Phylogenesis (7 page)

The youth accepted the stranger’s offer gratefully. With the two of them working in tandem the process of shifting the containers accelerated noticeably. The open back of the little vehicle began to fill.

“What is in these?” Only mildly interested, Desvendapur glanced down at the container cradled in his four arms. The information embossed on the side of the gray repository was less than descriptive.

“Food,” the other male informed him. “Ingredients. I am a food-preparation assistant, third level.” There was no false pride in his voice. “Graduated at the top of my classification several years ago. That is how I secured this position.”

“You make it sound like it’s something special.” Never known for his tact, Desvendapur was not about to open a new wing case now. He passed another container to the waiting male. “This is Geswixt, not Ciccikalk.” In what had become a rote comment, he fished automatically. “Of course, if the humans were here, it would be different.”

“Here?” The hardworking preparator whistled amusedly. “Why would there be any humans here, in Geswixt?”

“Why indeed? An absurd notion.” A practiced Des displayed neither discouragement nor excitement.

His new acquaintance barely paused to catch his breath. “It really is. They are all up-valley, in their own quarters.” He indicated the rapidly growing stack of containers. “This is food for them. I’m learning how to prepare sustenance not for our kind, but for humans.”

5

H
aving by now more or less come to the depressing conclusion that the presence of humans in Geswixt was a myth, Desvendapur made the fastest mental adjustment of his life. With admirable lack of hesitation, he responded, “Yes, I know.”

“You know?” The preparator hesitated uncertainly. “How do you know that?”

“By the markings on the containers,” the poet replied without hesitation, supple prevarication being close kin to the white heat of creation. The only difference was that he was creating for the sake of convenience and not for posterity.

His new acquaintance clicked dubiously. “Every shipment is coded. How do you come to know the codes?”

Self-immersed in semantic mud and unable to see a way clear to extricating himself, Des blithely burrowed in deeper. “Because I’m here to cross-check you. I am also in food preparation, just assigned here as a general kitchen assistant.” He tapped the repository he was cradling with all four digits of one truhand. “How are your skills? Current? Up-to-date? Tell me what this contains.”

Distracted, the preparator glanced at the embossing. “Powdered milk. A natural mammalian bodily extract that is used as an ingredient in many meals.”

“Very good!” Des complimented him slavishly even as he wondered what ‘powdered milk’ might be. “This one’s trickier.” He singled out a cylinder with a larger embossed identification area than its predecessor. “How about this?”

The younger male hesitated only briefly. “Soya patties, various nut extracts, dehydrated fish, assorted fruits and vegetables. I don’t know all the individual names yet.”

“Go on, try,” Des urged him. “I’m going to catch you out yet before we’re finished here.”

“Nothing was said to me about another assistant being assigned to my section,” the preparator murmured, still uncertain.

“That’s what I thought.” Des moved to stack the container without letting the other have a look at its index. “This one is too alien for you.”

“No content listing is too alien for me. At least, I don’t think it is.” Antennae gyrated pridefully. “I complete all my assignments and receive notable ratings.”

They continued in this fashion until the last of the containers had been transferred and its contents elucidated. “Where are your quarters?”

“They have not been designated yet.” Des continued to improvise, a skill at which poet-soothers excelled. “I came up early. I’m not supposed to present myself until next day next.”

The preparator considered. “There is not much to see here in Geswixt proper. Why don’t you come with me? You can share my room until you have been assigned.”

“Many thanks, Ulunegjeprok.”

His new friend glanced around. “Where is your personal gear?”

“It missed the transport because I decided to come up early,” Des explained. “Don’t worry about me. It will work its way through the system in a couple of days.”

“You can borrow some of mine if you need anything. I see you’ve already got cold-climate gear.” He indicated the special protective attire that covered most of Desvendapur’s body. “I need to see if there is any other cargo here for the kitchen. If not, we can leave in half a time-part.”

“I will meet you right here,” Des assured him.

Leaving the preparator, the poet rushed from one part of the terminal to the next in search of Melnibicon. When he found her, she was conversing amiably with a pair of older thranx. Fighting to conceal his excitement, he drew her aside.

“What’s going on?” She eyed him warily. “Your spicules are dilated.”

“I have…met someone,” he hastened to explain. “An old friend. He has invited me to stay with him for a while.”

“What’s that? You can’t do that.” The senior flier looked around uncomfortably. “I took a chance just in bringing you over here for the afternoon. I can’t leave you here. Your absence will be questioned.”

