On his thorax the eight spicules pulsed weakly, sucking air. He turned his head and looked up, using his truhands to brush at the dampness still clinging to his eyes.
Then other hands were on him, turning him, helping him untangle. Antiseptic cloths brushed at his eyes and there was a sharp smell of peppermint. A voice spoke soothingly. “It’s all over. Relax, just relax. Let your body gather its strength.”
Instinctively he turned toward the sound of the voice as the last film masking his eyes was sponged away. A male Thranx looked down at him. His chiton was deep purple, so he would be quite elderly.
Realization came in a rush. Purple. The adult’s chiton was purple, and purple was a color that had been described to him and now he knew what it was and the ceramic inlay in the doctor’s forehead was a single bar of silver crossed by two bars of gold and his ommatidia were red with gold and yellow central bands and they gleamed in the light of the room and … and … It was wonderful.
He looked down at himself, saw the slim body, the segmented abdomen, the four glistening wing cases, vestigial wings beneath, the four strong, jointed legs spraddled to his left. He raised a truhand, touched it with a foothand, then repeated the motion with the other pair, then touched all four sets of four fingers together.
All around him he heard uncertain clicks and whistles as strange voices struggled to master new bodies. Someone brought a mirror. Ryo looked into it. Staring back at him was a beautiful blue-green adult, still damp but drying rapidly following Emergence. The valentine-shaped head was cocked to one side. Cream-white feathery antennae fluttered and smothered him in the most peculiar sensations. Smells, they were; rich, dark, pungent, musky, glowing, vanilla. The smells of the postcocoon recovery room, of his metamorphosed friends. He knew he’d been asleep not a few minutes or seconds but for more than half a year, that his body had changed and matured from a pulpy, barely conscious white thing into a gloriously streamlined adult.
He tried to gather his legs beneath him and found ready hands on either side, helping him up. “Easy there … don’t try to rush yourself,” a voice told him.
Erect, he turned and discovered a wide window. On the other side stood a host of excited, mature Thranx. Ryo recognized the markings of two, his sire and dame.
They were no longer kindly gray shapes. They had color now. Evidentally they recognized him, for they made greeting signs at him. He returned them, realizing that he now possessed the means for doing so.
The hands left him. He stood by himself on all fours, abdomen stretched out behind him, thorax and then b-thorax inclined upward with his head topping all. He looked back over his shoulder, down at his body, then down at the floor. He stepped carefully off the soft padding onto the harder outside ring. Experimentally, he walked in a slow circle.
“Very good, Ryozenzuzex.” It was the elderly doctor who’d supervised his Emergence. “Don’t rush yourself. Your body knows what to do.”
Around Ryo his companions were taking experimental deep breaths, cleaning their eyes, testing legs and fingers, females wiggling their shining ovipositors, extending and recoiling them.
I can walk, he thought delightedly. I can see colors. He sensed the pressure of air around him and his brain sorted the implications. I can faz, and I can smell, and I can still hear. He thanked those who’d assisted him and marveled at the clarity of his speech; sharp clicks, beautifully modulated whistles—all the intricate convolutions of Low Thranx. Years of study paid off now.
He marveled at that, too, his four mandibles moving smoothly against each other as he made sounds of pure pleasure. Only one thing hung in his thoughts to mar his happiness: his body was complete but his future was not, for he still had not the vaguest idea what he wanted to do with himself.
Eventually he drifted into agricultural services, for he felt a positive joy at finally being able to go Above and, unlike his highly gregarious fellow citizens, took pleasure in working outside the town.
He drowned his personal uncertainties and confusion in work. Pushed by his clan, he took as premate a bright and energetic female named Falmiensazex. Life settled into a comfortable, familiar routine. His clan and family ceased to worry about him, and the old, nagging indecision faded steadily until it was nearly forgotten.
II
It was the midday of Malmrep, the third of Willow-wane’s five seasons and the time of High Summer. The weather was rich with moisture and the air rippled with heat.
