All of this impressed itself on his mind as he drew his weapon and took aim at the crouching alien. Before he could depress the trigger, something hard and muscular struck his right side. His impact-shocked fingers released the sidearm, which went tumbling to the damp, grimy floor. As he struggled with what felt like a massive bundle of live wires, the second creature turned to face him. Up close he could see that it had a protruding ridge of bone where a nose would be but no visible nostrils. No such ambiguity clouded the identity of the gaping mouth, whose parted jaws revealed sturdy incisors and molars arranged in double rows. A maw that could both rip and chew, it was presently inclining toward his face.
A part of him realized dimly that from a distance, and not a great one at that, such a being could easily be mistaken for human by even a well-programmed Myssari automatic. The matter of multiple joints aside, the native possessed the requisite number of limbs in approximately the same places, four manipulative digits instead of five, a head in the right location, and similar proportions. The flowing hair could easily conceal the left-skull and right-skull flanking eyes, while from anywhere but up close the central facial bony ridge looked very much like a human nose. Yes, the confusion was understandable. That his demise was imminent in no way affected the disappointment of his realization.
A bright light flashed in his eyes, blinding him. It was due not to the release of his body’s protective endorphins but to a perfectly placed discharge of energy from a weapon wielded by one of his Myssari escorts. As he blinked in furious pain, Ruslan’s vision cleared enough for him to see that where tooth and maw had loomed ever closer to his face, smoke now rose from a small crater where the alien’s head had been. The decapitated body slowly fell to its left. Maintaining their grip even in death, the powerful four-fingered hands that held him now dragged him to the ground.
More shots were fired, driving the remaining pair of frustrated, screeching creatures from the chamber. As the outpost escorts pursued them, familiar figures rushed to Ruslan’s aid. Kel’les arrived first, followed by Cor’rin and Bac’cul. Their largely inflexible faces prohibited expressions of concern, but he could see the apprehension in their eyes and hear clearly the strain in their voices.
“I’m fine,” Ruslan assured them. Balancing on two legs, Bac’cul used his third to brace himself against the headless native corpse. Utilizing all three arms, he soon had the human free from the dead creature’s death grasp. “It was a near thing, though,” he added as he rose to his feet.
“We heard noises.” Cor’rin was staring at him out of her small violet eyes. “Then the sound of a weapon being discharged and we came as fast as we could.” She looked past him, in the direction taken by the fleeing natives and the pursuing Myssari. “Your survival is a tribute to the skill of our escorts. I would not have dared to take a shot while you were held so close in the native’s embrace.”
“Weapons schooling comprises only the most peripheral portion of our field training.” Though Bac’cul had an irritating fetish for elucidating the obvious, an exhausted Ruslan could not find it in his heart to venture even the slightest dollop of his usual sarcasm.
He was exhausted, and crushed. Twi’win’s pessimism had trumped his original zeal. Observed in passing from a distance and from the air, the ferocious native creatures he had encountered could easily pass muster as possible humans. While it was not conclusive that the ones who had attacked him were representative of the same species that had been spotted and recorded by the Daribb outpost’s airborne automatics, neither was it an unreasonable assumption. Discouraged and depressed, he felt that he could hear Twi’win’s acerbic comments already.
He did not have long to wait to hear the actual ones.
* * *
—
“You must allow us to continue searching.” There was as much intensity in Bac’cul’s voice as Ruslan had ever heard from the usually even-toned Myssari.
Strange the situation was. Though he was sitting with his back to the discussion, Ruslan did not miss a word. As he stared out the back of the outpost’s three-sided observation tower, his gaze swept over the interminable sea of shallow mudflats. In the distance a wan sun was setting, its sickly hue unable to render the sunset anything other than ailing. From within the mud a few desultory bubbles rose and burst, signifying the presence of something unwholesome beneath the surface whose sole current activity consisted of breaking alien wind. Nothing that was not artificial rose above the murk; not a tree, not a bush, not a blade of grass. Daribb was a world ruled by suck and slime—sad, smelly, and sinking in upon itself.
Yet his kind had seen fit to settle here, to lift buildings and travelways above the murk, to raise children and expand civilization and find, as always, something to exploit. Now they were gone and all was ruin, falling in upon itself and left to the haunts of local bipeds who resembled their past masters only in the most rudimentary shape and size.
He was very tired. He had helped the Myssari on Seraboth. He had helped them on Myssar itself and most recently on Treth. Surely there was no more they could learn from him. He had explained and demonstrated and utilized and performed. He was done remembering. They could preserve his exhausted body however they wished, alongside the many others they had recovered from the unpremeditated catacombs of a dozen worlds. Dimensional recordings of him talking and moving would live after him to amaze each new generation of Myssari youth. He would not be present to hear their muted equivalent of laughter and endure their stares and gestures.
There was no question that they valued what he had done in helping to explain and preserve something of human culture. Having lived an ordinary life until the coming of the Aura Malignance, he was proud of the fact that he had contributed something special, if only to the knowledge base of another species. Who else could make such a claim? Certainly not any human inhabitant of Daribb: there were no human inhabitants of Daribb. He had already acknowledged as much to the outpost’s director.