“I’ll take care of it. I will not involve you in any way, Melnibicon.”

She took a step back from him, fending him off with both foothands. “Blood parasites, you won’t! I am already involved. You came
with
me, soother, and you are coming back with me.”

“It is only for a day or two,” he pleaded with her. “I won’t be missed.”

“What about your regular daily recitals, your rounds?”

“Tell anyone who asks that I’m not feeling well, that I am suffering from an internal upset and am self-medicating myself. Have Heul activate the privacy lock on my quarters.”

“So you would involve her in your subterfuge as well. I will not be a party to this, Desvendapur. If you want to spend time here, place an application through the proper channels.”

“It will not be approved,” he argued. “You know it won’t. Geswixt is a restricted destination.”

“Exactly why you’re coming back with me.” She started to turn away. “Now if you will excuse me,
soother,
I am not finished talking with my friends.”

He stood motionless, thoughts churning and anger rising as she persisted in ignoring him. It was impolite of him to remain standing there, but she remained adamant. Since she did not acknowledge his presence, her friends did not feel compelled to, either. Hiding his mounting frustration and his fury, he turned and started back across the broad, flat surface of the terminal. He would meet his new friend Ulu at the designated pickup point and at the appointed time, but first he had to make a stop at the lifter that had brought him here from Honydrop.

Walking gave him time to ponder what he was about to do. Though his mind was clear, his intentions firm, a part of him remained hesitant. What he contemplated was unlike him, unlike anything he had ever done before. But wasn’t that the source of true artistic inspiration: the naked plunge, the embarkation into regions never before visited, the effort to break free of convention and restraint? He argued with himself all the way back to the lifter, while he was on it, and after he left it behind. But having set his mind, he solidified his decision as he approached the meeting place. He took considerable pride in not looking back over his shoulder, not even when he boarded the small truck and drove off in the company of chattering Ulunegjeprok.

Melnibicon would look for him, he knew. She would ask who had seen him. He doubted she would receive much in the way of response. Everyone in the terminal was busy, intent on his or her own business. No one would have noticed one more thranx striding purposefully through their field of vision. Eventually she would give up, cursing all the while, and reboard the lifter for the return flight to Honydrop. It was not her fault if he missed the departure. Upon her return she would report him as absent, accept whatever chiding was due for taking an unauthorized passenger to Geswixt, and go on about her business.

It troubled Desvendapur, but not to the point of preventing him from engaging in conversation with Ulu. They spoke about alien foodstuffs and their sometimes eccentric preparation, Des giving the impression he knew a great deal while in reality he was utterly ignorant on the subject. But the more Ulu talked, the more Des ‘tested’ and ‘checked’ him, the greater grew the poet’s rapidly burgeoning store of knowledge. By the time they reached the checkpoint, he felt he could have carried on a limited conversation on the subject. Certainly he now knew more about it than any nonspecialist.

It was rare to see a hive tunnel blocked or guarded. Desvendapur supposed that access to military installations was similarly restricted, as was that leading to sensitive scientific installations, but this was the first time in his life he had actually encountered an armed guard. One of the pair recognized Ulunegjeprok immediately. Des tensed when the no-nonsense sentry turned his attention to the truck’s passenger. But it was late in the day and the guard was tired. When Ulu cheerily explained that his passenger was another newly arrived worker assigned to his own section, the body-armored thranx accepted the explanation readily. There was no reason not to. Why would anyone not ordered to do so want to willingly place himself in close proximity to a bunch of soft-bodied, pinch-featured, antenna-less, malodorous mammals? The truck was waved through.

They entered a much longer tunnel, featureless except for periodic electronic checkpoints. Their progress was being monitored, Des realized. The amount of security was daunting. How long he would be able to continue to brazen his way through he did not know. Long enough to gain inspiration for a small volume of stanzas, he hoped. Phrases, at last, that would be underlain with real meaning and significance. After what he had gone through to get this far, he had better accomplish at least that much.

Would Melnibicon notice that the lifter’s navigation system had been accessed? Would it occur to her to recheck a preprogrammed course that the craft had followed faultlessly many times before? If she did, then he would have only hours of freedom in which to seek inspiration. If she did not, and relaxed on board as she had on the flight over, then he might have a day or two in which to interact with the aliens and the storm of exotic sights and sounds they hopefully represented before Security caught up with him. As for Melnibicon, her hastily reprogrammed lifter would set her down automatically among the rilthy peaks, whereupon if he had done his work properly the flight instrumentation would then freeze up and compel her to call for rescue.