Ryo checked the readout on the console. Two assistants accompanied him on the scouting expedition into the jungle. They were to survey the feasibility of planting two thousand bexamin vines.
He’d argued long and patiently with the Inmot local council who had intended to plant the newly drained and cleared land in ji bushes. Ryo insisted that it was time to diversify local operations further and that bexamin vine, which produced small hard berries of deep ocher hue, was the most suitable candidate for planting.
The berry fruit was useless, but the single seed that lay at the center of each, when crushed and mixed with water and a protein additive, produced a wonderfully sweet syrup that was nearly as nutritious as it was tasty. But the fifteen-meter-long vines required more attention than the most delicate ji bush. Nevertheless, the council voted three to two in favor of his suggestion.
Ryo was quite conscious of how much was riding on the success of this planting. While failure would not shatter his solid reputation within the Company, a good bexamin crop would considerably enhance it. Whether a grand triumph was a good idea he wasn’t sure, but he didn’t seem to be progressing in any other directions. So he thought he might as well rise within the Company structure.
“Bor, Aen,” he said to his two assistants, both of whom were older than he, “break out the transit sighters. We’re going to lay a line down that way.” With right foothand and truhand he gestured to his left, to the northeast.
They acknowledged the order by unpacking the instruments and fixing them to the proper mounts on the side of the crawler. Ryo made sure the stingers were unstrapped and ready for use in case they should meet with an errilis.
But nothing sprang from the tangled vegetation to challenge them as they powered up the instruments. Minutes passed and Bor was removing a reflective marker from its case when an explosion threw him violently to the crawler deck. The concussion bent the thinner trees eastward. Vines and creepers were torn free of their branches. Only his grip on the steering pylon enabled Ryo to maintain his footing.
During the silence that followed, the three of them lay stunned, not knowing what to make of the violence. Then a frantic cacophony of screeks and wails, moans and weeping rose from the startled inhabitants of the jungle as they recovered from their own shock.
A trio of splay-footed inwicep birds ran past the crawler, their meter-wide webbed feet barely tickling the swamp water, their necks held parallel to the surface and their thin blue tails stretched out behind them for balance.
“Ovipositors acute!” muttered Bor. “What was that?” As if to punctuate the query there was another roar, less cataclysmic but still strong enough to rattle the treetops.
Both assistants looked to Ryo for an explanation, but he could only stare south, the way they’d come, and perform instinctive gestures of befuddlement. “I’ve no idea. It almost sounds as if the generator nexus went up.”
“A collision at the transport terminal perhaps,” suggested Aen.
“Not possible.” Bor made a gesture of assurance. He was the eldest of the trio. “Only a monitor breakdown for the northern sector of the continent would allow such a disaster. Even if that came to pass I can’t visualize any collision of modules producing such an explosion.”
“That would depend on what they were carrying,” said Ryo, “but I agree with you. A more likely source of such energy would be the Reducer complex south of town where they distill fuel alcohols.”
Aen concurred. “We’d best hurry back and see what we can do to help. There may be fire in the bur
rows.”
“I have clanmates who work at the Reducer.” Bor was no less concerned than his friends.
“And I,” added Aen.
Ryo gunned the engine of the crawler. Broad exterior treads spun in opposite directions. The vehicle turned on its axis and Ryo sent it rumbling back down the path they’d crunched through the raw jungle. Ooze and water sprayed from the speeding machine’s flanks as Bor and Aen hurriedly restowed the survey equipment.
A fresh shock awaited them as they reached the edge of the jungle and were about to touch the farthest of the plantation access roads. Two large shuttlecraft of peculiar multiwinged design were resting there. In landing they’d made a ruin of several neatly tended fields of weoneon and asfi.
The local airport was south of Paszex, a fact that Ryo could not reconcile with the presence in his familiar fields of the two strange ships. It was the older Bor who roughly took the controls from him and hurriedly backed the crawler into the cover of the jungle.
