“What is a Rashaqin?” Helen asked.
I waved to Rilriltok with the back of my hand. “The doctor here is a male one. Well, sort of male by Terran rules. The sort-of-females are bigger.”
Much bigger, the meter-long Rilriltok said, stridulation unaffected by its beverage.
“Oh.”
I could see Helen processing. I couldn’t get over how alertly she watched conversations, head moving as if she were following a zero-g jai alai match. “I think I would like to meet such a creature.”
Person, Rilriltok said, straight-facedly.
Which, okay, is another one of those anthropocentric terms, since we have this weird habit of using our facial muscles to communicate even nuanced emotions. Most sentients don’t go in for that sort of thing. Even if you limit your sample to systers with faces. Or even to systers with facial muscles.
Unlike my friend Rilriltok, for example.
“Pardon?” Helen said.
“We say person,” I clarified. “Creature is impolite.”
“Oh,” Helen said. “I’m sorry. I… I would really like to meet such a person.”
It would be good for you.
I wondered if Rilriltok thought so for the same reasons I did. It niggled at me that O’Mara had recruited me when there was a perfectly good Goodlaw heading up hospital security. Was there some reason they didn’t think it could get the job done? Or was it O’Mara being turfy, and relying on their old and trusted associates, as they’d hinted? While I was wondering, Rilriltok set the beverage container on the tray, sorted my dishes into piles, and stacked them up.
Fortunately, I hadn’t wanted that last soggy cricket anyway. I placed my chopsticks across my fruit bowl and stood. So did Helen. She didn’t seem to have any trouble calibrating her motions to the shifting pull of simulated gravity. That was impressive. I was accustomed to switching back and forth, and it still took a while each time for me to acclimate.
I picked up the tray to take it back to the disassembler and said, “Come, on, Helen. The doctor here probably has to get back to work. Let’s walk with it, and check on your crew.”
Helen very quickly got her wish to meet the female Rashaqin.
Core General’s new Goodlaw was ahead of us in the admin and observation room when we arrived in the Cryo treatment center. It had hooked one foreleg over the safety rails that circled the lounge—as if an object the size of Core General was going to stop spinning—and was peering out into the Cryo unit with predatory fascination.
When we entered, the Goodlaw turned its head, faceted eyes glittering. It wore a dress uniform: a tidy, tailored little navy blue bolero jacket over its upper thorax, with cap sleeves cut to fit the upper joint of thorned killing limbs that I estimated would be a couple of meters long, extended.
I knew it was the Goodlaw, and not some other Rashaqin, because the jacket had a gold badge embroidered on its placket, and I could still read Judiciary ranks and uniforms.
Rilriltok had apparently not expected to report to work and discover an enormous natural enemy next to its desk. It came mandible-to-mandible with the mantoid—two-plus meters long even with its thorax held upright over its abdomen, and with raptorial forelimbs longer than Rilriltok’s entire body even when folded—and swiftly and prudently alighted on my back. Out of the corner of my eye I saw that it had folded its wings tight and color-shifted to match my lab coat and scrubs.
I couldn’t blame it.
I wondered if the Goodlaw had been waiting for us, or if this was a chance encounter. I guessed this was my opportunity to find out.
Greetings, the enormous predator stridulated. I am Goodlaw Cheeirilaq. You must be Dr. Brookllyn Jens. And… Helen Alloy?
Politely, it pretended not to notice Rilriltok, who huddled closer to my spine. Rilriltok’s coverts clicked tightly closed, protecting its delicate wings. The barbs on its fine manipulators tangled so thoroughly in the dense springs of my hair that I worried it would take surgery to get us disengaged.
Rashaqin reproduction is harrowing. Their entire social order is built to keep adults well-separated, with lots of private space, so they don’t accidentally eat one another. The spawn are aquatic and generally not considered to be sentient until they pass through the nymph stage and emerge on land in their penultimate instar as miniature adults. At this point, they are taken into crèches and educated by carefully organized, regimented communities of adults.
This is probably for the best, as the spawn are both numerous and cannibalistic. On Rashaq, they’re left to fend for themselves until they molt out into that educable stage.
Swimming is not encouraged for tourists on Rashaq. Rashaqins, as responsible sentients, do their best to avoid reproducing elsewhere. It’s hard on the local ecosystem. Also on their colleagues, as the egg-laying sex generally eats the other during the reproductive interlude, unless they’re already extremely well-fed. I understand that in modern society, the—we’ll call them females, though it’s not entirely accurate—generally bloat themselves with food before intercourse or resort to technological intervention for fertilization. And the males—like Rilriltok—tend to feed everybody they meet.
When I was still Judiciary and visited Rashaq a couple of decans ago, they were in the midst of a natural child-rearing fad. There had been a lot of articles about how the egg-layer eating the progenitor was much healthier for the young and rendered them more competitive in the wild. As there are, demographically, significantly more of Rilriltok’s sex, competition for mates is pretty extreme, and a surprising-to-me number of males volunteered.
Things might have gotten even uglier than they did, but Core General and the Judiciary both sent crisis intervention teams, and eventually the fad blew over with only a few dozen casualties who hadn’t signed up to be eaten. We managed to catch all the perpetrators and remand them for rightminding.
Anyway, my interaction with the Core General medical team there was how I got interested in working here.
“You’ve identified me correctly,” I said. “We’re here to check on our patients.”
Well, the patients were mine and Rilriltok’s. They were Helen’s crew.
Close enough.
I stepped past Cheeirilaq toward the window, raising the arm on the far side of my body so Rilriltok could use it as a bridge to scuttle around to the front if it felt it necessary. My colleague seemed to be at the mercy of its freeze reflex, however.
Cheeirilaq kept a respectful distance, and I assumed if Rilriltok needed to leave it would let me know.
Beyond the windows, the familiar coffins lay side by side, raised on racks that brought them up to a convenient height for most species to work at. Doctors and technicians of several species moved calmly around them, reading instruments and peering at whatever lay behind open panel covers. All the coffins we had brought back appeared to be here, and appeared to be intact.
Helen’s relief was palpable even before she said, “None of the systems have failed.”
It was still too early to be certain of that, but it seemed like a terrible time to point it out, so I didn’t.
CHAPTER 13
RILRILTOK’S WEIGHT SHIFTED AS IT raised its eyes to peer over my shoulder. I turned slightly to give it a better view and more cover behind my torso.