Relic

10

It was as the team was packing to leave Dinabu for the last time that Ruslan felt a tug on his arm. That the touch was slightly but noticeably warmer than that of a Myssari immediately identified the owner of the insistent fingers.

“Can’t go yet.” An anxious Cherpa was gazing up at him. “Won’t go yet. Won’t. I’ll suck in my breath until I turn inside out. I’ll wriggle—”

“Easy, easy.” By now the soothing tone he had adopted whenever he was in her presence came unbidden to him. “What’s wrong? Why don’t you want to leave yet?”

“Need something. Can’t forget.” Turning, she gestured in the direction of the city. “You need to come with me to get it. Three-legs need to come with me to get it.” Her expression was deadly serious. “We’ll need guns. Lots of guns.”

“There’s that kind of danger?” he inquired gently.

Her head turned slightly to one side and she eyed him as if he had suddenly morphed into one of the eel-like creatures that lived their whole lives in the slimier portions of the endless mudflats.

“No. I’m making it all up. I’m crazy, remember? Crazy and ’leven. I want lots of guns because there’s no danger. What do you think?”

Where Cherpa was concerned, he hoped for intelligence. He wished for sanity. He had not expected scorn.

“Lots of guns it is.” He started away. “I’ll tell Bac’cul and Cor’rin and they’ll inform the escort leader. When do you want to do this?”

“Right now. This minute. Yesterday.” She was plainly troubled. “I shouldn’t have come with you without it, but your appearance slapped my brain and it didn’t stop shaking until today.”

“We’ll get ready as fast as possible,” he assured her.

What could be so important? he wondered. A nicfile containing her personal records, perhaps with images of her parents? A visual life history of the kind people used to carry around with them on Seraboth, contained in a tiny device that recorded one’s every action, every utterance? The Myssari would treat any such material as invaluable since the contents could be corroborated by her, by a living human being. All he had to do was suggest that was the case and the escort she was requesting should be immediately forthcoming.

More than a dozen armed Myssari from the outpost accompanied him and the girl as they retraced their steps back to the section of the city where he had initially encountered her. It being essentially a recovery operation with an as yet undefined target, a quick in and out allowing no time for field research, Bac’cul and Cor’rin remained behind with the driftecs. In the event a flash extraction was required, they would be in constant contact with the compact expeditionary group.

Having been attacked twice now by the local bipedal aborigines, Ruslan was more than a little wary of every dark alley and overhang, every crumbling ledge. Back once more among the devastated reaches she had called home, the effervescent Cherpa had gone silent. She had survived here alone through stealth and caution. The presence of armed Myssari around her did not result in a sudden change in habit.

So she was the only one not taken by surprise when the parallel walkways being utilized by her new friends erupted beneath them.

“Nalack!” she screamed as she bolted for the safety of a nearby structure.

The name meant nothing to Ruslan. The creature’s appearance meant everything. “Nalack” might not even be a name, he told himself as he threw himself to one side while simultaneously struggling to draw his sidearm. It might be a curse. Both seemed applicable to the shape that was rising out of the muck.

It looked like the mother of all nematodes. Coated in a special mucus that allowed it to slip rapidly through the mudflats in search of food, the slick snakelike body terminated in a spray of two-meter-long tentacles that themselves were coated with thousands of tiny barbs. Unable to escape, trapped prey would be ingested as the head-mouth folded in upon itself, pushing the incipient meal backward down the long gullet. There were no visible eyes or other sensory organs.

Twice as thick as his own torso, the upper portion of the muscular dark brown body emerged farther from the mud and struck at the scattering of Myssari. Many shots were fired but none struck home. Taking aim at the flailing nalack was like trying to draw a bead on an uncontrolled hose. Metal, ceramic, and blended graphite flowered in fragments as the missed blasts struck the surrounding buildings.

