Quofum (9 page)

He chuckled aloud to himself as he turned and made his way down the steps that were integrated into the side of the laboratory building.

He did not need to retire to a central communications station to contact the scientific team. There was no central communications station because it was unnecessary. Every member of the expedition carried with them one or more compact communits that were capable of multiple functions. Besides the ability to carry out complex field analysis, conduct full and detailed on-the-spot medical evaluation of an injured member, and perform various other tasks, each unit was capable of serving as a full-scale, fully featured communications center. The camp had no need of a separate room, or even a separate console, devoted to communications.

Out in the field a team member so equipped could even contact any developed world in the Commonwealth. Of course, once the communication in question had been relayed from communit to shuttle to mother ship and then via narrow space-minus beam, the time delay involved would be considerable. It would take far longer for the communication to reach its intended destination than one that was boosted by a planet-based beam. But it would get there, eventually.

A striding Boylan placed the call while inspecting the inner border of the camp’s defensive perimeter. Though it had proven thankfully more reliable and trouble-free than the water condenser, he made it a point to personally examine it at least twice a day. He wanted no repeat of the spikers’ intrusion, nor any surprises by other terrestrial belligerents.

As he paced along the inner barrier something blue, fist-sized, and active came tumbling out of the nearest undergrowth. Taking an evasive, zigzag path, it approached the boundary. Contracting its entire body, it unexpectedly leaped off the ground with the intention of entering the camp compound a meter or so ahead of the captain.

There was a bright flash of light and the singeing stink of ozone. Blackened and smoking, the small body lay on the ground where it had been knocked backward, just outside the perimeter. Boylan paused in his inspection to study the tiny body. A viscous, greenish gunk was leaking from the creature’s cracked core. In both directions all along the perimeter could be seen the blackened, crumpled corpses of a wide assortment of unsuspecting Quofumian fauna that had attempted to penetrate the camp perimeter, as well as several examples of mobile native plant forms.

There was no sign that any of the confrontational spikers, either singly or in groups, had attempted to penetrate the enhanced perimeter subsequent to their initial failed assault on the camp. One could have tried and been fried, Boylan reflected, and the body hauled away by its surviving companions. But since that first attack there had been no alarms. The latter were programmed to alert the camp’s inhabitants only if the perimeter was breached. If they had been set to go off every time an attempt was made, just based on what he was seeing now in the course of his casual inspection, the ringing inside the buildings would have been continuous.

There was an additional benefit to be gained from the lethal fence line. It was generating an abundance of specimens for the scientists to study, a collection that required minimal gathering activity. Admittedly, most of the samples thus unintentionally acquired were not in the best of condition. But as a supplement to the researchers’ fieldwork they would still be welcomed.

He lingered a moment to study something the size of a large dog. It had six legs, though the shock of its demise had splintered two of them. Lying on its side he could not tell which was the front end, which the back, or in the case of this particular woodland denizen if such regional designations even applied.

He was quite pleased. Every aspect of the fence line appeared to be in working order. One reason less to chew out Araza. As Boylan resumed his walk, he acknowledged the delayed response to his call.

“Tellenberg here, Nicholai.” The scientist knew it was Boylan calling back because every one of the communits in use by the team had its own signature. Besides which, the researcher could see the captain on his own unit’s screen, just as Boylan could see Tellenberg. Neither man adjusted his device to produce a full three-dimensional image. Each already knew what the back of the other man’s head looked like. Calling forth full fidelity was an unnecessary waste of power. He might have chosen differently, Boylan mused, if he were talking with Haviti.

“Everything is okay?” Boylan inquired. “Everything is good with you and the others?”

“Everything is good, yes.” Of the four researchers, it was Tellenberg who could manage the best imitation of the captain’s gruff tone. “Mother,” he finished.

“That’s right, make fun of Nicholai. I am only responsible for camp, for success of this mission, and for your continued health and safety. I have no responsibilities and I can relax all day and watch bad tridee recordings. Not like you, who have arduous responsibility of spending a few hours each day collecting butterflies.”

