“We had no reason to lie to you,” Twi’win told him, demonstrating admirable poise.
Wide-spaced eyes zeroed in on her. “You had every reason to lie to us. Yet it appears you have not done so. Both the equipment we have and the personnel trained in its use have found no sign of the two humans. Nothing larger than a maggot escaped their notice. I must therefore conclude that the specimens are indeed no longer present within this illegitimate facility. This leads inevitably to the question of where they are at present.”
Risking spontaneous demise, Cor’rin chirped, “Not here.”
Penetrating eyes shifted their attention from the outpost’s commander to the outspoken researcher. “Restating the obvious does nothing to sate my curiosity while simultaneously shortening my patience.” The Vrizan came toward her. While taller and slightly more massive, he did not loom over her quite as much as did the human. “Perhaps you could be persuaded to reveal their present location?”
Sensing that his commander was on the verge of stepping beyond the bounds of propriety, his adjutant moved forward to place a limber hand on his superior’s arm. As whenever a Vrizan moved, the soft supple crackling of numerous joints was plainly audible. The aide murmured something in Vrizani that the Myssari did not hear clearly. Favoring Cor’rin with a bifurcated stare that could only be described as murderous, the commander stepped back.
“Perhaps,” the adjutant said, “in the absence of a visiting starship, the specimens have been moved to an orbiting station to await its arrival.”
The commander gestured impatiently. “You know that the Myssari maintain several such extra-atmospheric monitors. We tolerate them because we know of them. To my knowledge all are wholly automatic and devoid of the means to sustain visitors even on a temporary basis.”
“To your knowledge, yes,” the aide pointed out. “It is conceivable that our knowledge is imperfect, just as it proved to be inadequate regarding the presence of surviving human lifeforms in the city of Dinabu.”
“Just because our—” The commander paused sharply. “Dinabu. Of course.” Returning his attention to the quietly watching Myssari, his slit of a mouth grew wider. “Where better to hide the specimens than where the immature one was found? I should congratulate you on your obviousness.” He coughed orders at his subordinates, one of whom immediately commenced to spew a stream of instructions into an aural pickup. As the Vrizan moved to leave the conference chamber, the commander turned back to Twi’win and the others.
“I regret that it will be necessary to temporarily disable your communications and transportation capabilities. The respective locks and blocks that will be emplaced will automatically disengage in a day or two. By then we will have concluded our visit to your small outpost at Dinabu and, I believe, recovered our property. As to the matter of the adult human, we will discuss his future possibilities with him in a manner befitting the representatives of two civilized species. I promise you that no coercion will be involved. You will be informed of the outcome promptly.”
As soon as they were gone Bac’cul and Cor’rin confronted the outpost director.
“Were you telling the whole truth when the shameful Vrizan queried you?” Bac’cul was beside himself at the thought of losing not only the newfound girl but Ruslan himself. “Have you had them sent to Dinabu?”
“If so they must be warned, somehow, and moved elsewhere!” Cor’rin was as distressed as her colleague. “As quickly as possible!” Her tone was anguished. “But if our transportation is disabled, how can we—”
“Would that I knew their location,” a glum Twi’win interrupted the researcher. “What I told the Vrizan was the truth entire. I have no idea as to the present location of the two humans. This I do know: they cannot be hiding within the outpost. Vrizan technology is as advanced as our own; in certain aspects, perhaps more so. If the specimens were here, they would have been found.”
Bac’cul was baffled. “Then…where could they be?”
The outpost director turned away from the two scientists and toward the interminable mudflats that stretched away from the research facility in every direction. “Only one conclusion is possible. If they are not hiding within the outpost, then they must be hiding without.”
Cor’rin came up to stand and stare beside her. “Is that possible? Our pre-arrival studies suggested that the general environment is…”
“Hostile.” Swiveling her head more than halfway around, Twi’win regarded her dismayed visitors. “Generally, not unrelievedly, so. While my personnel never venture outside unless they are armed and properly attired, I suppose it is conceivable that one with an intimate knowledge of the Daribbian environment might be able to survive its threats without protection.”
“The juvenile!” Cor’rin exclaimed.
One of the director’s hands gestured in a broad sweep at the surging, sucking surroundings outside. “As nearly all of the human presence here was concentrated in their empty cities, we have expended very little of our limited resources on the study of the mudflats themselves. Aggressive lifeforms aside, they constitute anything but a hospitable environment. The great majority of our work has focused on the derelict urban centers.”
“Whereas humans who lived and matured here must have been forced to learn everything they could about all of their surroundings.” Bac’cul’s voice was full of rising hope. “We must begin a search of the immediate area!”
“How?” Twi’win regarded the researcher with a mixture of compassion and frustration. “With our transportation immobilized we cannot cover any significant ground. We will have to wait until the driftecs are operational once again.”
Cor’rin’s frustration was palpable. “We cannot just squat here waiting for the Vrizan to return! And they will return, once they have finished fruitlessly scouring Dinabu for signs of the two specimens.”