The action ended Ryo’s immobility, if not his confusion. “I don’t understand. Is it some kind of emergency? Is that why they didn’t set down at the port and …?”
Bor interrupted him, pragmatism assuming sway over politeness.
“Those are not Thranx, or anything else friendly. They are AAnn shuttlecraft. Don’t you recall them from Learning Time? There has to be an AAnn warship somewhere in orbit around Willow-wane.”
Bor’s words brought the segment of study back to Ryo in a rush.
Powerful, antagonistic, and crafty were the words that best described the endoskeletal space-going AAnn. Their star systems lay farther out along the galactic plane than the Thranx worlds. Though war had never been declared between the two races, occasional “mistakes” were made by individual AAnn commanders who “overstepped their orders.” Or so the AAnn apologies always insisted.
Since the Central government on Hivehom was always practical about such matters, the errors never led to full-scale combat. Such isolated incidents were irritating but rarely outrageous. The Grand Council therefore chose to protest such incidents through diplomatic channels.
This policy was not much comfort to the three outraged individuals driving the crawler, an unusual state of affairs among a people normally respectful of authority.
The trio could not sympathize with diplomats, since all they could see were two invading craft that had destroyed laboriously groomed fields, and the plumes of dark black smoke that rose like mutilated ghosts above Paszex.
“We must do something.” Ryo stared helplessly through the trees. Across the fields drifted the hiss of discharging energy weapons mixed with the lighter crackle of Thranx stingers and an occasional nasty cur-rrrupmph! from explosive shells.
“What can we do?” Bor’s tone was one of calm acceptance. “We do not have—” His voice rose at the thought and his eyes gleamed like diamonds. “We do have weapons.”
Ryo’s hands pulled the largest stinger rifle from its holster. He needed all four to handle it. “Bor, you drive the crawler. Aen, you navigate and keep watch for the AAnn.”
“Pardon,” Aen objected, “but in accordance with our respective positions it would be my place to drive, Bor’s to shoot, and yours to navigate.”
“Rank is hereby superseded by circumstance.” Ryo was checking the charge on the rifle. It was full. “I order you to disregard position.”
“If you wish me to ignore position then you cannot give me an order to do so,” she argued smoothly. Bor settled the argument by plunging the crawler through the trees onto the field of cab-high asfi. They were soon submerged in ripe yellow pods just starting to droop from their green-and-black-striped stalks.
Noise and gunfire continued to issue from the direction of the town. That was natural. Also promising, Ryo thought. Having touched down unopposed in an unprotected colonial region, the invaders quite likely would anticipate little in the way of armed resistance. Certainly nothing as absurd as a counterattack.
Ryo ordered Bor to aim the crawler for the parked shuttles. Ryo wished simultaneously for an energy rifle. That would be much more effective against machinery, the stingers having been designed for use against living beings.
They approached quite near to the shuttles and still no one appeared to challenge them. The shuttlecraft were the first true space-going vehicles Ryo had ever seen. Paszex and Jupiq and even Zirenba did not rate a spaceport. Only facilities for less powerful suborbital craft.
At Aen’s suggestion, Bor swung the crawler sharply left and off the main cultivation path. Now they were smashing crudely through the dense rows of asfi stalks. Fruit and stalks flew in all directions.
Such casual destruction was normally worthy of severe condemnation, but under the circumstances Ryo didn’t worry about possible social consequences. And then, suddenly and unexpectedly, a single creature was standing just ahead and to the right of the rapidly advancing crawler.
The AAnn was relieving himself and the abrupt appearance of the crawler was a shock. He stumbled over his short pants and growled unintelligibly.
The blunt, heavy jaws were filled with sharp teeth. A pair of black, single-lensed eyes peered from high on the two sides of the head. A single tail curved from behind. The large, clawed feet wore devices that resembled steel spats. Its short pants were matched by a shirt of dull color and a helmet forested with electronic sensors.
A thick cord connected a bulky hand weapon to a power pack slung around the AAnn’s waist. The muzzle swung around to point at the onrushing crawler.
