The good new stuff, p.37
The Good New Stuff, page 37
“I have never seen such a cold, desolate wasteland of rocks in my life,” Mary remarked as they approached an outrageously voluptuous antarctic beach. A fish for every taste, Drin thought.
She had parked the submarine and rode on his neck toward the shoreline, her warm thighs smooth against his sandy outer skin. The idea that she often had eggs, of a sort, waiting in a part of her body so near to him gave him ridiculous and perverted thoughts—thoughts that unwontedly stimulated certain secretory organs below the tips of his fingers. Some, he had heard, had experimented with interspecies stimulation and considered it a form of art. Thank providence, he thought, that such thoughts on his part could remain private. But if Mary ever said that she wanted … No, no. Consign that idea to the abyss. Too much chance of giving offense.
It didn’t help at all, as they neared the beach, that he could see at least four unabashedly pregnant young Do’utian women lolling thick-necked on the smooth pebbles in the sun. The beachmaster was nowhere to be seen, a circumstance that ran his biological thermometer well past its set point. He wondered if Mary understood how hard this would be for him?
“That beach is an indolent paradise for us, I’m afraid. I’d much rather talk to the head man than that naked harem, but he’s left them unprotected. This isn’t good. Uh, Mary, if they become aggressive with me, it might be best if I just let nature …”
She patted the top of his head, firmly enough for him to notice.
“I’ll never say a thing. Promise.” She put her arms around his neck, as far as they would go, and pressed the soft parts of her body against the back of his head, laughing. It was not at all unpleasant. Then, suddenly, she stopped.
“Drin,” she spoke quickly, “to your left. What is that in the—DRIN!”
Instantly, he rolled his eyes around and slipped his tongue into his pouch, triggering his sonar with one manipulator and grabbing his weapon with the other. Then he saw, and knew instantly that it was too late to do anything.
A tall pole, perhaps half a Charter unit high, supported a white pennant at its end, snapping in the offshore breeze. The other end was firmly buried in the side of the corpse of a Do’utian man, bloated, floating in the swell. He shuddered as the wind shifted and brought the scent of death to him.
“Are you OK?” asked Mary.
“Yes. But I would prefer to approach this upwind. How are you?”
She was a trained monitor, and, he hoped, not as affected due to the difference in species. Fortunately for him, the wind shifted again.
“I’m fine. Look, why don’t I check out the victim and the murder weapon while you interview?”
It made sense, but he was hoping for her presence to bolster his resolve not to be swept away by instinct on the beach. He belched in self-disgust; was he not master of himself?
“Very well, Mary. I’ll take you over to it, I need to get closer anyway. I suspect the victim was the beachmaster here, and if so, these women have been widowed. I should be able to tell from his scent—he will have marked them. Widowing can be a very painful death sentence in primitive circumstances; an unbirthed egg turns poisonous in a month or so.”
“So my human primitives kill five Do’utians with one harpoon?”
“Mary, they are not your primitives,” he rumbled. “Don’t take so much on yourself. It’s not very professional.” He extended his tongue behind him and placed manipulators on both her shoulders. “Besides, there are no reports of harems dying because of the other murders.” The thought struck him: why not? “We don’t know the whole story,” he finished. No, indeed.
He felt her five thin bony fingers cover his three thick muscular ones. She grasped tightly, and he could feel some warmth, though not taste her skin, through her water suit. He could not fathom what feelings ran through that alien mind nor what awful images from her past this fresh corpse might conjure. But he could recognize sadness in her, and try to give sympathy.
His own feelings were proving harder to manage. There was a primal urge in his species to avoid their dead, and thus, the evolutionists believed, avoid whatever circumstances might have led to death. Then there was what waited for him on the beach. He shuddered.
“I can tell you’d rather not go any closer, Drin.” A splash surprised him, and Mary swam in front of his left eye. Humans, in general, were clumsy in the water. But they were fearless and some like Mary were competent, if slow. “I’ll take it from here. Looks like about as far to the corpse as to the beach. No problem; I’ll just swim in when I’m done, or I’ll buzz for you if I need backup. OK?”
He rumbled an assent, she bared her teeth to him, flipped and started pulling herself through the water toward the victim, climbing through the waves with steady pulls of her front limbs. The wonder, he reflected, was not that his simian friends were slow in the water, but that they could swim at all, and even appear graceful, in their own way, while doing so.
“I’ll be expecting you. Take care,” he called after her. Then, with mixed feelings, he sent himself toward the beach.
The approach was not the simple landing of a human boat ramp. Jagged rocks were all over. The beachmaster had chosen well: an adult Do’utian needed care to reach the shore. Drin exhaled and settled firmly on the bottom to ignore the random swells. Legs extended, he picked his way carefully along, a Charter unit below the surface, while holding his sonar transceiver high over his head, hearing the image it received through his earphones. There! A sandy path opened through the rocks. He followed it. It zigzagged to an open gravelly area under the breakers that seemed safe enough, but he chose to pick his way through the smooth stones along its side just in case. Carefully, he emerged onto the beach.
The women crowded together as soon as they saw him. Very well, he’d take it slowly.
