Freedom's Challenge

Read Freedom's Challenge for Free Online Page B

Book: Read Freedom's Challenge for Free Online
Authors: Anne McCaffrey
read,” Zainal said and gave it a little shove with one large and very dirty thumb.
    â€œPlease wash up, dinner’s nearly ready,” she said, because she really couldn’t tell Zainal not to handle the book—which might be the only one of its kind—with his dirty hands.
    â€œI learn to read,” he said and gave it another, almost angry push.
    â€œYou?”
    Zainal scowled and Zane, who was seated in the high-seated chair his adoptive father had made for him, began to whimper in apprehension. He was very quick to sense moods. Immediately Zainal turned a smiling face and diverted the child by tickling his feet until he was hilarious with tickle laughter.
    â€œI need to read to use computers.”
    Kris blinked in surprise, having forgotten for the moment that Botany now possessed working computers…whichwere being put to all kinds of good use. There had been several uninterrupted sessions to develop adapters for the units to run on solar power.
    â€œOh, yes, of course you would,” Kris said. “Dead easy for a man with your smarts.”
    Zainal turned his smiling face from Zane and gave the little book a dark scowl. “Not when all those…squiggles…make no sense at all.”
    â€œAre there many—” and Kris thought swiftly for a less insulting description than “kids’ books”—“primer books in what we got?” She hadn’t had occasion to look in that section of the hastily assembled “library.”
    â€œThis was given me. I wash my hands…and Zane’s feet…” he added pointing to the oily smears now marking the child’s bare feet.
    â€¢Â Â Â â€¢Â Â Â â€¢
    ONCE ZANE WAS IN BED, SHE TOOK, NOT THE book, but a pad and pencil and wrote out the alphabet in upper and lower case, as large as she could lengthwise across the page.
    â€œBut I brought the book to read…” he said, pulling it toward him with now clean hands.
    â€œFirst you must know the…squiggles that spell the words we use. Too bad we didn’t have a book on English for second-language speakers…although come to think of it, that wouldn’t do
you
much good. Now, this is the first letter of the alphabet…‘ay.’ Which can also be pronounced ‘ah’…just to confuse you. It is a vowel. B, which is usually just ‘bee’ is the second letter and a consonant.”
    He had repeated “vowel” and now spoke “consonant.” Zainal had no trouble committing the sequence of the alphabet to memory—nor of naming any of them when Kris drilled him. His concentration was incredible. He kept her going until even such words as “Spot” and “Jane” were blurring her eyes. He had also read through the book nine times and had it memorized.
    â€œNo Spot and Jane on the computers,” he said.
    â€œWe’ll work on computer language tomorrow,” she said, rising stiffly from the chair in which his need to learn had pinned her for hours. She yawned.
    â€œI work more now,” he said, looking at her expectantly.
    â€œOkay, see how many words you already know that rhyme with Spot…like dot, and tot, and Scott…or with Jane, like mane…no not drain…ah, try run, fun, gun, stun…”
    â€œOh,” he said, delighted at such an exercise.
    She went to bed. When Zane woke her in false dark, hungry, Zainal had filled pages of similarly sounding words, not all of which were spelled properly but she had to give him an A for effort. Spelling would come later. What did astonish her as she fed Zane by candlelight was the computer manual she found under a pile of his laboriously hand-printed sheets. He had underlined all the un-words…ctrl, del, esc, Pgdn, Pgup, num, menu.
    â€œHe can’t have read the manual,” she murmured and smothered a laugh. “He may be one of the few who ever did before they turned on a

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