Phylogenesis (9 page)

7

U
lunegjeprok’s voice was flat, betraying no hint of the excitement he felt. “Instead of preparing foodstuff basics for humans,” he asked his friend and fellow worker, “how would you like to deliver some?”

Desvendapur did not look up from where he was cleaning a large quantity of pale pink
vekind
root. “Do not joke with me, Ulu. What are you talking about?”

“Hamet and Quovin, the senior biochemists in charge of final checkout and delivery, are both down sick. It has fallen to Shemon to carry out the transfer of this week’s produce. I spoke to her earlier. She has never done this before and is apprehensive about doing it alone.”

“Why?” Des wondered. “You know the procedure as well as I. It is not complicated.”

“It isn’t procedure that concerns her. She has never dealt with the humans in person, only via communicator, and she is not sure how she will react. So she asked for subsidiary personnel to accompany her.” His antennae straightened. “I volunteered. Knowing of your interest in the aliens, I also volunteered you.” He extended a foothand. “I hope you are not disappointed in me. If you want to withdraw your services for this afternoon…”

“Withdraw?” Desvendapur could hardly believe his good fortune. At last, after all he had suffered—physically, mentally, and emotionally—he was going to encounter the bipeds in person instead of via research team projections and odorless images. Already mellifluous phrases and biting stanzas were bubbling in his brain. “This afternoon? How soon?”

Ulunegjeprok whistled amusedly. “Clean your eyes. We have several time-parts yet.”

Des did his best to concentrate on his work, but everything he managed to accomplish subsequent to his friend’s revelation he did by rote. His mind was spinning. He would take a scri!ber with him so that he could compose on the spot, to ensure that nothing was lost and every advantage taken from the forthcoming confrontation. There was no telling how long his superiors’ illnesses or Shemon’s aversion would last. It might be some time before the opportunity arose again.

“What are you doing?” As he labored at his own station, Ulu eyed his weaving, bobbing coworker curiously.

“Composing poetry.”

“You? Poetry?” Ulunegjeprok whistled long and hard. “You’re an assistant food service preparator. What makes you think you can compose poetry?”

“It is just a hobby. Something to occupy my recreational time.”

“Good thing Hamet and Quovin are both out sick and Shemon is busy inventorying the week’s consignment. They wouldn’t look upon this as recreational time. Well, as long as you’re making the effort, I’ll give it a try. For friendship’s sake, even though it will be painful. Go on, I’m braced—recite something.”

“No, never mind.” Aware that in his excitement he was skirting potentially dangerous territory, Desvendapur turned back to his work, stripping the thorny casing from oblong
cazzi!!s
fruit. “I’m not very good at it.”

“That goes without saying, but I would still like to hear something.” Ulu would not be put off.

Cornered, Des complied, trilling and clicking as inconsequential and unsophisticated a brace of stanzas as he could manage, a feeble collage of words and sounds guaranteed to get him whistled down at any semiprofessional gathering of qualified soothers.

Ulu’s reaction was wonderfully predictable. “That was awful. You had better stick to making
hequenl
buns. You’re good at that.”

“Thank you,” Des told him, and he meant it.

Systems idling, the small transport truck in the warehousing chamber hovered an arm’s length off the floor. Des and Ulu saw to the transfer of assorted crates and containers while the venerable Shemon accounted for each one as it was loaded. It was evident from her attitude as well as her words that she did not want to be doing this, that she dearly wished the absent Hamet or Quovin were present instead, and that the sooner they had concluded the delivery and returned, the better she would like it.

There was barely enough room in the vehicle’s enclosed cab for three. As she adjusted the guide controls and the truck started silently forward down a well-lit corridor, Desvendapur checked to make certain his scri!bers were nestled snugly in the abdominal pouch slung over his left side. He had brought two, in case one should fail.

“Why do you need us to come along anyway?” Ulu was asking her. At these words, Des wanted to reach out and smother him. “Are these creatures so physically feeble that they cannot unload their own supplies?”