First though, he traced his route with a sharp tongue tip on his comset’s screen and sent the resulting image to Mary. While she could float over larger outlaying rocks that would disembowel him, there seemed to be only one place where the breakers might not dash her to pieces. He also sent a brief report to Monitor Central and inquired about the status of his request for Kleth support. Scheduled, they told him.
Chores done, he returned his attention to the widowed harem. Widowed because they had been very clearly scented by the dead beachmaster, and the deceased’s neobarbarism seemed to have extended to marking them physically as well as with his scent—some of the scars were still unhealed.
A medical team would be needed. While, contrary to his initial assessment, only two of them were gravid; with the beachmaster gone they would both be needing egg relief soon. Also, all four were clearly undernourished.
He filed a quick report for Do Tor on his comm unit, then walked forward to them slowly, mouth politely open, tongue and manipulators spread to signal peaceful intent. Still, they cowered. They were young, very young, despite scars and abrasions on their hides that most of his people wouldn’t acquire in eight times eight times eight years, and would probably remove if they did.
“I’m Lieutenant Drinnil’ib from the Monitors. I don’t mean any harm,” he said. “I’d just like you to answer some questions.”
It must be the smell of the beachmaster’s death that frightened them into silence. He had come close enough to carry some of it, and they probably thought he was responsible.
They keened and backed away as he approached. But a cliff surrounded the beach, and soon they could back up no farther.
If they could smell the death, then there was no reason to try to keep it a secret. He was hoping to avoid the legendary consequences. Nonsense, he told himself. These must be at least semi-educated people, living in primitive conditions by choice.
“I’m sorry to have to bring you this news. I’ve come from the North Pole colony investigating the reported deaths of several people in this back-to-nature area. I’m afraid I have one more to investigate. By what I smell, the latest victim was your husband. I’m sorry. I assure you I had nothing to do with his death before the fact.” Lieutenant Drinnil’ib reached into his pouch and produced his badge, a holoprint two docis on edge—big enough for them to see easily. It gave off his scent as well.
The smallest of the harem, with deep black scars on her forelimbs, finally walked forward, then lowered herself to her belly in supplication.
“No,” he protested. “I don’t want you to do that. Stand up! Speak to me, please.”
She keened again, then opened her mouth wide. It took him a few heartbeats to register what he saw, and then a few more for the horror of it to sink in. Where the two branches of her tongue should have been, where the manipulators that signified their species’ rise from the beach should have curled, was nothing but a blackened stump, so short it would be useless for feeding or speaking.
He quickly pulled in his own tongue and lowered his belly to the gravel, to be on her level. Then he gently touched his beak to hers in sympathy. She shut her eyes and lowered her beak in sadness, and he did the same. When he looked up again, the other three had joined them. The gravid ones were looking at him expectantly. Oh-oh.
“Look,” he explained, “I’m not part of your culture. I’m a Monitor. This is strictly a professional visit.” Their eyes showed no comprehension, and their bodies began to sway back and forth on their legs. They came closer, swaying and keening. The first female kept nuzzling him. He tried to back away, but froze.
From then on, he noted his body’s response with what was almost detachment. Body temperature up. A tightness at the base of his tail. He wanted to keep his mouth shut to avoid tasting whatever chemicals they were putting out, but a groan worked its way out from deep inside him, his beak yawned open involuntarily as reason left his brain. The women were beside him, keening, holding him between their bodies, their beaks locked wide open, pressing his most private areas. The need to give overwhelmed him. He let his tongue caress their tails, almost as if it were someone else’s.
He never saw the eggs emerge from their throats, but rather felt the smooth bumps against his underside, an emptying feeling in the base of his tail, and a slight coolness in that area as his consciousness slowly faded back in.
Afterward, of course, he remembered everything with the humiliating clarity of a terapixel hologram. Especially when he looked back at two white eggs covered with sticky yellow goo. And especially when he looked up and saw little Mary Pierce standing about eight Charter units away, mouth open in what must have been a look of horror.
Setting aside his embarrassment and disgust, he tried to remember what needed to be done. Back home, in a hospital, the eggs would be sprayed clean and anointed with all sorts of healthy fluids, wrapped in germicidal barriers, and placed in an incubator. The nearest thing to an incubator they had here was a Do’utian pouch. His was full of other things, but the women had pouches, too.
It was then that he realized that since none of the women had tongues, he would have to place the eggs in their pouches himself. He shut his eyes, moaned, and buried his beak in the sand again. He couldn’t do this.
“It’s OK,” he heard Mary say. “I’m afraid I don’t remember what the handbook says about Do’utian midwifery, but if there’s anything I can do, just tell me.”
He lifted his head up. “The handbook doesn’t say anything. It’s supposed to be too private. But … but the eggs need to be cleaned off and placed in the women’s pouches. They can’t do it themselves because their former husband disabled them. I’m … I’m afraid I’m not up to it.”
“No problem, buddy. I think they accept me. Must be your scent all over me. Is it OK if I wash the eggs in the sea?”
“Yes, I think so.”
