Hammer and Crucible by Cameron Cooper (easy books to read txt) 📗

certainly possible whenever you want them. Do you want me to change anything now?” The comforter on the bed shifted through patterns and rainbow colors.

“As long as it is warm and soft, I’m fine,” I said quickly. “I had a sack with me on the deck...”

“Fetching it,” Lyth replied, his tone remote. “It’ll be here in a moment. I’ve added a concierge printer, there.” He nodded. One of the walls now featured the dark face of a concierge and the maw of a printer beneath. “The concierge is not me, so you may deal with it with complete privacy.”

“I appreciate that,” I said honestly.

“If you require any changes, the concierge can arrange them. Ask for whatever you need.”

A semicircular hole a meter high appeared at the bottom of one of the walls, next to the bed. A platform on wheels rolled out of the hole. My sack was on top of it.

I pushed my surprise aside. Why wouldn’t the ship just push aside nanobots and take the quickest route to where it needed to go?

“I’m never going to sleep, wondering if a wall is suddenly going to shift or open up and let something through.” I glared at Lyth. “Humans like stability,” I added.

Lyth pressed a finger to his temple, as if he was thinking hard. “I have settled the matter with the concierge,” he told me. “If you tell the concierge to lock your room settings, no one else may change them—not even me. Then you will be assured that nothing will move unless you wish it to.”

“That works for now,” I said, although I was going to have to contemplate how one related to a space that could change to anything in an instant.

But right now, the bed beckoned.

“Juliyana is asking for you,” Lyth said.

“Tell her to get some sleep,” I replied, moving toward the bed. “I’ll talk to her in eight hours.” I frowned. “What is the ship time, right now?”

“Whatever you want it to be,” Lyth replied.

Of course.

“Then in nine hours, it will be six in the morning. Tell the others, please.”

“Goodnight, Colonel.”

“Danny,” I growled. “I haven’t been Colonel Andela for a long time.”

“Good night, then, Captain Danny,” Lyth said.

I gave up.

Lyth went away, the door closed behind him with a soft hiss, then gave a tiny chirp to indicate it was locked.

The bed was perfectly soft and snuggle-inducing. I was woken by the light in the room shifting toward dawn, until the sun rose, blazing, up one wall and roused me to full wakefulness.

Yeah, I could get very used to this.

14

The galley wasn’t where I left it.

I was positive the door had moved a few meters up the passage from where it had been. But the door looked the same and when I approached it, it opened as it had before.

I stopped on the sill for a moment, to absorb the differences. Last night, the galley had been adequately functional, with the table and two benches, the printer maw and some recessed cupboards and drawers on one wall.

I wasn’t sure where the printer was anymore, but for a moment, that wasn’t my concern.

I stood in an antique edifice I could vaguely remember having seen before, but only in images. Where I stood was approximately in the middle of it. To either side was a row of tables with padded benches on either side of them, with a clear space running down the middle. On the other side of the corridor was a high counter with round stools in front of it, screwed to the floor at regular intervals. The counter was clear in places, but there were islands of things—in my surprise, I didn’t absorb the details, only that there were glass domes and cylinders displaying what was inside.

From somewhere in the room, music was playing very quietly. A muted voice sang too softly for me to hear the lyrics. I was positive I’d never heard the song before, yet it seemed familiar, anyway.

The wall that the corridor behind me had in common with this place was dazzlingly bright. I took another step forward to inspect the wall.

It looked like a glass window, running the length of the long room, with metal supports spaced across it. On the pane immediately next to the door, words had been painted in a rainbow arc, but they were in reverse, a display for whoever might read them on the other side. My brain said there was no “other side” to the illusion, but damn it, there were people out there in the sunshine, walking by. And there were ground vehicles that looked nothing like anything I had ever seen before. The only reason I knew they were ground vehicles was because a woman in very odd clothes settled behind the controls of one of them, started it, and steered it away from where it had been parked. The vehicle would be forced to follow the paved road because it had inflated wheels.

The sound of people walking by, the vehicles, and even further away, birds and high childish voices calling to each came through the “window”.

Overriding all that, though, was the smell of brewed coffee…and hot food. I thought I could detect the scent of maple syrup.

“Danny,” Juliyana called.

I had been aware of her and Dalton sitting to the left, when I stepped in. I pulled myself away from the fascinating view through the window and walked along the corridor to where they were sitting and settled on the bench beside Juliyana.

Dalton held out a thick piece of card toward me, with text and decorations on it.

“An analogue menu,” I murmured.

“Not exactly,” Dalton said. “If you double tap what you want, that orders it.”

“I told it what I wanted and it wrote it there for me to tap and confirm,” Juliyana said. “Now we’re just waiting for it to arrive.”

I tapped on the eggs. Then I added waffles because the smell of warm syrup was making my mouth water. And coffee, because that smell