Jack McDevitt - SEEKER

No shots had been fired between Mute and human warships for a few years, but the long conflict still simmered. Nobody really knew what it was about, any longer.

Neither side was interested in real estate belonging to the other. Neither side actively threatened anyone. And yet there it was, a living antipathy, drifting down the centuries. Politicians on both sides got support by promising the voters to be tough with the aliens. (I wondered how the Mutes could have politicians when their minds were more or less open to all.) The term Assemblage was a misnomer. The loose group of Mute states, worlds, duchies, outposts, orbital cities, and whatever else, were more a social grouping than a formal political entity. But they could react in concert with stunning efficiency. Some observers argued they could already see the stirrings of a group mind.

I was relieved to get off the Komar. I stopped at the service desk, where another human avatar in my image presented herself and gave me directions to get to the museum at Provno.

The shuttle I wanted was marked with a lightning bolt designator. It was crowded, and I had to push in. There was nothing more revelatory of the alien nature of Mute society than boarding that vehicle and watching the Mutes interract with each other, make way, stow their packages, move their children into seats, quiz each other over who gets the window, and do it all in absolute silence. Well, maybe not absolute.

There were of course the sounds of rustling clothing, closing panels, and air escaping from cushions. Harnesses clicked down into place. But there was never a voice.

I had by then been more than a week in the exclusive company of Mutes, and I was learning to ignore the sense of being exposed to the public gaze. Just don’t worry about it, I told myself. But I couldn’t resist occasionally glancing over at a fellow passenger and picturing myself waving hello.

There was usually a physical response, a meeting of eyes, a lifting of the brow, something. Occasionally they even waved back.

I tried to think warm and fuzzy. And in fact, my reaction to these creatures, the primal fear and revulsion I’d felt in their presence, was dwindling every day. But as I sat on that shuttle, trying to read and comprehending nothing on the page, I was a long way from being comfortable.

We dropped into the atmosphere, descended through a twilit sky, ran into some turbulence and a storm, and finally sailed out of the clouds beneath a canopy of stars.

Below, cities blazed with light.

A female flight attendant stopped by my seat. “We’ll be landing in seven minutes,” she said. I couldn’t tell where the voice was coming from.

I spent the night at a hotel just off a river walk. Ashiyyurean architectural styles, at least on Borkarat, are subtly different from anything we’ve employed. Human structures, whatever their cultural tendencies, are static. They are symmetrical, and however eclectic the design, one always detects balance and proportion. Mute buildings, on the other hand, are a study in motion, in flow, in energy. The symmetry is missing. Seen from a distance, my hotel looked incomplete, as though part of it projected into another dimension.

I ate in the restaurant, surrounded by Mutes. And I’m proud to say I held my own.

Stayed at my table, worked my way casually through my meal, and never flinched when a nearby infant took one horrified look at me and tried to burrow into its mother’s mammaries.

I wondered how early in life the telepathic capability began. Could a child in the womb communicate?

Two humans, male and female, showed up. They saw me and came over. You’d have thought we were the oldest of friends. At my invitation, they sat down and we exchanged trivia for the next hour. They were from St. Petersburg, one of the ancient terrestrial capitals.

I think I’ve mentioned that the Ashiyyur do not use spirits of any kind. I read somewhere that there are no comparable drugs for them, and they do not understand the human compulsion to drown our senses. So the glasses we raised to each other that night were tame, but we made promises that we’d get together back home.

Amazing how close Andiquar and St. Petersburg became.

I slept well, except for waking in the middle of the night after an especially realistic sexual dream. And there I was again, wondering if the Mutes could pick up nocturnal stuff as well. Had I frightened the children on three floors? No wonder they didn’t like having people around.

I thought about the couple I’d met at dinner. They were young, recently married. But I bet myself that tonight they were sleeping apart and probably drumming up more emotional vibrations for any Mute antennas paying attention than a good oldfashioned romp would have. Mute-world is not a place for a honeymoon.

The Museum of Alien Life-forms was located on an expanse of parkland on Provno, in a long island chain in one of the southern seas. The parkland area is largely devoted to public buildings and historical preserves. Landscaped sections are blocked off, often commemorating historical figures, sometimes simply devoted to providing quiet places for reflection. There are streams and myriad small creatures that come begging for handouts from visitors.

The architecture was hyperbolic, rooftops that surged like ocean waves, angled spires, soaring stalks. Crowds wandered through the area on long curved walkways that sometimes ascended to the upper levels. Everywhere there were leafy porticoes to which you could retreat simply to enjoy the play of nature. Everything seemed light and fragile, as ethereal as the sunlight.

Private vehicular traffic was banned in the parks. Visitors could enter by aircab, although the bulk of traffic was handled by an overwater maglev train. I’d never seen one before, and I have no idea how they handled the engineering.

The museum stood between two similar but not-quite-identical obelisks. It was made of white marble and incorporated arcs and columns and rising walkways so that it was reminiscent of one of those children’s puzzles that you can take apart and reassemble but always looks different. A moving ramp took me up to the front entrance, where I came to a wall engraved with Mute characters. I turned my translator loose on it, and it told me that the museum had been founded on an indeterminate date. (The translator wasn’t good at converting dates and times.) And that life-forms from all over the galaxy were welcome.

I went inside, while Mute children looked alternately at me and the sign and gaped, while others just gaped and still others drew back in alarm. But I smiled politely and pushed ahead.

You might expect that a museum devoted to off-world biological systems would give you lots of holograms of the various life-forms in action. But it wasn’t that way at all.

Maybe there was a sense that visitors could get the holograms at home. So what they had were display cases and exhibits filled with stuffed skins and heads.

They’d probably been picked for shock value. Giant creatures with maws big enough to swallow a lander. Snakes that could have used me for a toothpick. Predators of all sizes and shapes, some fearsome beyond belief. And the prey, cute little furred creatures that could run fast. And damn well better.

There were plants capable of gobbling down a fair-sized technician, and multilimbed creatures that lived in the trees of Barinor, wherever that was, and stole children. I wondered why anybody would choose to live under such conditions. At least, with kids.

I’m happy to report there were no stuffed people. Maybe that was a concession to the fact that they occasionally had human visitors. They did have a couple of birds and lizards from Rimway, and a tiger from Earth. But the only human was an avatar, a bearded guy who looked like a Neandertal. He even carried a spear. When I approached him, he grunted.