Howling Stones (6 page)

“Been meaning to work on that,” she told him as the door finally slid aside. At least, he mused, it did not make a grinding noise as it did so.

“Station upkeep is the responsibility of those working on site,” he reminded her, “irrespective of specialty.”

“Hey, I do what I can. The climate here is rough on electronics. My priority is the treaty, not janitorial work.”

Not wishing to start another argument, he withheld the comment that was teetering on his lips and followed her into the lift. It was just big enough to accommodate the two of them and Pulickel’s self-hoisting travel case. The door closed smoothly behind them.

The interior of the station was a revelation, but not the kind that inspires. Clothes were scattered about both
the living and work areas. A few hung from the ceiling. Empty food containers clung to furniture like giant, brightly colored fungal spores. The tiny carcasses of dead arthropods spotted the softfloor. Fashioned of native fibers, a hammock hung suspended in the portal that separated the main living area from kitchen and sleeping quarters. Several water bottles in various stages of consumption occupied unlikely—and in at least one instance, unsanitary—locations within the room.

Lining the sweeping windows that ran around the station’s circumference was a small jungle of native plants. Each chosen for its beauty or uniqueness, they flourished in improvised pots that were as much a product of Fawn Seaforth’s imagination as they were of her resourcefulness. Empty food containers, cut-down power-cell packs, cleaning and maintenance tubes: all had been ingeniously pressed into service. Alien perfume and color filled the room.

Pulickel found himself drawn to what looked like a longitudinally sliced water carrier potted with miniature black roses. It was beautiful to look at, but the streamers and leaves and tendrils blocked windows and dirtied the floor. A thick mass of aerial roots threatened to overwhelm an atmospheric monitoring panel. Fawn noted the direction of his gaze.

“Have to trim that back.” She bent to smell of something blue and gold. “What do you think of my collection? I cleaned the place up especially for you.”

“Just for me? You shouldn’t have.”

“Yeah, I know, but I did anyway.”

“Seaforth …” he began sternly.

“Come on: it’s Fawn. We’re going to be working together too long for last names. Especially last names as long as yours.”

“All right, Fawn.” With a sweeping gesture he encompassed the room and what he could see of rooms beyond. “How can you live and work in this squalor?”

“Squalor?” She made a face. “There’s no squalor here, Pulickel. Just comfort. Don’t you like flowers?”

“I love flowers, and houseplants, but I don’t relish the idea of sharing my living quarters with alien species. Especially new ones whose properties and characteristics haven’t been thoroughly cataloged.”

“Relax.” She moved to another plant. “I put each one through a rigorous quarantine and check before I bring it into the station. Make sure that they’re all free of parasites and hangers-on. I even check pollen and spores for possible serious contamination. Sure there’s dangerous flora on Senisran, but these here are all harmless to both human and thranx.”

Carefully avoiding the debris that made passage difficult, he worked his way across to the outer wall and its bank of indigenous foliage. “I can understand a small collection, but these are taking over. They could get into equipment, clog filters, no telling what.”

She spread her arms and performed a slow pirouette. “Honestly, Pulickel. Do I look in any way unhealthy to you?”

In point of fact, she looked healthier than any human being he’d ever seen in his life, but that wasn’t the point. There were procedures that had to be followed, strictures that needed to be observed.

It suddenly occurred to him that he was more than a little tired. “Could you just show me my room, please? We can discuss all this later.”

“Sure. I know you must be exhausted.”

“I’m not exhausted,” he replied irritably as she unhooked the hammock that was blocking the doorway.

“Sorry. This was the best place I could find to put it up. There’s a lovely view of the inlet from here. You can lie here at night, open the windows, and watch the moons come up.”

His eyes widened. “Open the windows? You mean, you consciously and willingly violate the atmospheric integrity of the station?”

“Frequently. I like the feeling of freedom.”

“I’m sure that the native species that fly in and out at such times do, too.”

