“During their period of expansion your people settled on a great many worlds. The Combine has extensive resources, but not all can be devoted to science—far less to one particular discipline.”
Bac’cul’s words supplemented as well as supported her own. “There are currently four teams such as this one working on four ex-human worlds.”
Ruslan nodded tiredly. Out of his original wishful thinking had come hope, which had soon given way to reality. Dozens of worlds. Four research teams. Trillions of bits of information generated in languages and by technologies not their own. The Myssari were doing the best they could. It was consolation writ small.
And yet—and yet—it was still a wonderment to him that so basic a piece of knowledge should have been utterly obliterated from the general records of any world, much less all of them. Such had been the fear engendered by the Aura Malignance. Had it really originated on and been propagated from Earth, as some legends had it? Without finding that fabled world, he would never know.
Among them all it was Kel’les alone who could clearly see his pain. “There is a very great deal to catalog, my friend, and far more catalog than there are cataloguers.”
“I know, I know.” At a touch, his Myssari chair, functional but uncomfortable as ever, slid him away from the table. “I just have to endure.”
“The most critical quality in good science.” San’dwil pushed back and stood as well. “More important even than insight or intellect.”
Ruslan dredged up a wan smile. “Then I’d make a good scientist, because I sure have more of the former than the latter two.”
Not for the first time swallowing his immense frustration, he informed Bac’cul and Cor’rin that he was going to watch some of the external retractors that were working on the deeply buried knowledge center. Halfway there he told Kel’les that his stomach was giving him the slightest of arguments and that instead he’d better retire to his room. Though it was only late afternoon, he explained that he was going to take some of the medicine that he had brought with him and retire early. Halfway to his room he turned sharply down a different corridor.
The horizontal service shafts brought and distributed power from the energy cube and water from the treatment plant. On a walk-by the previous day, he had noticed that the latter was undergoing repair. Ensuring that for the moment no one was watching him, he bent, lifted the currently unlocked access door, and eased himself outside. Though he was more massive than many Myssari, their wide tripodal lower torso demanded broad portals. He had no difficulty slipping through the gap.
Both of the buildings that housed the outpost’s living quarters backed onto the northern end of the old park. Walking quickly but trying not to draw attention to himself, he avoided the last tubing and conduits only to find himself confronted by a security fence too tall to jump and too highly energized to touch without risk of electrocution. But by climbing up a vertical tank on the base side of the barrier and down a convenient native tree on the other, he managed to surmount the problem.
His knees complaining mightily, he landed on the other side. Save for breathing a little faster, he was intact. For the first time since he had landed on Treth, he found himself truly alone. A glance back the way he had come revealed no minder patiently waiting for him to resume his little expedition. There was not even an automaton. Turning, he struck out through the last remnants of the park.
The density of the vegetation made for slow and difficult going. It would have been easier with a cutting tool, or a dissolver, but requesting the use of either one would have aroused suspicion among his well-meaning handlers. No matter. He pressed on without, enjoying the feel of verdure against his body even when the occasional black thorn nicked his flesh and brought forth blood.
He would not have dared the solitary excursion had the wildly overgrown park been substantial in extent. With much of it having been cleared to permit the expansion of the Myssari base, however, he soon found himself through the thickest flora and able to contemplate the city proper.
What struck him immediately was how familiar it was. The architecture was sufficiently similar to the prevalent urban style on Seraboth to send a momentary jolt of dislocation through him. Years had passed since he had been “invited” away from the world on which he had been born, but he had lived there long enough for memories of even small details to stick. The way professional and commercial buildings were spaced, how defiantly residential towers thrust toward the clouds, the spiderweb of interstructural links designed to convey everything from power to people, the covered pedestrian walkways…all might have been lifted straight from the cities he remembered from his wanderings. There was even a wall formed of material against which an old man might once have slumped.
One thing that was different and reminded him he was not on the world of his birth was the nature of the enveloping vegetation that was rapidly reclaiming the buildings. On Seraboth it had been primarily green. Here on Treth it tended to shades of purple and lavender. Green remained a highlight but was not dominant, though as the local sun set it was growing increasingly difficult to distinguish colors. The intensifying evening sounds were different, too. Buzzes and hums rather than the squeaks and whistles of Seraboth.
One more human world, he thought. One more vast cemetery. He started forward…and almost immediately stumbled over something. Glancing down, he instantly identified the cause of his near fall.
It was a doll. A large one, simple and devoid of technological enhancements. Or detractions. It all depended on how one regarded the purpose of such objects. Until they reached a certain age, children had a remarkable lack of need for electricity. The doll was outfitted in rural attire. Its flat, nondimensional face had features that had been heat-pressed on. The ears did not flex, the nose did not expand and contract, the mouth was incapable of speaking, burping, or coughing up internal fluids. The blue eyes, however, laughed.