“Let them.” Twi’win sounded anything but accommodating. “If they come back we will be ready for them. Prepared, I am confident my staff can stand them off. Next time they will not have the element of surprise.”
“But,” Bac’cul protested, “what about the humans?”
Already ambling toward the lift that would take her back down into the body of the outpost, the director looked back at him. “We can only hope they are safe and that when our driftecs are once more operational, we can find them before the Vrizan do.” With her assistants in tow she entered the waiting lift and was gone.
Left to themselves, Bac’cul and Cor’rin turned their attention back to the vast mudflats above which the outpost stood, a lonely sentinel of civilization in an environment as intimidating as it was unpleasant.
“We could take Kel’les and go look for the humans ourselves,” he suggested hesitantly.
“How?” She indicated the flat, yellow-brown horizon. “There are no landmarks, nothing to suggest which way they might have gone. If they were close by and standing erect, or even crouching, do you not think the meticulous Vrizan would have spotted them? If they could not locate them with instruments, how could we possibly find them on our own? If Ruslan and the child were walking on gliders, the Vrizan would surely have taken notice.”
Bac’cul’s mind was racing. “Humans have fewer joints than us but thicker bones and heavier muscles. It is conceivable they could make more progress without gliders and on foot than Myssari or Vrizan.”
“Except that one of them is a juvenile, short and undeveloped.”
“Trueso.” Once again Bac’cul returned his gaze to the bleak, utterly flat landscape that surrounded them. “Then we are left with our original uncertainty: where are they?”
“Not in the belly of some indigenous predator, one hopes. If that is the case, then all our defensive posturing and all the belligerence of the Vrizan hold no more meaning than what can be found in a specimen cup of this all-pervasive muck.”
12
The
Myssari technician who was running the checkout on the organic recycling system was as relieved as the rest of his colleagues at the departure of the belligerent Vrizan. Though the majority of personnel had suffered no contact with the intruders, everyone knew that they had temporarily taken control of the station. All staff had been instructed to stand aside and not interfere as the Vrizan had conducted an incredibly thorough inspection of the outpost’s facilities, though to what end and for what purpose most of the workers had no idea.
It was not important, the tech told herself. The Vrizan were gone now. All that mattered to her and her associates was that the intruders had left without doing any damage. They had been in a foul mood when they had arrived and had apparently encountered nothing to ameliorate their emotions by the time they departed. Wishing them all infected fundaments, she and her colleagues had resumed their daily work schedule as soon as the Vrizan had taken their leave.
Since no alarm or alert had sounded to indicate that they had returned, the tech was more than mildly startled when the exterior portal just ahead and to the right of her normal inspection track began to open from the outside. She immediately found herself debating whether or not to sound a warning. Surely if the Vrizan had come back, their approach, not to mention their actual arrival, would have been broadcast throughout the outpost? That left few alternative explanations for what she was seeing. To the best of her knowledge, there were no maintenance crews working on the exterior of this side of the facility. Those that were operating outside were doing so on the opposite side of the station from where she was standing. There was no reason for one or more members of those maintenance crews to be on this side. Additionally, if someone was having a problem with reentry, she and everyone else would have been notified to look out for them and to be ready to render assistance as needed.
All her excellent reasoning notwithstanding, the doorway continued to slide sideways into its receptacle. Diluted hazy sunlight poured in through the opening that resulted. She held off sounding an alarm. It was probably nothing. Declaring a false emergency would open her to station-wide ridicule.
Just as she had decided that the door opening was purely accidental, two figures stepped through the gap and into the accessway. Beyond the fact that they stood upright, she could recognize nothing about them. Completely covered in muck from the mudflats, all details of their true shapes were masked. Whatever facial features they possessed were turned away from the tech.
Daribbian indigenes! she thought wildly. If these were anything like their fellow creatures, they were doubtless both dangerous and hostile. She immediately voiced an alarm to her aural pickup. It turned out to be the wrong decision. The ridicule she had hoped to avoid soon followed, though it was all good-natured.
Though the relief expressed by Bac’cul, Cor’rin, and Kel’les, not to mention Director Twi’win, at the safe return of the two specimens was expressive, the humans themselves seemed to care for nothing save access to a mist rinse. Only when they had thoroughly cleansed themselves of the mud that had provided them refuge did Ruslan take the time to explain where they had been and how they had avoided detection by the swarming Vrizan.
“Cherpa deserves all the credit.” Seated in the relaxation lounge with a cold drink at hand, he was happy to relate the circumstances of their survival. “I didn’t want to go outside, unarmed, but it was obvious that if we were going to avoid the Vrizan we had no other choice. So I followed her lead.” He nodded toward the far side of the mood-changing chamber, where the girl was playing with her doll while finger-painting three-dimensional patterns on the wall. That the ever-changing scenes being displayed were of Myssari and not human-settled worlds did not matter to her. She found each and every one new and fascinating.
“But you were outside, and at night.” Bac’cul could not keep the astonishment from his voice.
