“Oh, really?”
Mark released her hand with a touch of distaste. She had calluses!
“If you will come with me I will show you to your quarters. Sorry not to have a welcoming committee here, but we are very busy and don’t spend much time on the social niceties.” He only realised his gaffe when he was following her out.
Carmen Smith… Oh God!
He had just met the Director.
Xenoethnologist my ass. I don’t need this.
“I take it you received all your immuno treatments?”
It was a stupid question to ask, she was well aware, but she did not think she would be having a sensible conversation with this idiot.
“Yes,” said Christian.
Carmen noticed he was a little pale. “You do know this is an open runcible?” Mark nodded. Carmen studied him for a moment, wondering what his problem might be. Perhaps he knew of her objections to him coming here. She shook her head and turned to the door. It slid open and they stepped outside.
The sky was alien. No other word applied. He could have said it was the colour of blackberry cordial shone through with a sun lamp or that the clouds were like the froth on fermenting red wine. But those were descriptions taking as their basis things from Earth — things familiar. The sky was not familiar. It was something seen in Technicolor nightmares and the strangest of dreams. He stood under a sky an unimaginable distance from Earth. Another world. Another place. An element in the dreams of another species. Abruptly he realised Carmen was speaking to him.
“—it’s fatal to anthropomorphise.”
“Sorry…?”
“The Orbonnai are very like us physiologically.”
“Oh, yes… I am trained in these matters.”
“I thought it best to warn you. There have been members of Station Seventeen who had formed too close an attachment to the likes of Paul.”
“Paul?”
Carmen gazed at him speculatively. Abruptly he felt foolish, but the sky and the weird contorted landscape below it had denuded him of words. He shrugged as if making himself more comfortable in his fashionable jacket.
“That is anthropomorphising in itself,” he said. “I myself adhere to Gordon’s dictum; ‘If it is alien, give it an alien name’. ‘Paul’ is far too prosaic.”
He glanced at her again and took in the angular beauty of her tanned features. She’d had alterations other than her eyes, yet, because she was out of date she seemed more… plausible. She said, “The runcible technicians named him Paul. Edron, the co-ordinator of the planetary biostudy team, then tried to have his name changed to Xanthos or some such. Never caught on.” Mark nodded to himself like someone with access to privileged information. “I would be most interested to view any studies made of him.”
Carmen glanced at him. “I’ll have the recordings sent to your quarters directly.” After leaving the shower and donning his silk Faberge lounging suit, Mark dropped in the chair before his viewing screen and caressed a touch-plate with his finger. The screen flickered on to show him a scene of dense jungle on the edge of a stream with banks of blue sand. He fast-forwarded it until there were signs of movement from the jungle. A narrative began as he watched. He jumped with surprise then glanced around guiltily before returning his attention to the screen.
The orboni edged out of the jungle, wire-taut as it surveyed its surroundings, then squatted down in the sand at the edge of the river. It was difficult not to ascribe human characteristics to it, with its bilateral symmetry, arms and legs, and its upright stance. Yet, it was bone-white and with a head like the bare skull of a bird. Half listening to the narrative, Mark watched it intently.
“—and the immediate and invalid assumption being that Paul was a tool user. Note the three fingered hands and opposable thumb. As we now know, Daneson was in error. It is far too easy to anthropomorphise when faced with creatures which bear such a close physiological resemblance to humanity. Here we see the true use of that opposable thumb, and more importantly, the long mid-finger with its hooked point. It is relevant at this point to add, that the Orbonnai do not have nails. As Gordon once had the temerity to conjecture; ‘If they don’t have nails they don’t use tools. Imagine bashing your finger with a hammer.’ A most dubious—”
Mark turned the sound down as he observed Paul. He did not need the distraction of this babble. He knew what he was searching for, and he knew he would find it. According to the highest Church authorities the Orbonnai were pre-ascension.
The orboni reached into the stream and fumbled around for a while. Eventually it withdrew its hand, holding a snail the size of an ash-tray. Mark watched it intently as it inspected its prize, and felt a momentary flush of excitement. Could it be that all the evidence he needed would be on these memory crystals? He noted a number of rocks laying nearby. Would Paul make the connection? The way he was inspecting the snail looked very much as if he was satisfying his curiosity. Mark willed Paul to pick up a stone. If there was no evidence here then he would have to go outside. He shuddered at the thought and turned the sound up again.
“—Again he was in error. This ‘turning’ of the nautiloid is not due to aesthetic appreciation. It is an instinctive behaviour that mimics the tumbling of the mollusc in the current of the stream when it has been dislodged from its hold on the bottom. Shortly we will see the reason for this.” Abruptly Paul darted his ‘long’ finger inside the snail, twisted it, and pulled out the white squidlike body it contained. With relish he pecked this up, tipped his head back and shook it to get the morsel down. He discarded the shell.
“There. A study of nautiloid behaviour shows they open the clypeus of their shells to re-attach themselves to the bed of stream after about thirty seconds ‘tumbling’. This is what Paul was after. Other studies have shown that the Orbonnai still follow this instinctive behaviour even with empty nautiloid shells taken from the beds of the streams. Empty or otherwise, these shells are always discarded after thirty seconds. It is well to note that the blue nautiloid, which has a tumbling response time of fifty seconds, has displaced the green nautiloids in the Graffus island chain, as it is slowly doing here, and that there are no Orbonnai there.”
“Stupid woman,” said Mark, and ran the recording forward.
“—the miracidia of the so-called ‘brain fluke’ parasite are caused to break secondary encystment by the heating of the faeces. Their vector here is—”
“—once in nautiloid waters they begin their cyclic swimming patterns. This greatly increases their chances of finding a host—”
“—a matter of conjecture. If green nautiloids are the infested form of blue nautiloids then—” Mark swore and jerked the memory crystal from the machine. He looked at the label in disbelief.
He closed his eyes and tapped his cross for luck, then reinserted the crystal and ran it to near its end. When he turned it on the scene presented to him froze him in his seat.
“—but of course the thrake has no need to be this mobile. It is my opinion that this is a throw-back to the tumbling delay, and a time prior to such widespread infestation. This is, of course, based on tenuous evidence. There may be a cyclic—”
Mark was not listening. He was staring in horror at the creature on the screen. It bore the appearance of a giant metallic wood-louse bent into an L. It had four short insectile legs on the ground, and six of what could only be described as arms. They were long, had two joints. The pair nearest its head ended in crablike pincers, and the pair below ended in clubs. The final pair Mark could not see because they were the ones holding down the orboni, while the thrake dismembered it with its pincers, and conveyed it piece by piece to its nightmare, machine-like mandibles and grinding mouth.