He put it down. In the course of the post-plague years he had spent roving a silent Seraboth, he had encountered many such forlorn relics of vanished individuals. All the crying they engendered, and there had been all too much of that, had finally faded away to nothing after the first few months of realizing that he was alone. He had wept tears the way a tree sheds bark, until, like a tree, nothing but bare heartwood remained.
The girl who had owned the doll was dead. Her parents and any siblings she’d had were dead. Just as on Seraboth, every human on Treth was dead.
No, that wasn’t quite right, he corrected himself. Now he was here. Humanity lived again on this world—and would at least until he departed.
The skeletons he encountered in the first building he entered were largely if not wholly disarticulated. Complete breakup would come with the further passage of time. The calcium and phosphorous and other elements would be gratefully taken up by the soil and thence by the plants that now blocked the long-gone windows and fallen doors. Deeper into the first room, which struck him as possibly the foyer of a once great hotel, plant life thinned out. It was a place where only those growths that could thrive without direct sunlight could survive.
In the center of the room, which boasted an atrium that soared all the way to the apex of the structure, was a fountain. It was dry as dust, its once decorative motile structures now home to bioluminescent growths and small scurrying things. Due to the failing light he could not make out the shapes of the latter, but they were at best unsightly. Every fully evolved ecology has its vermin, he mused.
It was time to leave. He had been gone longer than he intended. Although he had not strayed far from the base and it was impossible to miss (he simply had to avoid the tall human structures), he did not relish plowing his way homeward through the small but dense wooded area that was all that remained of the city park. Leaving behind the tall tomb that was the unidentified structure, he retraced his steps until he was once again standing on the pedestrian way outside. Two of Tr
eth’s three moons were now rising in the sky. While they did not provide enough light for him to see clearly, they did supply sufficient illumination to allow him to find his way back.
He had not taken three steps when the cough stopped him.
Neither a buzz nor a hum, it was deep and ominous and unlike anything he had heard since arriving on this world. Above him unfamiliar stars had begun to background the two moons, one spherical, the other jagged. The silhouettes of ruined buildings seemed to bend forward, admonishing him. He fancied he could hear the reproachful moans of the dead millions.
“Shouldn’t be out by yourself at night.”
“We are gone and this world has reverted to those who dominated before us.”
“Alien world equals alien dangers. Stupid human!”
He picked up his pace, looking around uneasily as he headed for the thicket from which he had emerged earlier. The intensifying moonlight bathed everything—buildings, pavement, oddly geometric plant life—in a silvery softness that was as false as it was beguiling.
The cough came again. Louder this time. Nearer.
He could hear himself breathing as he tried to move faster still. Though still in decent shape he was not the athlete he had been in his youth. That might not matter, he knew, depending on what was responsible for the now repetitive cough that was somewhere behind him and closing fast. He considered calling out, but most of the Myssari would already be inside their living quarters, while the night team would be preoccupied with their work.
Abruptly, the coughing stopped. A look back showed nothing behind him, nothing to block out eternal stars and human architecture. Ahead loomed the wall of park vegetation that marked the boundary between Myssari life and human demise. He started into it.
Something stood up in front of him.
He sucked in his breath as he stumbled backward. Whatever it was that rose before him in the night was far more massive than any Myssari. It had come not from the camp but from the depths of the crumbling city where it and its kind had assumed the mantle of dominance once worn by the planet’s human colonists. In lieu of the intellectual capacity of a human, this new master of Treth boasted a more basic but no less efficacious round mouth full of backward-angled teeth, enormous scute-covered front paws, and a counterbalancing tail of inflexible gray bone. Even in the dim light, Ruslan could see that its two eyes were located one above the other instead of side by side. They differed in size, color, and shape, perhaps to allow the creature to see different portions of the spectrum—or as well by night as during the day. He took only hasty notice of such additional characteristics. What mattered was the mouthful of teeth. Unmistakably, the cougher was a carnivore.
It struck him that the creature might well have been stalking him ever since he had left the safety of the scientific compound.
He could run: the beast had long, powerful hind legs that would doubtless catch up to him within a few strides. He could attempt to find a vulnerable area and fight back: if there was a sensitive place located within the mass of long yellow-and-black fur, he couldn’t see it in the dark, and probably not even in daylight. He could dodge to left or right: one of those massive paws would probably crush his skull before he could get beyond reach. His only hope was to make it into the dense park brush and try to wriggle into a place the predator could not reach. All these thoughts ran through his mind in a matter of a few seconds, subsequent to which he made up his mind and ran.
Straight at the creature.
A deep-throated cough crackled around him as bony forepaws descended toward his head. He could feel the air they pushed ahead of them as he dove between the upright carnivore’s legs. By the time it whirled, he had rolled and was up and running for his life. He did not know if his bold charge had surprised it, nor did he care.
He was taken aback when the branches and twigs he encountered did not snap under pressure from his flailing arms or body weight. Whatever their internal integuments were composed of was tougher than the vegetation he remembered from Seraboth. The inability to force a path through the wood left him at the mercy of his pursuer. From the cracking and coughing he heard coming closer behind him, he realized that the animal was encountering no such impediments. Looking back, he had a moonlit vision of a face as big as his entire upper torso, a nightmare cross between a parasite and a panther. He was too old to fight and too tired to scream.