“You are a worrier, aren’t you? If it’ll make you feel safer, I’ll arm the external defenses. As for the open windows, I happen to like fresh air. When it gets too hot and humid inside, I close everything up again. Nothing really dangerous ever intrudes. In the morning, I go around and add to the station’s collection of small flying arthropods.”

He twitched at the thought of something small, alien, and buggy landing on his face while he slept. “I’ll keep my quarters sealed, if you don’t mind.”

She shrugged. “Suit yourself. Makes me claustrophobic.”

Thankfully, she hadn’t even bothered to inspect either of the two unused sleeping areas. The standard room was typical in nearly every aspect, its familiarity a great comfort to the weary and troubled xenologist. It was a little musty from disuse, but everything was where and as it should be, and there were no extraneous decorations of either Senisran’s or Seaforth’s making. He reveled in its reassuring sterility.

He hastened to shut the door behind him to keep out any small uninvited locals that might be crawling about. “It looks fine. Let’s get my case.”

“After you, my honored guest.” As her left hand swept out in a gesture of invitation, she executed a mock bow.
He forced himself to smile at the harmless, mild sarcasm. The bow took his mind off her words anyway.

He spent the remainder of the day unpacking and putting up his equipment and personal gear. Several times he paused to ensure that the door was still tightly sealed against intrusion by anything larger than a human hair. He also carried out a personal inspection and cleaning of the room’s overhead air filters. The curving window offered a view only of surrounding forest, but he was pleased with it nonetheless. Claustrophobic, indeed! Rather than closed-in, the room gave him a feeling of security.

As he put away the last of his gear he wondered why he couldn’t have been sent to Miramilu. The largest and most important of the island groupings thus far contacted by Commonwealth representatives, it lay only three hundred kilometers from Ophhlia. Conscious of their status, its citizens had held off allying themselves with either humans or AAnn, sensibly evaluating the offers of assistance that both sides regularly presented to its chiefs. Already they were utilizing simple Commonwealth and Empire technologies to improve their everyday lives, advantages gained without committing themselves to either side. The Miramiluans were playing it smart instead of stubborn.

The station there consisted not of a single prefab structure unceremoniously planted into the ground but of a growing complex that in size and sophistication threatened to rival Ophhlia itself in importance. In such surroundings he knew he could make an immediate difference. The research that would result would be important and prominently featured in
The Journal of Xenological Contact
.

Instead, they’d sent him here. Because, it had been explained
to him, Parramat was more of a trouble spot, more of an insoluble problem. Less insightful xenologists could be counted on to deal with Miramilu’s more comprehensible recalcitrance. Despite one mild protest, he’d been sent where they needed him most—not where he’d wanted to go.

Well, it wouldn’t take him long to compile a report on Fawn Seaforth. That part of his work here was already well on its way to completion.

His own personal computing facilities integrated seamlessly with those of the base. He was greatly relieved to see that save for a few minor glitches, that portion of the station was operating properly. As a test, he ran through a few basic setup programs, talking softly to the vorec and making sure the more powerful station unit responded readily to his stock inquiries. By the time he was finished, it was growing dark outside. The onset of alien evening arrived on sky streamers tinged with pink and gold.

His door chimed, using the musical quote from Brian’s “Jolly Miller” that he had programmed into it.

“I’ll be out in a minute,” he told the door. He didn’t want Fawn Seaforth in his room any more than was necessary. She might bring passengers along with her. Visitors from outside. He intended to preserve the sanctity of his quarters for as long as was practicable.

Setting the room on “constant clean” and his personal facilities on standby, he stepped out to join her, closing the door behind him as quickly as possible. They passed through the general living area and into the small dining facility. The same curving windows offered a view of rapidly darkening forest. Moments later, powerful lights on the rim of the station came to life, illuminating the vegetation and startling the early risers among the
forest’s nocturnal fauna. Unrecognizable creatures with large, glowing eyes vanished swiftly into the concealing treetops.

“Very little work’s been done on Senisran’s night life.” Fawn was busying herself with the food processor. She had traded in her nonexistent swimsuit and dirty over-shirt for clean shorts and blouse. A part of Pulickel was pleased, while the rest was gravely disappointed. This mental disagreement represented an internal conflict he would have to somehow resolve, he told himself.