“Some of the ‘butterflies’ around here bite,” Tellenberg told him.

Boylan’s concern was immediate and real. “Someone has been bitten? Already I see that on this world it could prove difficult to defend against so many possible dangers, small as well as large.”

“No, no.” The scientist hastened to correct him. “As reported, we’ve had a few run-ins with some of the simpler local life-forms. You know how it is. Very typical for a planet where the predatory fauna has no reason to fear offworlders. Such attacks just enable us to add to our collections.”

Striding along the inside of the fence line, Boylan came across another heap of dead wildlife. “Without even being directed to do so, the camp is also adding to your collections. Or to dinner. I will leave to your expertise the requisite categorizations.”

“Sounds appetizing,” Tellenberg riposted. The image on the captain’s screen shifted as the scientist turned his own communit away from his face. “What do the rest of you think?”

With Tellenberg’s vit pickup now pointed in their direction, Boylan could see the other members of the group scattered throughout the boat. From the seat at the control console, N’kosi responded with a rude gesture. Nearby, Valnadireb also responded with a gesture. The thranx utilized all four hands, rendering actions as complex as they were unintelligible.

Sitting on the narrow bench that was an integral part of the hull and ran around the inside of the boat, Haviti just smiled. “I don’t mind eating a few specimens—after they’ve been catalogued. Or if we have duplicates. If the food prep’s analyzer says something is edible, I’m game to try it. Local forage is always a nice change from dehydrates and synthetics. You never know when you might bite into something exceptional.”

“Like a new flavor,” commented N’kosi. “How often in one’s lifetime do you get to experience a new flavor?”

Upon reaching the gate, Boylan completed his circuit of the camp’s interior safety perimeter. More than satisfied, he pivoted on his heel and headed back toward the domed, climate-controlled entry module.

“A patentable discovery like that would repay all costs of expedition,” he pointed out via his communit.

Tellenberg was apologetic. “I’m afraid all we have so far are hundreds of unprecedented discoveries and thousands of new species to be placed in an absurdly large number of Quofumspecific phyla. Alas, no new flavors.”

Reaching the entrance to the outer lock, Boylan had to pause for a second while Security read his bioprofile. The door then slid aside to admit him. An invigorating blast of cool air greeted his arrival.

“We must make do then with your pitiful vast scientific discoveries. When will I be able to see some of them for myself?” Waiting for a reply, he could clearly hear Tellenberg consulting with N’kosi and the others.

“Even with occasional stops to collect, we should be back at the river landing sometime tomorrow morning,” the scientist told him. “Before lunch, certainly. Assuming the boat doesn’t give us any trouble.”

“Boat is self-maintaining.” Boylan stepped through the inner doorway and into the module that had been fitted out as the expedition’s living quarters. “Not like camp, where I have to do so much work by myself with only personality-deprived half-mute technician to assist. See you tomorrow morning, then.”

“Don’t eat anything we wouldn’t eat,” Tellenberg directed him by way of signing off.

The captain clipped his communit back onto his service belt. He was pretty fortunate, he knew. On previous expeditions he had found himself forced to operate in the company of researchers whose notion of uncontrolled hilarity was to alter recordings of alien zygotes and pass the results off as genuine. All too many of them could consider humor only in the abstract. To Boylan, anyone who could not laugh when one of a team’s members slipped and fell in a pool of alien excrement was not worthy of the extra help and companionship that were so vital to an expedition’s success.

Who said he had no sense of humor?

Tellenberg slipped his communit back into its weatherproof holder. The device itself was also completely weatherproof, which meant that the holder was somewhat superfluous, but he was a firm believer in the efficacy of redundant systems—especially out in the field. He smiled to himself. Boylan’s attitude toward the science team bordered on the schizophrenic. On the one hand the captain professed little interest in the researchers so long as they did their jobs and did not violate accepted Commonwealth standards for carrying out fieldwork. On the other, he could be as solicitous as a brooding hen. He would never admit to such concern, of course. It would never square with the macho image he sought to project.

