Phylogenesis (18 page)

It did not matter who was looking for him, he decided with satisfaction. Police or traffickers, rangers or poachers—he would avoid them all until he and he alone decided it was time for Cheelo Montoya to leave the Reserva. They kept the rain forest at arm’s length: He embraced it. The trees and the animals and the insects were his friends, his shield. All he had to do was find out what was going on here, in this empty, isolated place, and figure out the best way to profit from that knowledge before he left.

While taking care, of course, to make sure that his friends and his shield did not poison, infect, dismember, eviscerate, or otherwise impede him.

12

S
ustenance would not be a problem, at least not in the short term. Desvendapur had readier access to food than anyone else in the colony, far more than he would be able to carry. Besides, it was his intention to live as much as possible off the alien land. Just as the bipeds had been able to derive nourishment from many of the native foodstuffs available on Willow-Wane, so the residents of the hidden colony on the human homeworld found that their digestive systems could tolerate a significant variety of the local plant products. This greatly facilitated settlement and the perpetuation of secrecy, since suspiciously large quantities of food did not have to be brought down from orbit.

Certain vital minerals and vitamins not found in terrestrial vegetation, or available only in insufficient quantity or incorrect proportion, were supplied to the colonists in the form of supplements, and it was these that Desvendapur was careful to stockpile for his pending enterprise. As a food preparator he was as familiar as the senior botanists and biochemists with those local growths that provided the bulk of the colony’s provender. Once outside, he would know exactly what to look for in its raw form and how best to prepare it. Provided he could get outside, of course.

He spent a good deal of his leisure time surreptitiously studying and evaluating potential egresses. There was only one main exit to the surface: The shuttle dock where he had first arrived. On those occasions when it was necessary for them to pay a visit, the colony’s human friends and facilitators entered via the same portal.

There were in addition a number of artfully concealed emergency exits, to be used only in the event of disaster. Their design and construction was familiar to him. Every hive boasted similar “shoot” tunnels equipped with automatic, individually powered lifts to the surface. Utilizing one in the accustomed manner was out of the question, as its activation would set off all manner of alarms.

At least he would not have to deal with guards, armed or otherwise. The forest that grew above the colony was undisturbed and empty save for those remote monitors that had been designed jointly by humans and thranx to keep watch for unforeseen intruders. Since the establishment of the colony there had been none. This portion of the planet was not only vast and untouched, it was guarded by the humans themselves against unauthorized entry. The monitors were a calculated afterthought, a precaution whose presence was very likely unnecessary. Nevertheless, they existed, and he would have to deal with them.

But no one guarded the exits. There was no reason, no need for sentinels. Bold and audacious as the colonists were, no thranx in its right mind would think of taking a solo, unsanctioned jaunt on the actual surface, exposed to thousands of exotic alien life-forms. Additionally, it could get uncomfortably cool outside, especially at night. There was also hostile fauna with which the colonists were utterly unfamiliar, and they wanted to keep it that way.

All except Desvendapur. Hostility was fertilization for tragedy, and tragedy was the foundation for many a noble epic. As for the climate, he would cope. Of all the places on Earth, the colony had been established in the one most copacetic to his kind. If he could not persevere on the surface above the colony, it was highly unlikely he would be able to do so anywhere else on the world.

It took him some time and much careful calibrating to forge the necessary internal directives. Anyone who chanced across them would discover that he had been temporarily transferred to the colony’s other food preparation facility. Anyone who happened to check personnel records would note that he was still hard at work in the colony. With his work location temporarily blurred, no one should miss him at either location. He would be free to wander, to absorb and learn, to discover and explore. When he was finished he would return to his old station, there being a good likelihood of his never having been missed. He would resume work while devoting the majority of his time to the tailoring of his rough notes.