Bac’cul and Cor’rin, however, were not so willing to give up. Having traveled a long way from Treth at considerable cost to their department, they were not ready to concede to reality, pack their belongings, turn around, and go home. Besides, Cor’rin was arguing as she confronted Director Twi’win, it would be several sixparts before a ship could be designated to pick them up and take them back to Myssar. Why not utilize the time remaining to continue the search? Smiling tautly to himself as he continued to stare out the window, Ruslan knew the answer. Twi’win’s reply to Cor’rin confirmed it.
“You must think we have no other use for our limited resources here than to escort you around Dinabu. There are other human settlements and cities that cry out for exploration.” She gestured with all three hands, executing a complex pattern in the air in front of her. “Should we return to Dinabu, I am sure there is an excellent chance that we would once again encounter the same welcoming ‘humans’ there that your party did yesterday.”
“Just because our initial search was interrupted by hostile indigenes does not mean there are no surviving humans in the city.” Cor’rin was emphatic. “Absence of proof is not proof of absence.”
“You will need to come up with more than clever words to persuade me to allocate additional resources to what I have regarded from the beginning as a wasteful undertaking.”
Though he paid close attention, Ruslan did not participate in the ongoing debate. It would have been useless to do so. His words would have carried no weight and he saw no point in opening himself to embarrassment. He was an artifact. A highly valued one to be sure, but one that retained precious little control over his own destiny. Where the Myssari were concerned, expediency always took precedence over compassion. Just because he wanted to continue the search, which despite his near-fatal encounter with local lifeforms he very much wished to do, did not mean that his desires would make one whit of difference to the outpost director. Or, for that matter, to Bac’cul
and Cor’rin.
Kel’les, now—Kel’les had become friend enough to side with Ruslan against the others. At least Ruslan thought so. He was unsure what the actual result would be if he ever put that friendship to a serious test. He was uncertain he wanted to.
He urged on Bac’cul and Cor’rin’s efforts silently, knowing that to inject himself and his opinions aloud would only be likely to stiffen Twi’win’s opposition. If the outpost director would not yield to the urging of two esteemed scientists of her own kind, she surely would be immune to the entreaties of a single alien.
Having no standing in what was essentially a disagreement involving science and economics, Kel’les sidled over to stand beside the human. “Bac’cul and Cor’rin are making as good a case as they can. I feel that their reasoning is sound.”
Turning away from a panorama that featured endless muck and sallow sunlight, Ruslan murmured softly to his trisymmetrical friend. “I’ve lived among your kind long enough to know that one thing both our species had in common was the inevitable triumph of cost over reason.” He nodded to where the three Myssari continued in passionate but characteristically soft-voiced debate. “Though in this case Twi’win is such a disbeliever in the possibility of finding any human survivors that I think she would refuse our requests even if she had access to ten times the needed supplies and personnel.”
As he finished, something fist-sized, dull red, and multi-legged slammed into the observation tower’s transparent wall. The resulting organic splatter was unpleasant to look upon and he turned away even as the structure’s automated maintenance gear swung into action to remove the stain left behind by the unfortunate leaper.
Kel’les’s small, lipless mouth flexed. “The director is required to accommodate us. The orders came directly from Myssar.”
Ruslan nodded, a gesture his companion knew well. “She’s required to do so only insofar as is practical with respect to local conditions.” He gestured in the direction of the dispute, which, by Myssari standards, was growing positively heated. “Orders or not, it all comes down to a decision by Twi’win.”
As he and Kel’les looked on, the debate came to a sudden end. Feeling that the abruptness of it did not bode well for their continued efforts, Ruslan was apprehensive when his companions ambled over to rejoin him. Twi’win did not join them, disappearing into the lift shaft that would carry her away from the topmost portion of the observation tower. He was not upset that she departed without speaking to him. There was no reason for her to deal directly with what was nothing more than a valuable specimen.
With Bac’cul’s and Cor’rin’s postures conveying a mix of excitement and resignation, he hardly knew what to think. They were quick to enlighten him.
“We have struck a compromise.”
He nodded tersely. “As is always the Myssari way. Is the compromise in our favor or against it?”
The two researchers exchanged a look before Cor’rin turned back to the human. “Twi’win has agreed to authorize one more full-scale visit to Dinabu and to nowhere but that city. That is where the single disputed sighting by the outpost’s automatics took place, and she is convinced there is no reason to look elsewhere. After that, if we wish to continue searching, we will have to request additional resources from Myssar.”
“I understand. In that event, do you think your department will provide them?”
“Difficult to say.” The pupils of Bac’cul’s orange-red eyes narrowed. “Two expensive failures would be unlikely to inspire calls to underwrite any subsequent excursions.”
Ruslan’s mouth tightened. “Then we’d better make the best of this forthcoming outing.”
Cor’rin gestured her agreement. “We have to make our own preparations. The day following tomorrow the weather is supposed to be amenable. We should go then, as soon as possible and before the director has additional time to reflect on options and change her mind.”
She departed with Bac’cul, the two of them moving with commendable speed, their three-legged gait looking as unsteady to Ruslan’s eyes as his bipedal stride undoubtedly did to them. He turned back to his minder.