“There’s so much to study and catalog during daylight hours,” she continued, “that none of the resident biologists on Senisran have had much time to devote to studies of life after dark.”

He took a seat at the small oval table. “Anything dangerous around here?”

“You saw the revavuaa? The purple snakelike creature that slid from cover when we were approaching the lift shaft? That’s got a real bad bite, but it’s not exclusively nocturnal. As for the local diurnal life-forms, I’ve put together a small but necessary list of critters to watch out for. You can download the relevants into your files anytime.”

“You let it hang around the station?”

“That’s where it wanted to hang around. It may be poisonous, but it’s not aggressive. You saw it slither off when we approached. I can’t be shooting everything that comes poking through, and there’s not enough power to run a full defensive screen around the clock. Besides which, the screen is a pain in the butt. It wasn’t on when we arrived because I get tired of having to continually turn it on and off. Regulations or no regulations.” She removed several plates and bowls from the processor and set them on the table.

“Don’t expect me to wait on you like this every night. It’s just that it’s your first day and I know you’re tired.”

He studied the platters hungrily. “I’m perfectly willing to do my share of the domestics. These aren’t native foods, I hope?”

She grinned. “I wouldn’t hit you with that on your first day here. No, tonight we’re having good old imported reconstitutibles. Local cuisine can wait, though I promise you, besides the fruits and vegetables there are some wonderful things the Parramati pull out of the ocean. In particular, there are some soft-shelled burrowing pseudo-mollusks that taste heavenly when they’ve been steamed and basted in butter.”

“I look forward to it.” He started helping himself from the assembled plates. “Could I just have some water?”

“Sure.” Reentering the processing area, she returned moments later with a self-chilling pitcher and sat down opposite him.

“I’ll try whatever you think I might like,” he promised her as they ate. “The local foods certainly haven’t done you any harm.”

She smiled. “Why, Tomochelor, thank you for the compliment.”

“I didn’t mean—” He stopped, flustered, considered beginning again, and gave it up in favor of chewing his food. “I’ll try them a little bit at a time, until my system becomes used to the local tastes and consistencies.”

“That’s the way I did it.” She ate actively from her own plate, but with care.

He thought about complimenting her on her change of clothing, decided that anything he might say could be misconstrued, and determined that where she was concerned, it would be safer to avoid the topic of attire entirely. When they did speak, he forced himself always to
meet her eyes. When there was silence, he struggled to look anywhere but at the rest of her. Clearly, being stationed on Torrelau was going to involve challenges for which he had not been able to prepare himself in the usual manner.

The dinner was excellent, the familiar reconstituted foods reassuring as well as nourishing. Near the end, he broke his own resolve and tried a sample of each of the three native fruit juices she had placed on the table. All were superb. He wondered if she gathered the fruits herself or traded with the natives for them. He could see her climbing the local trees, crawling out on limbs, her incredible legs twisting and dangling …

Resolutely he returned his attention to the meal. Tree climbing was not in his job description. Mildly amazed, he watched her pack away an astonishing amount of food.

“If you have work to do, don’t worry about keeping me up,” she told him in response to a question he hadn’t planned to ask. “I sleep like a rock here and the sound-proofing between partitions is excellent. Plus, there’s a vacant room between yours and mine. Whatever you’re doing, I won’t hear you.”

“I’m pretty quiet, though I do like to play music rather loudly on occasion. Contemporary inventions.”

“Really? Have you heard the latest from Chikareska or Mattuzh?” Before he could reply she rushed on. “I can download via relay from Ophhlia, but they’re not exactly up on what’s new there either.”

“I don’t know Mattuzh that well,” he replied, “but Chikareska is a favorite of mine. Do you know the
Blue Collage
?”

“You’ve heard the
Blue Collage
?” Her excitement was palpable. “I’ve heard
about
it, but I can’t get the
philistines in charge of imports to shell out the necessary royalty.”