When they were revised to his satisfaction he would submit them to the appropriate sources on Willow-Wane for criticism and publication. That they would cement his celebrity he had no doubt. Then he would gladly submit to the public revelation and exposure of his true self, in the process reclaiming his identity. If this connected him with the death of the transport driver Melnibicon, he would deal with the consequent ramifications as required. What happened after that did not matter. His fame would be assured. The honor and renown he would bring to his much-reduced family, to his clan and his birth hive, would blaze forth no matter what his eventual disposition at the hands of the authorities. There was even a good chance he would escape punishment. Great art traditionally excused a multitude of sins, as well it should. He did not dwell long on the morality of this conviction.

But his compositions would have to be exceptional indeed.

It was with growing confidence that he made ready. The thrill of preparing to do something as illicit as it was extraordinary inspired him to fire off half a dozen scrolls filled with screaming hot stanzas. Reviewing them, he decided that they represented his best work to date. And they only anticipated the sights he expected to see, the experiences he proposed to have. He could foresee that any creative difficulties that might develop were not going to arise from insufficient inspiration, but from a need to channel and guide a surfeit of illumination.

And then, falling upon him as heavily and abruptly as a collapsing tunnel, the chosen day was at hand. He bade temporary farewell to Jhywinhuran and his friends and coworkers within the food preparation section, assuring them that he would return from his temporary reassignment to their quadrant of the colony within a single moon cycle. Returning to his quarters, he made certain that everything was in order and that, should anyone come calling and enter uninvited, they would find a chamber in a state reflecting the continued residence of its occupant. He had arranged everything just so, even to programming his favorite relaxation music and visuals to power up at appropriate times of the day.

There was only so much he could do. If someone should post a watch on his living quarters they would quickly discover that the cubicle was not in use. But why would anyone do that? As jointly devised by humans and thranx, colony security was designed to keep a lookout for wandering strangers on the surface. It was intended to keep outsiders sealed out, not residents locked in.

The supplies he had so patiently and laboriously accumulated were packed within a waterproof commodities sack appropriated from food preparation. Anyone observing him in transit would think he was making a delivery. The fact that he would be traveling outside the usual food freighting routes was unlikely to give rise to a great deal of comment. It was not as if he were transporting a bomb.

Strapping the sack onto his back, he used a reflective surface to make sure that it was properly balanced against the long, narrow sweep of his abdomen. The fact that he had not been mated and still retained his vestigial wing cases helped, since the additional layer of hard chitin served to shoulder some of the weight. Slipping a carry pouch over his thorax found him heavily burdened, but not intolerably so. Taking a last look around the comfortable chamber that had been his home ever since he had touched down on the world of the bipeds, he walked out, closing and securing the entrance behind him with his personal code.

He had deliberately chosen the hour of early morning when hive shifts were in flux. With half the colony’s workers retiring and the other half rising to their assignments, there was a lot of traffic in the corridors. Everyone walked who could. The fewer vehicles the colony utilized, the less the chance that an accumulation of stray vibrations might be picked up by unknowing travelers on the surface above. Given the isolation of the colony’s site within the immense protected rain forest, that was extremely unlikely, but every precaution that could be taken to ensure secrecy had been fully implemented.

No one confronted him or greeted him as he made his way westward through the hive. General anonymity was one of the benefits of working in food preparation, and he had deliberately done nothing since his arrival to cultivate conviviality or friendship among his fellow thranx outside his department. Jhywinhuran was the one exception. He tried not to think of how she might react to the revelation of his true identity. Seeing her perfect vee-shaped face, her golden eyes that seemed to glow within, the elegantly sensuous sweep of her ovipositors and the gleam of soft light off her brilliant blue-green exoskeleton made him uncomfortable. He forced the images from his mind. A poet on the hunt was not permitted to indulge in the balm of soothing reminiscence.

As he traveled farther from the centers of operation and into zones designed for general maintenance he encountered fewer and fewer residents. Machines held sway here, muffled and muted to emit as little in the way of vibration and telltale impulses as possible. Every technological blanket available had been thrown over the colony to screen it from prying eyes.

But in addition to basic foodstuffs imported from orbit and water from the colony’s own wells, there was one other component vital to the continued health of the facility: air.