Civilized thoughts were subsumed by fury and Ryo never hesitated. Had he been the average worker, he would have died, but in the swamps Ryo had acquired reflexes that most hive dwellers lacked.
There was a sharp crack from the stinger and a tiny bolt of electricity jumped from its tip to strike the AAnn squarely in the chest. The AAnn convulsed, jumped a meter clear of the ground, and fell back twitching. He was motionless by the time the crawler rumbled past. Now the enormity of what Ryo had just done finally struck. He’d deliberately slain another sentient creature. For an instant Ryo was a little shaky.
They could hear anguished, high-pitched whistles from the direction of Paszex. Primitive instincts overwhelmed the last of thousands of years of civilization. The hive was being attacked. Ryo was a soldier defending the burrow entrances. All that mattered now was defense.
By now they were quite close to the nearer of the two shuttlecraft and Ryo was hunting for a section of the ship that might prove vulnerable to his weapon. If he’d had an energy rifle he would have begun by shooting at the multiple landing gear or at the transparent crescent that marked the command cabin above the nose. But these were warcraft. There were no exposed antennae or exterior engines.
Several armed AAnn stood beneath the nearest wing. They glanced up in surprise as the crawler rumbled into view. Ryo shot one of them before the others could move. The group suddenly broke and ran frantically for the ramp that led from the ground to the belly of the shuttle.
Ryo caught another AAnn with a second bolt halfway up the ramp, watching coldly as the creature jerked and twisted downward. Several energy beams reached from the other retreating soldiers toward the crawler but, fired wildly and in haste, they missed the agile machine as Bor sent it winding in unpredictable directions.
Now they were crossing under the stern of the first shuttle and careening toward the second. Ryo sent several shots crackling toward the twin exhaust jets and then the rocket openings between, hoping to disable some vital component. He had no way of knowing if the bursts were effective.
By this time panic was giving way to reaction among those on board the craft. Suddenly a powerful wash of energy radiated from the bow of the second ship. It carbonized the ground ahead and to the left of the charging crawler.
“Turn, turn!” shouted Aen. Bor responded with soft clicking noises indicating acknowledgment and mild annoyance.
The crawler raced for the concealment of some tettoq trees. A second e
nergy blast seared the earth where the crawler had been heading moments earlier.
Other rushing, mechanical sounds reached them. Looking back over the stern of the crawler as they disappeared into the shelter of the tettoq boles, Ryo could make out moving figures hurrying toward the shuttles. Some were on single-tracked machines that carried soldiers in pairs. Others ran on foot. All were pouring out of the town.
The fire from the second shuttle was joined by a flare from the first. Beams from both swept the tettoq orchard in search of fleeing enemy. One struck near enough to explode the crawler’s rear tread. But by that time the overworked vehicle was limping into the far thicker cover offered by the jungle.
Almost reluctantly, a final, fiery burst cut down two massive lugulic trees, which fell with a ripping crash just to the left of the damaged crawler, carrying down vines and lesser trees with them. Then a rich, rising whine filled the air.
“Can you see what they’re doing?” Bor asked, maintaining as complex an evasive course as he could manage with the damaged tread. Ryo and Aen tried to stare through the trees.
“The ramps have been taken in,” Ryo said excitedly. “Judging from the noise, I’d say they’re preparing to leave.”
“Surely not because of our little diversion?”
“Who knows?” Pride filled Aen’s voice. “They were certainly surprised. Perhaps they think several dozen of us, mounting deadlier weaponry, are preparing to attack them.”
“Such speculation is unbecoming,” Ryo murmured.
“The circumstances support it,” she replied.
“Then again,” Bor put in, “it may be that their flight has several possible causes.”
“Meaning what?” wondered Ryo.
Bor brought the crawler to a halt and joined them in gazing through the wall of trees. “Either they have accomplished whatever evil they planned for our poor hive or else,” and he pointed skyward with a truhand, “one of the warships that occasionally but regularly visits our system had received word of this attack and has drawn near.”