“Tell me your opinion, Kel’les. Honestly—do you think the outpost’s automatics saw a human?”
His friend demurred. “I am hardly in a position to comment, Ruslan. I am neither scientist nor engineer.”
“But you saw the images. The same ones as everyone else. If I wanted a researcher’s opinion, I’d ask Bac’cul or Cor’rin. I want yours.” He eyed his companion intently.
Trapped by the human’s words and stare, a clearly uncomfortable Kel’les could do nothing but answer. Honestly, as his friend had requested.
“I must confess I found them to be, at best, inconclusive.”
Ruslan was silent for a moment, then nodded solemnly. “Thank you, Kel’les. But we’re going to conduct the second search anyway.”
“Of course we are. One must be certain, and the chance may not present itself again.”
“I know that it won’t,” he replied.
Because by the time any kind of similar opportunity materialized, he told himself, he would in all likelihood be little but a valued memory in the annals of Myssari science.
9
Though the Myssari were by nature not an especially demonstrative species, there was even less visible enthusiasm than usual among the team from the outpost as the trio of driftecs skimmed across the slime toward Dinabu. The enervating dullness of the journey over the monotonous yellow-brown landscape was broken only by the occasional attack. Mounted by local predatory lifeforms that dwelled beneath the viscous surface of the endless mudflats, these attacks took the form of the desperate upward thrusting of arms, tentacles, and assorted alien gripping apparatuses for which Ruslan had no name. Preoccupied with thoughts of what they might find in the desolate city they were approaching, he spared these occasional fruitless assaults only the most cursory of glances. His Myssari hosts evinced an equal lack of concern. Too slow and too clumsy to present any real danger, the flailing limbs of local predators immersed in mud clutched only the empty air that was warmed by the wake of the speeding driftecs.
Limited in resources and modest in aim, the expedition touched down on the opposite side of Dinabu from the previous search site. Although this was also much farther from the location where the outpost’s automatic scouts had made their sighting, Ruslan did not object. He was fully aware his presence and that of his not-so-esteemed Myssari colleagues was resented by many of the researchers assigned (some said condemned) to Daribb. The present outing had barely been approved. Voicing objection to any part of it at this early stage was liable to see it terminated prematurely.
If naught else, the visit was rich with nostalgia. Living as he had for decades on Myssar, he had fallen out of familiarity with many of the simpler accoutrements of human life. Seeing abandoned eating utensils, entertainment displays, food storage and preparation facilities, even the mechanisms necessary for performing basic hygiene, brought back memories of a happier youth on Seraboth before the arrival of the Aura Malignance. Both children’s and adult toys were scattered throughout the corroding buildings. Noting them, he flashed an ironic smile at no one in particular. Now all the players were gone and only one functional toy remained: him.
That was not being fair to the Myssari, he knew. Specimen or not, they had treated him with respect, if not outright reverence. How he reacted to that was his problem, not one imposed on him from without.
“Do not wander off by yourself,” the escort leader had warned him. “Remember what nearly happened last time.”
Ruslan remembered. He also had never been one for taking orders. At least, not since his last human order-giver had expired in a hospital in Seraboth’s capital city. Ruslan recalled the death day clearly. Lying on the bed, his aged supervisor had drawn a last, desperate breath, eyes bulging in desperation. The awful sight ha
d quickly been blocked by the attending physician, who less than an hour later collapsed and died on top of his patient. There had been very few patients or health professionals left alive by the time the plague-resistant Ruslan left the building for the last time.
The structure through which he was presently walking was definitely no hospital, he reflected as he edged away from Bac’cul and the others. When he wanted to be by himself, not even the devoted Kel’les could keep up with him. From their very beginnings humans had always been good at hiding. The ancient survival trait now lent stealth to his curiosity as he turned sharply to his right and disappeared behind a small escarpment of oversized but lightweight storage containers.
He was not wholly reckless. Making his way across the platforms and walkways that rose above the murky surface, he took care to stay inland wherever possible, aware from the driftec flyovers of the greater dangers that lurked in deeper holes in the mud. The section of city through which he was walking bore some resemblance to the small fishing villages he remembered from visits to ocean shores on Seraboth, though there were no fish on Daribb and, for that matter, no oceans. But the mudflats teemed with hidden life; not all of it lethal, no doubt some of it edible.
One of the first things settlers of a new world strove to learn was which local organics were ingestible and which were toxic. Crumbling craft of local design, warehouses, cranes, and deactivated shocknets all pointed to a local industry that, if not designed to catch fish, was clearly intended to gather something. In the absence of sea or field, they suggested a once-thriving local commerce founded on gathering the bounty of the mudflats.
A gap loomed ahead in the walkway he was traversing. While his athletic days were largely behind him, the breach was not significant and he jumped it easily. Nothing rose from the muck below to snap at him, though the stink of organic decay was pronounced. He wrinkled his nose. Daribb was ripe with the stench of decomposition. A moon would have helped, nudging tides that would have washed the shores of the city. But Daribb had no moon. And not much else, he was coming to believe, save the ghosts of the long dead. Fatigue magnified his dejection.