The Myssari will be greatly disappointed, he found himself thinking as rows of teeth began to shift back and forth within the round gape. Where the proposed cloning project was concerned, his hosts would now have to make do with salvaged DNA in the absence of his future cooperation. Assuming they could find his body. Or enough of it.
As wide as his hips, a branch running perfectly parallel to the ground momentarily slowed the carnivore’s charge. It gave him time enough to duck beneath it. Under no further illusions as to his chances for survival, ancient instinct nevertheless compelled him to press on.
A shadow appeared in front of him. Though it was much smaller than the monstrosity on the verge of chewing into the flesh and bone of his back, its appearance did nothing to raise his hopes. It was not Myssari. The smaller offspring of his pursuer, perhaps, hovering expectantly as it awaited its share of the kill. Or perhaps an unknown species of scavenger appraising an incipient meal.
The shadow raised a limb. At the end of the limb was something small and shiny. There was a sharp, metallic, almost musical intonation. Light flared from the shining and passed close enough to scorch the floundering human’s left ear. He yelped more in surprise than pain.
Such was not the case with the predator that was almost upon him. It let out the loudest cough so far, one that broke and descended into an intermittent gargle. Turning, Ruslan saw flames rising from the creature’s right shoulder. He could hear clearly the sputter of burning hair and smell carbonized flesh. A second shot flared from behind him to strike where the monster’s neck would have been had its head not emerged directly from between its shoulders. The result was more flames and a burst of insane gargle-coughing. Whirling, the monster dropped to all fours and fled back along the path it had made through the brush. The smashing of additional flora as it took flight faded into the distance along with the flickering light cast by its flaming flesh and fur.
Sucking air as if he had spent the previous several minutes being smothered beneath a heavy blanket, Ruslan rose and turned to thank his savior. As soon as the individual took a step toward him, Ruslan saw that there were going to be difficulties in extending his gratitude.
His initial impression had been quite correct. The weapon wielder was not Myssari. In the shadowy wood he could just make out a vertical shape. Taller than the average Myssari, it was also slimmer. From the bottom of a pair of linked fleshy ovoids, two limbs extended downward. He thought they were pseudopods until his eyes adjusted enough for him to see that they were bony legs similar to his own. The difference lay in the number of joints. Where a human leg had three, this being boasted a dozen or more. It was the same with the two thin but highly flexible arms. The head was a hairless horizontal bar that sat atop a short but wide neck. At the right and left termini of the skull, bright eyes swiveled sideways and forward. There was a long slit of a mouth and no immediately obvious nose. Atop the long skull fluttered a row of small brown appendages like the petals of a flower. Whether these were sexual attractants, merely decorative, or organs of unknown function he could not say.
The creature was garbed in tight-fitting material that changed color and pattern as it moved. Camouflage gear, Ruslan decided. As his breathing slowed he essayed a few words of thanks in subdued Myssarian.
The muzzle of the weapon rose until it was aimed directly at his forehead.
Spreading his arms wide, he spoke again, this time more quickly. “Did you save me just to kill me? I don’t know your kind, but based on what I’ve seen and see now, you don’t str
ike me as inherently counterproductive.”
“I did not fire, ssish, to save you. The barunkad would have killed you first and then come for me. Eaten one first before carrying off the other.”
Having initially been slowed by the predator’s disappearance, Ruslan’s heart was now pounding anew. “Practical rather than altruistic. I can accept that. But why kill me now?”
The muzzle of the weapon did not shift away from the human’s head. “You have seen me. It will be better if you do not tell your…” As the battle with the local carnivore receded from its thoughts, the alien’s thinking shifted gears. “You are not Myssari. What are you?”
Looking past the alien, Ruslan gestured at the eroding metropolis beyond. “I am a human. A member of the species that settled this world and raised this city.”
The strange bean-shaped head dipped to the left. “You define yourself as a member of a species of liars. There are no more humans. None have been seen for…” He named a figure in his own language that did not translate into Myssarian.
“Until now.” Ruslan spoke as calmly as he could. Liars grew nervous as lies unfolded. If he was going to survive this encounter, it was vital for him to appear as self-assured as possible. “If you know of humans, then perhaps you have seen visual representations. Or within this city, statues. If I am not human, then what am I? Why would I claim to be a representative of an extinct race when I could as easily claim to be a member of an existing one?”
While the alien hesitated, the multiplicity of joints in its remarkable legs twisted and popped as it shifted on its feet. The latter extended backward from the ankle as far as they did forward.
“You claim to be a surviving human yet you speak perfect Myssarian. Far better than I. How do you explain that?”
“They found me on another empty human world and have cared for me since.”
“Then you are a pet.” The alien’s exceptionally wide mouth gaped to reveal dozens of small peg-like teeth.