A frantic Ruslan heard a sickening crunching sound as one of the escorts was snapped up by the thrashing head-mouth. Impaled on dozens of backward-facing barbs, the unfortunate Myssari’s bones snapped and crumpled as his body was forced down the predator’s throat. It was a sacrifice not in vain. In order to begin the process of swallowing, the nalack had to slow its wild gyrations. This allowed the doomed escort’s comrades to pause in their flight and take proper aim. Convulsed by repeated hits from their weapons, the nalack shuddered, thrust several times at its now well-concealed tormentors, and finally fell, a coil of extirpated muscularity that collapsed in upon itself. Its subsidence sent a shower of mud and dirty water cascading over anyone unfortunate enough to be sheltering nearby, including Ruslan. As the nalack spasmed through its final death throes in the muck, it regurgitated its most recent meal. Hardened from their tour of duty on Daribb, the companions of the dead and broken Myssari dealt with his remains far better than Ruslan, who turned away and threw up.

It was only when he had finished wiping his mouth with the back of his bare forearm that he remembered Cherpa.

Responding to the nalack’s attack faster than any of her companions, she had ducked into an open, protective doorway the instant the monster pseudo-worm had erupted from its hiding place within the harbor flats. Ruslan hurried toward the opening where she had disappeared, absently brushing at the filth that covered him as he ran, all manner of worrisome thoughts rushing through his mind. Given her still-uncertain state of mind, it was possible to imagine a raft of possible scenarios, few of them good. The appearance of the nalack might have driven her over the edge on which she had been teetering. Panic might have wiped memory of him and the Myssari from her mind. Revitalized fear could have sent her fleeing into the depths of the empty city. The inability of the Myssari to deal instantly with the threat posed by the predator, much less detect it before it attacked, could have led her to conclude that there was no safety in throwing in her lot with them.

His gaze swept the interior of the building into which she had fled. There was no sign of her, no indication she had ever been there. Behind him the sorrowful Myssari escorts were bundling up their dead comrade. There was no wailing, no heaving sobs. The Myssari did not cry. Their anguish was private. Ruslan’s throat constricted. Even had they been biologically able to produce tears, his friends would have found the act of weeping an unforgivable imposition on those around them.

They had better be prepared to deal with it, though. If they didn’t find the girl, an increasingly distraught Ruslan was going to put on an exhibition of grief that would go down as unprecedented in the annals of Myssari xenological research.

He let the escorts deal with their deceased associate for as long as he dared before informing them of the situation.

“We should call in the others.” The leader of the escorts was beyond upset, though one would never have guessed it from the intermet’s controlled demeanor. “The lifeform detection gear on the driftecs far exceeds the capabilities of our hand-carried instrumentation.”

Ruslan nodded ready agreement, not bothering to consider if the escorts would correctly interpret the meaning of the gesture. “Do it now.” He gestured over a shoulder, toward the building where Cherpa had vanished. “But we can’t wait for them to get here. We have to move now. The longer we wait, the deeper into the city she’s liable to run. I only found her the first time because she was being threatened by the natives.” He licked his lips. “She’s likely to have a network of deep, protected hiding places where we won’t be able to find her even with advanced search-and-locate equipment.”

While the escort leader relayed the request together with a report on the nalack assault, Ruslan reentered the structure where the girl had taken refuge. He blamed himself. Though his reaction to the predator’s assault had been instinctive, it was no excuse. His first thought should have been for Cherpa. The knowledge that she had reacted and bolted before he’d had a chance to respond did little to assuage the deep remorse he felt. If they didn’t find her, the Myssari would be greatly disappointed. His reaction would be far worse than disappointment. He would be alone. Again. A lone human dwelling among billions of tripodal aliens. An isolated specimen. A miserable…

“Hi, Bogo!”

He gaped. There she was, walking in his direction as though nothing untoward had happened. Not only was she unhurt, she was smiling. A big, bold, self-satisfied smile the likes of which he had feared he might never seen again.