It never occurred to him while he had been entering his irate, hasty adjustments that the disoriented craft might simply run into the side of a mountain.

For a service tunnel, the corridor they were speeding down seemed to go on forever. Locked into the passageway’s guide strip, Ulunegjeprok abandoned the controls to let the truck do its own driving. He would return to manual when necessary.

“So, where did you study?” he inquired innocently of his newly arrived counterfeit colleague.

Nothing if not voluble, Des spun an elaborate story woven around what he knew of Hivehom. Since Ulu was a native of Willow-Wane and had never been offworld, he could hardly catch Des in any mistakes. By the time the truck finally began to slow as they approached another floor-to-ceiling barrier, the poet had half convinced himself of his own skill at food preparation.

He held his breath, but the facility on the other side of the seal was disappointingly ordinary. Certainly there was nothing to indicate the presence of aliens. He was reluctant to press Ulu for details lest he appear too eager. Besides, the less he opened his mouthparts, the better. Silence was the best way of hiding ignorance.

Turning down a subsidiary corridor, Ulunegjeprok eventually parked the truck in a vacant unloading slot. Wordlessly, acting as though he knew exactly what he was doing and that he belonged, Des proceeded to help him unload. The kitchen facilities were extensive, spotless, and more or less familiar, though he did espy several devices whose purpose was foreign to him. That did not necessarily mean they were intended for the preparation of mammalian food, he reminded himself. He was a poet, not a cook, and the only food preparation equipment he was familiar with was the individual kind that he had made use of personally.

Encountering and finding himself introduced to a couple of Ulu’s coworkers, he was delighted to discover that he could pass himself off as a colleague with a certain aplomb. They in turn were able to present him to still others, with the result that by nightfall he was an accepted member of the staff. Thus accredited through personal contact, his presence was not further remarked upon. He even assisted in the preparation of the nighttime meal, noting that for this purpose the staff responsible for the preparation of the alien food had the extensive facility entirely to themselves.

To his surprise he discovered among the courses a number that were familiar to him. He did not comment on this revelation lest he expose his ignorance. But it was fascinating to learn that the humans could eat thranx food.

“Not all of it, of course,” Ulu remarked in the course of their work, “but then you know that already. Fortunately, they don’t ask us to assist in the treatment of meat.”

“Meat?” Desvendapur was not sure he had heard the preparator correctly.

“That’s right, joke about it,” Ulu whistled. “I cannot imagine it myself. They warned us when we were taking the special courses, but still, the idea of intelligent creatures consuming the flesh of others of their own immediate family was more than a little terrifying. Didn’t you find it so?”

“Oh, absolutely.” Desvendapur was quick to improvise. “Meat eaters! The proclivity seems utterly incompatible with true intelligence.”

“I have not seen them do it myself. I do remember asking, early on in the first seminar, why they did not just do all their own food preparation, but as you know the idea is to encourage them to become as comfortable as possible here. That means learning to eat food that we prepare.” He whistled a soft chuckle. “What the media would not give to know that the only contact project isn’t on Hivehom.” Light flashed from his compound eyes as he looked over at Des, who was whitened up to his foothands in something called flour. “Wouldn’t it be funny if you were a correspondent who had slipped in here under cover, and not a preparator assistant?”

Desvendapur laughed in what he fervently hoped was an unforced manner. “What an amusing notion, Ulu! Naturally, I am as sworn to secrecy as everyone else who has been chosen to work with the aliens.”

“Naturally.” Ulunegjeprok was forming the flour into loaves. Watching and learning something new and useful every minute, Des imitated him with rapidly accelerating skill. Alien food formed the basis for a nice quatrain or two, but where were the aliens themselves? Where? Would he have the opportunity not simply to prepare their food but to see them eat? To observe their flexible mouthparts in motion and see the long pink tongue thing that resided, like some symbiotic slug, within their mouths? That would provide inspiration for more than a few stanzas! Horror was always an efficacious stimulus.

He did not get his wish. The food was taken from them for final treatment and delivery, leaving the prep staff alone in the kitchen to clean up before retiring. Desvendapur followed Ulu to his quarters, memorizing sights and routes, learning something new and useful with every step.