Bram gave a start. The little beasts were gone in an instant, before he had time to react.
“We scared them off,” he said.
“They must have been watching us the whole time, everywhere we went,” Ame said. “The ones here got up the courage to investigate the walker when we were gone so long.”
A wary little face peered out from around a block of stone, then jerked back as Ame’s light beam found it. Bram had a quick impression of huge round eyes, button nose, tiny mouth, and the flash of a bushy tail.
He found himself laughing. “They’re curious,” he said.
“They’re descended from terrestrial life,” Ame said. “That’s for certain. Like every picture I’ve ever seen. Everything in pairs—eyes, ears, limbs—just like us! And they’re furred—they’re not only vertebrates but mammals, too!”
“But how do they breathe vacuum?”
“I wonder … they’ve had millions of years to adapt to this place. Have you ever heard of whales?”
“I know the word. Stands for something big.”
“It was a real animal once. It adapted to a new environment, too. It learned to go for long stretches without breathing.”
They were at the walker now. The biovehicle was in the same kneeling position they had left it in. Bram gave Ame a boost, and she hoisted herself up to the passenger bubble. Then she froze.
“Bram-tsu! Look!”
He levitated to a position beside her, and she grabbed his arm. One of the little animals was trapped inside the bubble, scurrying about frantically, looking for a way out.
He stopped her as she as about to insert herself into the bubble. “Wait. Let’s see if we can shoo that thing out of there first.”
“Why? What harm could it do?”
“I don’t like the look of those little teeth.”
“It’s more afraid of us than we are of it. Oh, look at it, Bram-tsu! It’s so small! It’s just a little baby! It must have gotten separated from its mother. It’s terrified.”
Without waiting for a response, she swan-dived through the lips of the bubble. Bram followed, letting out at least a pound of air pressure in his haste.
“The poor thing,” Ame said, reaching for the small creature. It cowered against the far side of the transparent bubble, chittering at them. It was a little roly-poly thing, a ball of soft brown fluff with enormous golden eyes that were mostly round pupil.
“Ame, don’t touch it.”
“Nonsense! It couldn’t bite me through my vacuum suit even if it tried.”
She picked the creature up. It squirmed in her grasp, then seemed to give up. A moment later it was in the crook of her arm, clinging to her with four tiny grasping paws.
“It wants its mother,” Ame said. “Look, Bram-tsu, there’s a third eyelid for when it’s outside.”
He bent closer and saw the transparent nictitating membrane flick across the golden eye when the creature blinked at him.
“And little flaps for the ears, too,” he added, noticing the folds of pink flesh that creased reflexively to close off the entrance to the ear canal when he leaned too close, as if the little animal were trying to shut him out of its world.
“I think you’re scaring it,” Ame told him.
“No, it’s getting used to me.”
There were similar little flaps for the nostrils, but the creature’s nose twitched as it sniffed at him, and the flaps stayed open.
“I’ve seen pictures of fur, but I never dreamed it could be so soft,” Ame said dreamily. “Sort of like the twins’ hair, only all over. It makes you want to stroke it.”
“Ame, you keep those gloves on.”
“All right,” she said, patting the little beast with a gauntleted hand. It responded to the touch by snuggling up closer against her and wrapping its tail around her arm.
“We’ve got to start back,” Bram said. “We’ll come back and study them.”
“Jorv will be pleased,” Ame said. “All of a sudden, zoology isn’t a theoretical science anymore.”
“We’d better leave it here. We don’t have the facilities for keeping it alive during the trip back to the tree. It might not survive.”
“Bram-tsu, I love you. You’re a biologist, but it never even occurred to you to take it back as a specimen.”
“Well, I…” He flushed, “There’ll be plenty of time to study these animals at our leisure, find out what they eat, take tissue samples without hurting them.”
It was the Nar influence, he supposed—growing up among beings whose respect for any sort of conscious life was innate. Bram hoped the human race wouldn’t lose that trait with the passage of generations, but he had heard a few rather cold-blooded remarks from some of the younger tree dwellers.
“I hate to give it up,” Ame said. “It’s so cuddly and cute. You know, Bram-tsu, it’s all fluff. Underneath, it’s all scrawny.”
Reluctantly, she pried the small clinging creature from her body and eased it through the lips of the bubble. Bram saw the little fleshy flaps wink into place over ears and nostrils, and the creature’s fur seemed to puff up still further. Then it was floating to the ground with chubby grace, its tiny prehensile paws outstretched for contact.
It scampered off immediately. A larger beast darted from a cranny to intercept it, bowled it over, and nudged it with a button nose to a perch on her back.
“It’s found its mother, anyway,” Ame said with relief.
The mother beastie stood up on her haunches to bare her teeth at Ame and Bram, then scurried away with the baby fluffball clinging to her fur.
“I discovered them, and I’m going to name them,” Ame said. “I’m going to call them Cuddlies.”
CHAPTER 8
The airless streets were filled with space-suited tourists from the tree these days. They gawked at the massive excavated buildings, hunted for souvenirs in the rubble, and generally got in the archaeologists’ way. About a quarter of the population could be found on the surface of the diskworld at any given time, and the proportion was increasing as quickly as pressurized accommodations could be provided and atmosphere plants cloned.
Bram strolled down the broad, roughed-out avenue with Mim at his side, trying to keep his feet on the ground and rubbernecking like anybody else. A lot had been accomplished since his last visit; duties aboard the tree had kept him busy there for several Tendays. The tops of more buildings had emerged from the gray dust, and the tallest of them now stood at a height of twenty feet or more.
“It’s coming to life again,” Mim said, reading his thoughts. “You can almost imagine what it must have been like.”
“Hundreds of thousands of people going about their business—more than ever existed on the Father World, let alone gathered in one place,” Bram agreed. “We’ve found shops, theaters, even a sports arena where they played a game in midair with a ball and stick, and you were out of bounds when your feet touched the ground. And we’ve only begun to dig.”
Mim said wonderingly. “So many! As many as the Nar! And it looks crowded to me with only a few thousand here!”
“Most of the shirt-sleeve traffic between buildings would have been through the tunnel system. Still, it must have been pretty lively on the surface.”
Two space-suited people walked by, bearing a huge slab of granite that seemed to be covered with bas-reliefs. They were walking almost normally, thanks to the tons of mass that kept their boots pressed to the ground. One of them freed an arm to wave at Bram and Mim as they passed. The slab dipped, but the person caught it before it floated too far down out of its inertial path.