Something bumped the underside of the boat. Hard. Hard enough to jolt his attention as well as his backside. Thoughts of the captain were abandoned as he turned to look back at N’kosi.

Having nearly been knocked out of his seat by the unexpected impact, the other xenologist had grabbed the bar that ran around the control console. He hung on with one hand as he checked the instruments. Nearby, Haviti was picking herself up off the deck. She appeared unhurt. Valnadireb helped her up. The thranx had been standing on all six legs and had not fallen. None of the four scientists felt the need to say “What the hell?”

An intent N’kosi was studying readouts. “Hull integrity intact,” he announced immediately. Tellenberg assumed he meant both hulls, since the boat had two. “Systems status unchanged. Minor course deviation corrected.” Glancing up, his gaze met Tellenberg’s. “What did we hit? Depth scanners indicate we still have ten meters of water under us.”

Haviti was leaning over the port side. A strange expression had come over her face as she looked back at her colleagues. “You mean ‘who.’”

It was truly amazing, Tellenberg marveled as he rushed to the side of the boat, how one small world could contain such a vast wealth of implications.

There were two—no, three of the massive creatures. They lolled on their backs, or at least on their dorsal sides since it was impossible to truthfully identify a front or back, and lazily regarded the boat and its occupants. More than a little dazed, the four researchers gazed back at the beings who had come up under the boat. There was no way of telling if the contact had been intentional or accidental. None of the alien trio appeared to be injured. As the scientists looked on, the three rolled and dipped in the water, easily keeping pace with the boat.

It occurred to the three humans that they ought to be operating their recorders. Fortunately, Valnadireb had never taken his off. It had been monitoring the encounter from the moment of collision.

As he was fumbling to position his own ear-mounted unit, Tellenberg’s fingers dropped away from the device. He had been overcome by the sudden realization of what they were seeing. A moment fraught with implications as profound as they were unexpected. A glance would have shown that his companions had been equally affected. One by one they checked their individual documenting instrumentation.

The nearest of the three aquatic organisms had disappeared, having submerged fully. The other two continued to loll on the surface. It was evident they were as interested in the exotic creatures on board the strange floating object as those terrestrial beings were in them.

Formed of lustrous, glassy protoplasm, each of the alien pair was a good four meters long. Their central bulges were approximately the same in diameter. Both fore and aft ends tapered to a stub, at the end of which was an obvious eye. Two eyes, one at each end. Remarkable, Tellenberg found himself thinking. Not only could he and his colleagues not tell the creatures’ dorsal side from the ventral, they could not tell front from back. The organisms’ design was fantastic, absurd, outrageous. A biological joke. He did not rule out the possibility that each of them was actually two individuals joined tail to tail, perhaps for purposes of ongoing reproduction.

But if that was the case, how to explain only one pair of waving appendages protruding from the central bulge? If each organism was comprised of two individuals joined together, would each separately be equipped with only one limb? And why not? he challenged himself. Each would have only one eye. One limb, one eye—but that was not what was most astonishing about the translucent shapes. Mere physiological aberrations were not what had him struck dumb.

What mattered was not whether the creature he was looking at was controlled by a single brain or two. What rendered him speechless was the unmistakable fact that both sets of waving limbs were semaphoring an intricate series of gestures in the direction of the boat. When Valnadireb responded by attempting to mimic the pseudopodal signaling as best he could, the two aquatic beings promptly reacted by gesturing in kind.

Standing at the railing, Haviti called forth a series of ancestral arm movements. Drawn from formal dance moves handed down through her family, they were languorous and serpentine. The creatures in the water imitated them beautifully. They then proceeded to follow this display with a succession of simple twists and turns of their flexible limbs. Tellenberg joined his friends in trying his hand at mimicry. The alien gestures grew more complicated. When the humans’ and thranx’s attempts at imitation failed, the water slugs simplified their efforts and repeated them until those on board got the movements right.