Total pages in book: 182
Estimated words: 171288 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 856(@200wpm)___ 685(@250wpm)___ 571(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 171288 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 856(@200wpm)___ 685(@250wpm)___ 571(@300wpm)
Except, the people the old lady had pointed out as her parents looked so young compared to her—they couldn’t be out of their thirties yet.
“I wasn’t but fourteen cycles myself when the two of them went.” Granny Two-two sighed. “I remember how hard I begged to be let to come. But no, my Mam said I wasn’t old enough yet. ‘Next year’ she said. But a’course, there weren’t no next year for they never did come home. And right after this almighty big suck moved in and froze the party, most people abandoned this end of the station and moved to the center and the other end—not so many sucks there, y’know.”
“Y’know! Y’know!” her second head exclaimed.
“I’m so sorry,” Penny said, really meaning it. “How awful for you to lose your parents that way!”
“Oh, I didn’t lose ‘em, did I? Right there, aren’t they?” Granny Two-two gestured again. “Hello Mam! Hello Pap!” she yelled, as though the two frozen figures could hear her. “I come an visit ‘em regular,” she said, turning to Penny. “It’s comforting-like, don’t you see. And also, a’course, I got to mine for treasures.”
“Mine for treasures?” Penny raised her eyebrows questioningly.
“Sure—treasures!” Granny Two-two patted her many pockets, making them click and clink. “I gets them from the suck, so I do.”
“So she do! So she do!” yelled her top head.
“Hush, you!” Granny swatted at it.
“You mean you’ve found a way to get things out of the temporal anomaly?” Penny asked in surprise. “But how? Wouldn’t you get stuck in there yourself?” She gestured at the large room, filled with frozen people.
“Well sure you would—if you was foolish enough to go into the suck yourself!” Granny Two-two exclaimed. “But that’s what I’ve got my quick-loris for.”
Reaching into one of her many pockets, she pulled out something which quivered and trembled in her cupped palms as she held them out to Penny.
Looking into her hands, Penny saw she was holding what looked like a furry little pet—about the size of a small squirrel. It was bright pink with fuzzy green stripes and it squeaked in a voice so high it was barely audible as it looked up at her with huge, dark, liquid eyes. After a moment she realized it wasn’t trembling at all—it was just twitching and moving so fast her eyes could barely follow its movements.
“Oh, he’s adorable!” Penny reached out to pet the little creature but it zipped away from her seeking fingers so fast she didn’t even see it move. The next thing she knew, the quick-loris was perched on top of Granny Two-two’s second head squeaking at her with all its might while the second head shouted,
“Bad-bad! Bad-bad!” over and over.
“Both of you quit it now!” Granny Two-two exclaimed, frowning.
Reaching up, she plucked the quick-loris off the top of her second head and cradled it in her arms. This seemed to settle both of them down since the quick-loris stopped squeaking and the second head stopped shouting, much to Penny’s relief.
“Now then, let’s go treasure-mining,” the old woman remarked. Still holding the fuzzy little animal in one arm, she searched through her other pockets until she found a round, flat disk.
Penny watched with interest as she pulled a length of thin wire out of the disk and clipped the end of it to a small collar around the quick-loris’s throat which had been hidden by its pink and green fur. Setting the little animal down, she held the disk and pushed a button on it which allowed more of the thin wire to be distributed. It was like a retractable leash, Penny saw.
“Find!” Granny Two-two commanded the little animal and her second head shouted, “Find! Find!” too.
The quick-loris took off like a shot. It ran right into the crowd of frozen people and started nosing around immediately, like a tiny squirrel-bloodhound sniffing for a scent, Penny thought.
“That’s amazing!” she exclaimed, as the loris scrambled through the crowd. “How does he do that? I mean, how can he go into the middle of a temporal anomaly and not be affected?”
Granny Two-two shrugged.
“That’s just how they are. Some say they’re so quick the suck only slows ‘em down a little. Others think they have a kind of natural field around their fur that wards it off. Either way, my little loris is a quick one, so he is!”
He certainly was, Penny thought as she watched the little animal at work. Occasionally he would climb someone like a tree and sniff through their pockets, but without finding anything he liked. He ran to the refreshment table, where a number of alien-looking snack foods were laid out, and nibbled a chunk of something purple and rubbery-looking before losing interest and scampering elsewhere in the room.
Occasionally the quick-loris found something that he seemed to think was valuable. He would hold the item over his head and squeak and chatter at Granny Two-two to get her attention. But every time she only shook her head.