in my head! Does that mean the Priests are right?