Donald Moffitt - Second Genesis

Shira tossed her head. “If I know Jorv, he was careless about getting out, that’s all. Walked away and left it unsealed.”

“Bram -tsu ,” Ame said. “Do you notice something strange?”

It struck Bram after a moment. “Yes, why aren’t there swarms of those creatures around the walker for a closer look at it? It’s just sitting there. Don’t they have any curiosity?”

“Maybe Jorv’s getting all the attention.”

“No, he isn’t.” Jao’s voice came through the suit radio. “There he is, wandering around in the middle of their camp, and they’re ignoring him.”

Bram spotted the human figure after a moment. Jorv was dawdling about in bemused fashion, pausing here and there to look at things that interested him. He might have been out for a Tenday stroll. The stick creatures hurried past him on their errands without stopping.

It wasn’t quite true that they were ignoring Jorv, though. Jorv got too close to some piece of equipment that a group of them were setting up, and one of them detached itself from the work party long enough to make a number of short, aggressive rushes at the space-suited human. Jorv scrambled back out of the way. Bram couldn’t blame him; even from a distance the rushes looked scary. Jorv kept his distance, and the alien went back to its work, paying no further attention to him.

As the walkers cantered closer, Bram was able to make out more details of the creatures. They were long, tubular beings with pipestem limbs that seemed to grow out in a cluster from just below an oversize head. They walked upright on all fours, like animated plant stands—keeping the trailing portion of their bodies from scraping the ground by curling it upward in balance.

“Our ancestors ran on all fours, too,” Shira said, mostly for Bram’s benefit. “They learned to knuckle-walk, so that they could carry things at the same time. That’s why evolution let us keep forelimbs we could manipulate with.”

“It made for the development of intelligence,” Ame agreed. “But these creatures never adapted for a two-legged gait. I wonder if…”

Bram studied the distant figures. The beanstalk creatures seemed not at all handicapped by their quadruped stance. The forward pair of legs did double duty as arms, and when the creatures carried things—tottering in the low gravity and intermittently dropping a front limb for temporary balance—Bram was amazed to see the tubelike abdomen curve flexibly around to assist with the grip. There seemed to be a clasping member at its tip.

The creatures wore enormous boxlike helmets that were far too large even for the oversize heads that could be seen shadowily within. A human child could have curled up inside.

“They want lots of room in those helmets,” Bram said aloud. “I wonder why.”

He reined the walker to a halt next to Jorv’s abandoned vehicle. Jao and Heln pulled up behind him.

“We’d better walk from here,” he said.

The five of them climbed to the ground. The pipestem figures in their unwieldy many-faceted helmets made no move in their direction. They went on with their restless scurrying to and fro, never pausing in their chores.

“Do you see what they’re doing?” Jao said, putting a hand on Bram’s sleeve.

Bram looked over to where the floodlights lit the underside of the tremendous cloudy ball that had been first a fuel tank, then an environmental module, then a landing craft.

It was growing all sorts of attachments. An undergrowth of prefabricated polyhedrons. Huge glistening balloons that were blown up and sprayed with hardening foam to become permanent structures. A network of tube-ways and covered platforms that connected with the beginnings of some kind of large excavation.

“That lander will never go anywhere again,” Jao said.

Bram nodded. “They’re here to stay. First spot they touched down on. I get the feeling it could have been anywhere on the rim. They didn’t waste any time unpacking, either.”

Heln came over, festooned with cameras and recorders. “This is all I’ll need,” she said. “I’m leaving the rest of it in the walker. I was able to go through most of the material on the way.”

“Any ideas?” Bram asked.

“I may have. First I want to see if Jorv and the others can pin down a working phylogeny for those creatures. I can tell you one thing, though.” She hesitated.

“Go on.”

“They’re not a contact species. But they observe a hierarchy of space.” She saw his puzzled look and added, “You see, it would affect their social organization—and the way they communicate.”

“You can tell all that by looking at them from a distance?”

“On average, they maintain a uniform separation between themselves of about one point five limb lengths in close working situations.” She gave a troubled frown. “The limits of fang and claw, you see. In humans, it’s about three feet. But the real clue came from Jorv.”

“You mean when he got too close to that equipment and was warned off? I suppose it shows that these beings are touchy.”

“No, not necessarily. They may inhabit a different universe of perception. Communication with them may not be a matter of language, or symbols, or images.”

She cast a glance at the folded easel of the computer signboard that Jao was removing from the walker.

“I don’t understand,” Bram said.

Heln hesitated again. “I don’t believe they’re aware of Jorv.”

“But they saw him. They rushed him till he backed off.”

“That’s not what I mean. I mean they’re not aware of him as an entity. They’re aware of the alteration of hierarchical space that his presence caused.”

Jao paused in his labors. “Just like physics,” he said. “The shape of space is defined by the presence of matter.”

Heln pursed her lips. “I know it might not seem to make much sense…”

“No, no,” Bram said hastily. “In the physical sciences we reason from a single datum sometimes and reach the most astonishing conclusions. You’ve got a new science here. We’ll take your word for it.”

Ame was anxiously surveying the scene within the floodlit area. “Jorv just got himself chased again,” she said. “We’d better get over there before he gets himself into trouble.”

“Yes,” Bram said. First he checked the air bubble of Jorv’s walker. It had deflated because the thickened edges of the gasket were misaligned. Shira had been right about Jorv’s carelessness. He must have shouldered his way out of the vehicle frontally, probably spreading the bubble’s lips apart with his hands, then letting them snap back into place. Bram realigned the closure and saw some of the collapsed folds begin to stir and rise; they might need that air on the way back—Jorv hadn’t bothered to set out with a full complement of reserve air bottles, and if he’d had to get back home on his own, he might have made a close thing of it.

Jao slung his computer over his shoulder, and Bram shouldered the folded easel. Ame, he saw, had a big pad under her arm; she and Shira relieved Heln of some of her excess equipment. Together, they danced lightly across the landscape toward the stick-people’s camp.

As they approached the lit area, two of the spindly creatures trotted by at close hand, bearing a large, lightweight construction panel between them. Their gait was three-legged, and the long tubular abdomens, with gauntleted pincers on the ends, were curled around for extra support. They were backlighted by the brilliant lamps, and through the cloudy sheaths that covered their bodies, Bram got an impression of stiff, slender, many-jointed legs. The huge boxy helmets, concealing their secrets in the reflected glare, made them look like walking packing crates.