“The ones that are present are engaged in more important tasks. They are scientists and researchers, not manual laborers. Easier for us to do such work.” She looked over at him. “Why? Do you want to go back?”

Desvendapur hardly dared to breathe.

“No. I was just wondering,” the unimaginative Ulu concluded.

The corridor was blocked by another guard station. Here they were waved through without an identification check, the contents of the transport being sufficient to establish their legitimacy and purpose. As the vehicle accelerated, Des looked for any sign of a change, for anything exotic or alien, and saw nothing. They might as well still be traveling through the thranx portion of the complex.

Eventually they pulled into a storage chamber scarcely different from the one they had left. Easing the truck into a receiving dock, Shemon shut off the power to the engine and slipped off the driver’s bench. Ulu and Des followed her around to the back of the conveyance.

Under her direction, they began unloading the foodstuffs they had brought. Save for small robot handlers and cleaners, the chamber remained empty. He tried not to panic. Where were the humans? Where were the aliens he had sacrificed his career, more than a year of his life, and the life of another to see? Unable to stand it any longer, he asked as much.

Shemon gestured indifferently. It was evident that she was well pleased with the turn of events. “Who knows? It is not necessary for them to be here for the unloading.”

“But don’t they have to acknowledge receipt? Don’t they need to check the delivery to make sure everything’s here?” Desvendapur was moving as slowly as he possibly could without appearing to be deliberately inhibiting the unloading process.

“What for? They have been notified that the weekly delivery was on its way. If anything is missing, or out of the ordinary, our department will be notified and the omission corrected.” Her relief was palpable. “At least
we
won’t have to deal with it personally.”

But that was precisely what Des wanted, needed to do: to deal with things personally. Despite his best efforts to bring about an inconspicuous slowdown, the quantity of cargo in the back of the transport was diminishing at an alarming rate. At this pace they would be done and gone within half a time-part. He invented and discarded dozens of scenarios. He could fake an injury, but Shemon and Ulu would only load him into the rear of the transport and hurry him back to the infirmary in the thranx sector. He could try overpowering the two of them, but while Shemon might prove a less than challenging adversary, Ulunegjeprok was young and fit and might be difficult to surprise. Besides, Des was a poet, not a soldier. And while such a hostile action might gain him a few time-parts of independence, the reverberations of such a gesture would undoubtedly result in his expulsion from the Geswixt hive and the loss of any further opportunity to encounter the aliens.

There was nothing he could do. He was trapped in a web of inexorably contracting time. His abdomen twitched, reminding him that his thoughts did not operate independent of his body.

Revelation congealed like a ripe pudding. Perhaps that was enough.

Passing a self-hovering cylindrical container twice his size to the waiting Ulu, he glanced in Shemon’s direction. “I have to relieve myself.”

She did not even look up from the readout on which she was tallying inventory. Truhand and foothand pointed. “Over there, through that second door. Don’t you recognize the markings?”

Desvendapur looked in the indicated direction. “Those are indicators for a human facility.”

“It is a joint facility, or so the instruction manual claims. But you didn’t see my instructions; you only saw yours, so I suppose your ignorance is understandable. Be quick, and do not linger.” There was unease in her voice. “I want to leave this place as soon as possible.”

He gestured assent leavened with understanding as he hurried off in the indicated direction, all six legs working. The doorway yielded to his touch and granted entry, whereupon he found himself confronted with as exotic a panoply of devices as if he had stepped into the cockpit of a starship—although their functions were far more down to earth, in more ways than one.

In addition to the familiar sonic cleanser and slitted receptacles in the floor, there were a number of what appeared to be hollow seats attached to a far wall. He would have liked to inspect them more closely, but he was here to try to encounter aliens, not their artifacts. Desperately he searched the waste chamber for another exit, only to find none.

Refusing to give up and return to the unloading dock, he eased the door to the service chamber open and peered out, folding his antennae flat back against his smooth skull to create as small a profile as possible. Shemon was focused on her readout while Ulu was preoccupied with the remainder of the unloading. Waiting until his coworker was busy in the back of the vehicle, Desvendapur bolted to his right, hugging the wall of the storage chamber while hunting desperately for another way out. He had to try three sealed portals before he found one that was not locked.