She did this quickly and efficiently, taking each egg in turn, cradling and talking to it as if it was a fresh-born human. Drin refrained from telling her that there would be nothing inside the eggs to hear her for eight-squared days. Done with the washing, Mary took the smaller egg and approached one of the formerly gravid women, who looked accusingly at Drin and backed away. Then a strange thing happened. The smaller Do’utian woman quickly moved in front of Mary and offered her own pouch.
When that member of the harem had accepted both eggs, she came over to Drin and slowly scratched the sand with her beak. It soon became clear that she was writing. When she backed away, Drin could read, fairly clearly. “I GRI’IL.”
“You can understand me?” Drin asked, wonderingly. Obviously, she could not speak.
She nodded.
“Your name is Gri’il?”
She nodded again.
“Do you want to leave?”
Gri’il did nothing, then nodded slowly, followed by a vigorous head shake. Something wrong.
“Will you follow me back to the North Pole? To civilization?”
She was still a very long time. Then she began painfully scratching the gravel again. What she wrote was “DANGR HUNTERS.”
Mary saw this, went up to Gri’il, wrapped herself around the Do’utian woman’s foreleg, and began her own type of keening. Soon, they had all joined in.
“I’m going to get some fish for everyone,” Drin said to no one in particular, and trotted back to the shore. The mutilated Do’utian’s were ill nourished and couldn’t feed themselves. Besides, he needed something to do alone. Away from all women of whatever species.
Individuals who wish to visit or reside in the wild regions, alone or in small groups, may do so without interference so long as they respect the rights of others and do not significantly disturb the environment. Introduction of chemical industry is specifically prohibited. Alternative societies are permitted so long as the individuals who join such societies are free to leave such when they wish. Do not interfere with suicide, or risk-taking that amounts to such. However, murder will be treated no differently than in the civilized areas.
—Planet Monitor’s Handbook
Law In Reserved Areas
“Gri, Ohghli, Donota, Notri, do I have it right?” Mary asked. Human memories, Drin thought, were amazingly poor considering their technological prowess—on the other hand, perhaps necessity had made them superlative inventors.
Drin rocked her submarine by putting a little extra into his next propulsive tail-stroke. “Your memory is either much worse than I think or you find a certain humor in my situation. I think I would rather not have my thoughts in that current so often.”
“My apologies.” The comset relayed the drop of pitch in her voice that Drin associated with increasing concern. “But they’re your wives now, aren’t they?”
“No! I have made no commitment. There is no registration. Except for Gri’il, none of them seems to have any intellectual understanding of their lives, or that of the broader race. None of them is a suitable mate.”
“I’d guess it will be hard for them to understand that,” Mary suggested, more right than she could know.
“Very hard. I approached them under circumstances that make biological bonding almost inevitable in nature. And Gri’il took the eggs … .”
“She seems the responsible type, and educated somehow.”
“She will have a tale to tell. I suspect she is a truant who dove into the back-to-nature business just a little deeper than her inherent depth. The others, I think, must have been born here. They seem virtually feral.”
“What will happen to them?”
“I think Gri’il will return to civilization, sadder but wiser. The feral women … I don’t know. The experts will have to decide—they may be happier as they are.”
“Mutilated?”
“No, we’ll fix that. But, they may be unable to adapt to civilization now. I cannot know their minds, or even if they have developed what you and I would recognize as a mind.”
“That’s heartless,” Mary accused. “They love you.”
“You don’t understand the biology. I think our conversation should find different currents now.”
But it didn’t. Mary’s attempt at matchmaking left him in no mood for conversation at all. There was silence instead, a silence that should have been filled with plans as they approached the primitivist human settlement.
It was shockingly big, even by his standards. Primitivism in humans, Drin realized at the sight, didn’t really mean living without technology. It meant living with a technology so primitive that it could be sustained without any meaningful education at the expense of ceaseless, boring labor; a technology of hand-hewn planks, poles, and rough-cut stones in huge piles, piles made all the larger by beings who evolved with twice the local gravity.
The entrance to their harbor had been choked down to a canal by massive stone walls and guarded by massive wooden gates. The stream that issued from this was putrid. Drin turned away.
“Pollution! Mary, I think I would prefer to walk in.”
“Understood. There must be two thousand people in this place, and that’s the only outlet. The air isn’t a whole lot better—lots of smoke. It’s a couple of degrees over freezing; cool enough for you?”
“A nice balmy day.”
“Why don’t you try riding on top of the sub? You’ll have to keep your tail off the rear electrodes.”
Drin released a bubble of humor; the idea of him riding on a human submarine was indeed bizarre. But the water stunk like rotting carrion. “If you can steer without your forward fins, I could hang onto those with my forelegs. Then my tail wouldn’t reach the electrodes.”
“The sub says that’s no problem. Climb aboard.”
He swam into position, curled his front toes around the rounded edge of the flexidiamond fins and released some buoyancy gas to hold himself down. The submarine rose under him and broke the surface. The air stank as advertised, but only when he opened his mouth.
Soon Mary climbed out of the nose hatch to join him. She’d put her monitor uniform jumpsuit on over her insulated tights and looked academy sharp. Remembering that humans relied almost exclusively on visual identification, he pulled his monitor badges out of his pouch and stuck them on his front shoulders.
