Nomad by William Alexander Page B

and stationary for far too long. “Tell the ship I said hello.”
    â€œI will.”
    Nadia heard the Khelone’s heavy footfalls slowly recede into the crowd.
    Dr. Dromidan tugged on Nadia’s earlobe to let her know where the pyramid stood. Nadia walked in that direction. She trusted other people to keep out of her way, and they usually did.
    *  *  *  *
    Sound bounced and echoed inside the pyramid. Nadia could recognize most of the chambers and passageways by the way noises behaved inside each. She made sharp clicks with her tongue to feel out the shape of the space around her. Dr. Dromidan had taught her that trick. The doctor herself had large, unfolding ears and a more precise sense of sonar than any human could ever learn, but even Nadia’s human ears found walls when she made clicking sounds.
    â€œGood,” the doctor said, noting her progress with echolocation. Then she tugged on Nadia’s earlobe when she made a wrong turn and directed her into the shared kitchens.
    Nadia was accustomed to the idea of shared kitchens. Her aunt and uncle’s apartment kitchen in Moscow had been similarly communal, used equally by several different households—though some of those households had been more equal than others. Mrs. Lebedevo had carefully policed all of their communal supplies.
    In her memory she heard heavy boots on a kitchen floor.
    Nadia paused to shut down all thoughts of Mrs. Lebedevo, their shared kitchen, and the cupboard that Nadia had hidden inside.
    â€œHello?” she said to the kitchen. “Anyone here?”
    She got no answer, and she felt out the familiar shape of the room from the echoes her voice made inside it.
    â€œGood,” she said to herself. She tried to avoid the kitchens during busy mealtimes, and she couldn’t easily predict their timing. Different species lived according to very different rhythms. Some gobbled down constant calories like sugar-burning hummingbirds. Others ate rarely.
    She avoided shelves of foams, sprays, and dehydrated tablets, each one engineered down to individual molecules and carefully labeled according to the species that would find them most nutritious. Nadia couldn’t read the labels, and didn’t want to anyway. The tasteless stuff reminded her of nonfood she had eaten at Zvezda.
    Nadia preferred food , and she could smell some. An actual meal simmered on the stove, hot with energy siphoned from the apex of the pyramid. Nadia found a small bowl and followed the smell.
    â€œHot,” Dr. Dromidan cautioned her.
    â€œI know it’s hot,” Nadia said. “It’s a stove. It’s supposed to be hot.”
    â€œGlove,” the doctor said.
    Nadia lowered her blindfold. She looked at the stove and the counter beside it, but she couldn’t actually see either one, or identify any specific object in front of her. She moved one hand over the counter surface, feeling for cloth, trying to find some sort of oven mitt.
    Dromidan punched her in the ear.
    â€œOw!”
    â€œKnife,” the doctor said helpfully. “Sharp.”
    â€œThey’re supposed to be sharp,” Nadia said. “But I wish people wouldn’t leave them lying around. Okay, can you help me find a glove?”
    Dromidan held her earlobe and used it to steer Nadia’s hand across the counter until she touched an oven mitt. She put it on, lifted the lid from a simmering pot of tasty-smelling stuff, and then ladled the goop into her bowl without spilling.
    The goop tasted splendid. Its rich intensity of flavorsalmost made her cry. Nadia had no clear idea what was in it, exactly—some combination of corn, beans, squash, and probably chocolate. She was still amazed that corn could taste so good. In Russia corn meant failure, choking and terrible failure. Foolish politicians had tried to import corn as the new staple grain of the USSR. It did not work out well. Corn refused to grow in Russia. But space