Total pages in book: 94
Estimated words: 88235 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 441(@200wpm)___ 353(@250wpm)___ 294(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 88235 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 441(@200wpm)___ 353(@250wpm)___ 294(@300wpm)
“Oh, well thank you,” Vicky said blankly. “But I didn’t really bring any of my, uh, lecture materials with me. You know—visual aids and such.”
“Don’t worry about that,” Professor Lornah said, making a shooing gesture. “We have a fully integrated sensory auditorium. You’ll be given everything you need to make an impressive showing.”
“Oh, um, okay.” Inside her head, Vicky was madly scrambling. She hadn’t expected to have to make a presentation on this alien world—especially not as soon as she landed! Then she took a deep breath and told herself to calm down. Despite the strange circumstances, this wasn’t her first rodeo—she’d been teaching high school for years.
And I don’t believe lecturing to a roomful of stuffy alien academics can be worse than trying to teach a bunch of bored, hormonal teenagers, she told herself firmly. I’ll figure it out.
Just as she had that thought, they came up to an even larger and more impressive building than the ones they’d been passing. It looked like a Medieval church to Vicky, with gray stone sides, soaring architecture, and stained glass in the many windows that seemed to shimmer and shift as she looked at it.
The colored glass pieces in the two vast windows on either side of the main entrance were in the shapes of enormous insects, she realized as she took a closer look. One looked like a giant orange praying mantis with pink and purple butterfly wings and the other looked disturbingly like a large cockroach—a turquoise one—with candy-apple red legs and wings.
As she watched, she realized the insects in the floor-to-ceiling stained glass windows were moving—flexing their wings and curling and uncurling their antennae very slowly but noticeably.
Vicky stared in astonishment. It must be some kind of alien tech in the window glass, making it look like the huge insects were moving, but it was amazing all the same.
“This is the University of Insects and Arachnids,” Professor Lornah explained, waving at the windows. As you can see.”
“Yes,” Vicky said. “I certainly can.”
“Your craftsmanship is very impressive,” Chain said, speaking for the first time. “I would love to learn the technology behind the shifting patterns in the glass—unless it’s a trade secret of some kind which cannot be shared.”
“Oh, you’d have to ask Professor Dunna of the Architecture and Adornments University,” Professor Lornah explained. “Though I don’t know if she would speak to you. And, being only a student, I doubt you’d understand anything she said anyway.”
She gave him a once-over, as though he must be stupid as they ascended the gray steps of the Insect University.
“I find my student to be an extremely good judge of mechanical matters and architectural structures,” Vicky said indignantly, defending the big Kindred. “In fact, Chain has innovative ideas on many subjects.”
“Is that right?” Professor Lornah arched an eyebrow at her. “Then maybe you’re teaching him the wrong things. Come along now, we must hurry,” she continued as they mounted the steps and entered the grand double doors which guarded the main entrance. “Oh, and this is a dinner lecture,” she added to Vicky as they passed through the arching double doors which rose twenty feet above their heads. “So I hope your remarks will be tasty.”
And with that cryptic remark, she led them into the vast building.
Chapter Sixteen
“Tasty remarks? What does that mean?” Victoria hissed under her breath to Chain as they walked through the high, echoing stone corridors of the University of Insects and Arachnids.
Inside, the building was as impressive as it had been on the outside with cathedral ceilings of gray stone arching up towards the sky. All of them had the same moving stained-glass windows which threw ever-changing, colored patterns down on the gray flagstones below. They looked like jewel-colored puddles spilling across the floor every few feet.
But the art in the windows wasn’t the only decoration. There were glass cases against the walls—some of them several stories tall—filled with mounted specimens of insects from hundreds of different worlds. Chain saw plinkk spiders smaller than a quasi seed in one case and a monstrous yorgyx wasp with a six foot wingspan and a barbed stinger as long as his arm in another. Truly, an impressive collection, he admitted to himself. But right now it wasn’t the bugs that concerned him, it was Victoria.
“I’m sorry—I really don’t know what ‘tasty remarks’ means either,” he murmured in her ear. “I’m also sorry you’ve been forced to take the lead here. I didn’t realize we were going into a Yonnie Six-type situation.”
“A what? What’s Yonnie Six?” she demanded, frowning.
“A planet where women rule over the males and treat them as slaves,” Chain told her. “I don’t think it’s quite that bad here, but it does seem like females are in charge on Priima Belle. So I’m afraid you’re stuck doing the deal for the T’lix-Kruthe.”