Donald Moffitt - Second Genesis

“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.”

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.

Bram waved back, frowning within his helmet. “I wonder where they got that,” he said. “They’re supposed to leave things in place till an archaeologist can have a look at the site. There are too many helpful amateurs wandering around.”

“Does it matter?”

“Very much, apparently. Ame says that the way finds are sited tells them as much as the finds themselves. And with bones especially, there’s a question of missing pieces.”

“Those long-footed skeletons?”

“She’s got some fairly complete ones. There’s a question about the dating. She sent word that there’s something she wants to discuss with me.”

“And lots of Cuddly bones?”

“Yes, and some they can’t identify. She thinks that they may have been pets of Original Man.”

Mim gave a subdued shudder and linked arms with Bram. “Ugh—bones! Still, it makes a good excuse for an excursion. The view gets more spectacular all the time.”

They both looked toward the horizon at the half-risen disk. It was a swollen red orb that stretched across most of the sky, its oblique angle squashing it out of shape. A smaller disk, back-to, made a black shadow across the glowing field. With the overhead moon brightening up, the diskworld was a reasonably well lit place these days—about on a par with the Father World nights when the lesser sun had been in the sky.

They had been in the system long enough for the diskworld’s rotation to bring this segment of the rim down almost to the plane of orbit. Yggdrasil, after some complicated maneuvering, was about a quarter diameter behind them again and catching up fast. At present, the trip from the tree took eleven days, the trip back even longer, but that didn’t stop the excursionists. With Yggdrasil renewed and the crust of the diskworld itself to tap, there was fuel literally to burn.

They continued their shuffling stroll. A Cuddly popped up out of a hole in the ground in front of them, sat up on its haunches, and gave them a fearless, big-eyed stare. The little animals had quickly allowed their natural curiosity to overtake their initial caution of human beings, and now they were all over the place.

Mim gave a cry of delight. “Aren’t they cute? Look at those clever little paws! They’re almost human! Can we take one back with us?”

“Why not? Half the people on the tree seem to have adopted a Cuddly. Or vice versa. They’re easy to tame, they eat anything, and they’re nice to have around.”

There had been some fear at first that the little burrowing beasts would spread uncontrolled through Yggdrasil’s vessels and passageways and perhaps interfere with the tree’s internal ecology. But that hadn’t been the case. The Cuddlies seemed to prefer human company, and they hung around the living quarters, attaching themselves to a particular person or family. They were affectionate little things, rubbing against a person’s leg until picked up and stroked, or even forcing matters by climbing up themselves to an arm or a shoulder. They were also shameless little beggars. Few people could resist them. They had quickly discovered all the outside exits, and during Yggdrasil’s “night” they liked to prowl about in naked space, among the leaves and branches. They could go an hour or more without breathing, living off the compressed oxygen in their accessory lungs or trapped in their amazing fur with its overlapping erectile follicles.