Filtered and purified, the alien atmosphere was drawn into the hive by means of a series of all-but-silent vacuum pumps. Narrow of diameter, camouflaged to look like tree stumps, they dotted the floor of the rain forest above, inconspicuous and immobile. When he entered via a servicing and maintenance hatch the one he had singled out, Desvendapur struggled against the pull from below. If he lost his grip, if he fell helplessly, arms and legs flailing, he would find himself trapped at the bottom of the shaft. If he was lucky, someone would detect the reduction in the flow of air and come to see what was causing the obstruction. If not, he would lie there until his food ran out and until—despite the presence of biological inhibitors—he began to rot.

Bracing all four legs, both foothands, and both truhands against the sides of the vertical cylindrical shaft, he stepped through the opening, using his truhands to carefully close the service hatch behind him. Even with eight limbs to brace himself against the dark composite walls, it was a struggle to ascend against the powerful downdraft. The untreated atmosphere being sucked down into the hive was ripe with a pervasion of exotic odors that threatened to overwhelm him. He persisted in his ascent. As expected, the air was cooler than he would have preferred, but adequately impregnated with moisture. He might get cold, but he would not dry out.

Once, he slipped, a rear leg losing its grip, threatening to send him hurling down the shaft. His other legs stiffened to take up the slack, and he quickly reasserted his stance, resuming the full brace. The supply sack strapped to the back of his abdomen now felt as if it were filled not with food and medication and survival gear but with bars of unrefined metal. The place where his thorax met his upper abdomen rubbed painfully together with each upward step, threatening to crack and expose his semiopen circulatory system. If that happened and the break was serious, he could easily bleed to death before he reached the surface.

Though always in view, the upper terminus of the shaft seemed impossibly far away. He elected not to look at it lest the distance he still had to climb discourage him. From the trembling in his legs he knew that he had already passed the point of no return. The top of the shaft was closer than the service hatch through which he had entered. Since it required almost the same energy to rise as to retreat, he clasped his mandibles tightly together and continued his ascent. His thorax pulsed with his hard breathing.

The higher he rose, the stronger became the alien stench from outside. Just when he thought his legs could no longer support him, his head slammed into something unyielding. The pain that raced down his unprotected antennae was intense. Only the shock kept him from losing his grip on the walls of the shaft entirely and plunging to the bottom. If that happened at this height he would not have to worry about rescue. Drawn inward by the suction from below, alien air entering through screened, eye-sized gaps blasted his face and exposed eyes. Ignoring the dust and grit, he reached up with both truhands to feel along the inner edge of the rim. There should be a single latch. In the near darkness he could see very little, and he was constantly having to look down to protect his eyes from the barrage of minuscule debris that threatened to rip the shielding nictitating membranes.

If he failed to locate the latch, or if it refused to open, he would have no choice but to try and work his way all the way back down the shaft to the service hatch. Given how his legs were shaking, he doubted very seriously if he would be able to make it.

He had studied the design of the air shafts closely, but perusing a schematic in the comfort of his quarters was very different from hunting for a tiny component part, trembling and exhausted, while braced only by his legs at the top of a lethally high duct full of incoming air that seemed determined to break his grip and send him hurtling downward. The delicate digits of his left truhand skimmed the place where the upper rim met the top of the shaft. They encountered an immovable obstruction. Raising his head, Desvendapur fought to see clearly in the poor light and softly moaning air. It was the latch. It
had
to be. Using all four digits, he pressed and twisted according to the schematic he had memorized.

The latch did not respond.

Regulating his breathing as best he could, he tried again. The latch might as well have been welded shut. Refusing to concede, unable to do anything else, he readied himself for a third attempt. But he needed more leverage—or more strength.

Sending his last surge of energy and determination into his lower body, he released his grip on the shaft walls with his upper limbs. Braced now only by his four trulegs, he grasped the latch with all sixteen digits of his foothands and truhands while pressing and twisting. Something unyielding complained. The latch gave.