“The best knowledge is always local knowledge, I suppose. Once we managed to make our way some distance from the outpost—farther than I would have liked, I have to admit—we spent the rest of the night buried in the mud on our backs and being very, very still. For all I know, a hundred predators could have taken our measure and decided that we weren’t worth the trouble, or that we were too alien to be considered digestible prey.” He turned to Cor’rin. “Having spent more hours than I care to remember immersed in alien muck, I suppose the three of us should be checked for possible contamination, although I would think a human body would be an unsuitable host for local parasitic organisms.”
“Still, a reasonable precaution,” she agreed.
Bac’cul gestured uncertainly. “Excuse me, Ruslan: the three of you?”
Once more the human nodded in the direction of the wholly preoccupied girl. “To contribute to the juven— to Cherpa’s mental health, you should at every opportunity treat her doll, the small human effigy she is never without, as a ‘real’ individual. She sees it as such. It’s a function of a lingering traumatic childhood. It’s also the only family she’s got.”
Cor’rin gestured understanding. “The information will be posted forefront in her records.”
They were interrupted by the arrival of the director. It was shocking, Ruslan mused, how fundamentally Twi’win’s attitude toward the visitors had changed since their discovery of Cherpa. It would have boded well for the future development of human-Myssari relations on Daribb…had there been any other humans on Daribb for the Myssari to relate to. Or any humans anywhere else, for that matter. Rejoining them, she settled herself down against a narrow Myssari seat. Her eyes were bright, her speech rapid.
“Details of the Vrizan intrusion have been reported to the appropriate authorities. There will be repercussions, albeit on a modest scale since no one was harmed, no permanent damage was done to the facility here, and nothing—such as invaluable live specimens—was taken.” She glanced in the direction of the happily playing girl before turning to the attentive Ruslan. “Arrangements are in motion to get you and the juvenile off Daribb and to a Myssari world as quickly as possible.”
“And Oola,” Cor’rin added. “Do not forget Oola. She is human family as well.”
The director gave the researcher a hard look but decided to seek explication later. “Ruslan, will you make ready the juvenile? Daribb being the only world she has ever known, it may well be that some significant mental preparation may be required in order for her to acquiesce comfortably to the departure.”
He looked past the sharp-featured alien to where a delighted Cherpa was busily rearranging landscapes on the far wall. “I think your apprehension may be misplaced, Twi’win. She strikes me as extremely adaptable. She’d have to be, to survive here alone for we don’t know how many years. Don’t worry, though. I’ll make sure she isn’t going to throw a fit moments before we board for orbit. She’ll be ready. I know I’ll be.” The unwanted attention of the Vrizan aside, he couldn’t wait to get off this inhospitable, empty planet. He rose.
“In fact, I’ll get started right now.”
Leaving the four Myssari to their consultations, he walked over to where Cherpa, with the use of one finger, was presently sliding mountains into place to serve as the backdrop for an alpine lake. He studied the resultant vista.
“That’s very pretty, Cherpa. Where is it?”
“Planet Here.” She grinned and tapped the side of her head. “I’ve had lots of time to imagine places I’d like to be. This is one of them.”
Unexpectedly, he felt his throat tightening as he surveyed a scene reminiscent of the mountains of Seraboth, and hastened to change the subject. “We’re going to have to leave this place. Leave Daribb and go somewhere where the Vrizan people who just came for you and me can’t find us.”
“Okay.”
So much for the need to prepare acquiescence and ensure mental stability, he thought dryly.
“You’re sure you’re all right with leaving behind…everything?”
r /> “There isn’t everything.” Her tone was somber. “There’s nothing. Not here. There are only things that want to eat you. I’d be real happy to go someplace where nothing wants to eat me.” She hesitated. “Only one thing’s-a-thing elsewise to take along though, maybe, perhaps.”
Another toy to bring, he decided. Or a favorite piece of clothing, or some physical reminder of her family. He waited for the details. They were not what he had been expecting.
“Maybe we should bring the other person, too.”
Confusion swirled his thoughts. “Another? There’s another person?” Realization made him smile. “Oh, you mean Oola. Of course we’re taking her with us.”
Cherpa tucked the doll tighter against her. “Not Oola. Pahksen.”
Pahksen? This was the first mention of any “Pahksen.” Bearing in mind the girl’s fragile mental state, Ruslan found himself wondering if the other “person” she was referring to might be imaginary. It was almost to be expected that someone her age in her condition would have invented an imaginary friend for company. Given ample time, he would have slowly and gently confronted her with the likelihood. With them waiting to be called for departure at any moment, he had no leeway for patience. He asked her straight out.
She shook her head and made a face. “Pahksen’s not imaginary. Though lots of times I wish he was.”
For a second time since he had arrived on Daribb, the faint stirring of a long-held hope was swiftly whisked away. “He,” she had said. Ruslan set about questioning her further.
“Let me make sure I understand, Cherpa. You’re saying there’s another live human here?” It was not impossible that she was referring to a dead body she had named. An isolated child, much less one forced to endure her circumstances, could conceivably make a “friend” of anything. But she nodded affirmatively and without hesitation.