Entering and closing the door behind him, he noted that it was of human design, being narrower and higher than that intended solely for thranx. Ahead lay a ramp leading upward. Advancing with determination, he took in a plethora of alien artifacts around him: contact switches of human design in a raised box; a railing of some kind attached to the wall head-high, too elevated to be useful to a thranx; a transparent door behind which was mounted equipment whose pattern and purpose he did not recognize; and more. Though the ramp was oddly ribbed instead of pebbled as was normal, it still provided excellent purchase for his anxious feet.

A second, larger door loomed in front of him. From its center bulged a recognizable activation panel dotted with unfamiliar controls. Touching the wrong one, or the wrong sequence, might set off an alarm, but at this point he didn’t care. Even if that proved to be the ultimate result of his intrusion, at least there was an outside chance aliens might respond to the alert. Without hesitating, he pressed two of the four digits of his left truhand against a green translucency. From his studies he knew that humans were as fond of the color green as were the thranx.

The door buzzed softly and swung back. Without waiting for it to open all the way, he dashed through as soon as the opening was large enough to allow his abdomen to pass. There was a temperature curtain ahead, and he hurried right through it as well. Then he came to a stop, stunned physically as well as mentally. He was outside. On the surface.

In the mountains.

His feet sank into drifted rilth, and incredible iciness raced up his legs like fire. The shock was magnified by the fact that he was not wearing cold-weather gear, but only a couple of carrying pouches. There was no need for special protective attire in the hive below. Looking around, he saw whiteness everywhere—the whiteness of newly fallen rilth.

Turning, he took a step back toward the portal. The intense cold was already numbing his nerves, making it difficult to feel his legs. It struck him forcefully that no one knew he was out here. Ulu and Shemon would not begin to wonder at his continued absence for another several minutes at least. When they did, they would start by searching for him in the unloading area. By the time anyone thought to look for him outside, he would be dead, his respiration stilled, his limbs frozen solid.

He tried to take another step, but even with all six legs working, the cold had reduced his pace to a bare shuffle. Fresh rilth, frozen white precipitation, began to sift down around him, spilling from a leaden sky. I’m going to die out here, he thought. The irony was unspeakable. His death would provide excellent fodder for some bard in search of inspiration. The tragic demise of the poet aspirant. No, he corrected himself. Of a stupid assistant food preparator. Even his motives would be misascribed.

“Hey over there! Are you all right?”

He found that he could still turn his head, though the effort made the muscles in his neck shriek. The salutation had come from a figure a full head taller than himself—from a biped, a human.

From his studies Des knew that humans rarely went without protective attire, even when indoors and out of the weather. This one was clad in a single pouch of loose gray clothing that covered it from neck to ankle. The leggings fit neatly into short gray boots of some synthetic material. Astonishingly, its head and hands were unprotected, directly exposed to the falling rilth. Though it evinced no sign of an integrated heating unit, it moved freely and easily through the accumulated rilth that came up to just below the tops of its footwear.

Though it was far from the circumstances under which Desvendapur had first hoped to try out his store of meticulously memorized human phrases, he was not shy about responding. The vocal modulations sounded unnaturally harsh to his ears, and he hoped he was not overemphasizing the guttural nature of the mammalian speech.

Evidently he was not, because the human responded immediately, hurrying toward him. It was astonishing to observe it lifting first one foot and then the other, plunging one uncaringly downward into the rilth, raising the other, and bringing it forward. How it managed to stand upright, much less advance on only two limbs, and without a counter-balancing tail like the AAnn or the Quillp, was something to behold.

“What are you doing out here like this?” Up close, the biped’s odor even in the clear outside mountain air was all but overpowering. Desvendapur’s antennae flinched away. Performed in front of another thranx, the reaction would have constituted a grave insult. Either the human was unaware of its meaning or did not care. “You guys hate the cold.”