“You must have killed the nalack or you’d be dead by now.” Peering past the stunned Ruslan, her gaze fell upon the curved, tightly wound corpse of the imposing predator. “Yep, you killed it, all right. Good for you. Better for you than being dead.” There was pride in her voice. “Since you all were busy, I went and got what I needed.”

He noticed that her left hand was holding something behind her. Though masked by shadow, it seemed too big to be a nicslip.

“You got what you needed,” he repeated uncertainly.

She nodded vigorously. “We can go now. It’s okay. The three of us can go.”

She held up the doll.

It was made of some soft material, though whether natural or synthetic he could not tell. One eye was missing. The hair was a tangle and, interestingly, as long as Cherpa’s. The formal bright green singlet it wore had been torn and crudely patched numerous times. He made a mental nod. Green would be a popular color on a dull-brown world like Daribb. Like most modern toys for children, it had once doubtless been capable of movement, speech, and a modicum of artificial intelligence. Power source long since drained, it hung limp and mute in the girl’s hand. He swallowed hard.

“What’s her name?”

“Oola. I think it was something else once but I can’t remember. I don’t know where ‘Oola’ comes from.”

“Doesn’t matter.” He put a hand on her shoulder. “If Oola’s happy with her name, we should be, too.”

Cherpa nodded and spoke in a small voice. “I couldn’t leave without her. She’d never forgive me. I’d never forgive me.”

“Of course you couldn’t leave without her. Now there are three humans to be friends with the Myssari, right?”

For a moment the girl looked confused. Then her voice strengthened. “That’s right. I’ve talked to Oola and she said that the Myssari people can study her, too. I like you, Ruslan.” Her other hand came up to take his. “You’re not just funny. You’re nice.”

No, I’m not, he thought. But he didn’t correct her.

If Ruslan’s arrival at the outpost had caused a minor sensation, Cherpa’s resulted in something close to a partial shutdown of activity. Everyone wanted a look at the first surviving human juvenile. As a prerequisite of their deployment to an archeological site like Daribb, support personnel as well as researchers were required to study and learn all they could about human history. This included details on biology. None missed the significance of a chance to observe a second live human who was not only an immature specimen but of the opposite gender from the only other known survivor.

Cherpa tolerated the stares with remarkable equanimity, Ruslan thought. Much better than he had when he had first been brought to Myssar. Perhaps her slightly skewed outlook on existence provided something of a shield, her inclination to mild madness interposing itself between reality and whatever she chose to believe. When fitted with a translator, she proved able to ignore the numerous comments she could now understand.

At a private meeting with Twi’win and Hoh’nun, the chief of the outpost’s scientific contingent, she examined and touched everything within reach. Other researchers, including Bac’cul and Cor’rin, were also present. Watching the girl as she delightedly studied and fingered everything from furniture to electronic controls, Ruslan decided that she was going to have an easier time adapting to her new Myssari surroundings than he ever had. He had already spoken to his companions about finding a suitable Kel’les-equivalent to serve as her minder. The girl’s rapid adjustment extended even to letting the Myssari handle her precious doll.

“Oola can take care of herself,” she had explained when Ruslan had tentatively conveyed the request. “As long as I’m close by, she knows she’ll be okay.”

While Cherpa explored her new surroundings, he was left to contemplate the incongruous sight of the outpost’s senior researcher and two subordinates studying the raggedy remnants of what once must have been a fairly advanced children’s toy.

“Our offspring do not play with small artificial replicas of themselves.” Hoh’nun was repeatedly turning the doll over and over in his three hands. “A Myssari child would find such a diminutive replicant unsettling.”

Bac’cul spoke up. “You say the artifact was once capable of speech and movement?”

Ruslan nodded. “I never played with anything like it myself, but I remember other children on Seraboth being accompanied by similar homunculi. Most were equipped with rudimentary artificial intelligence as well as the ability to perambulate on their own. The human word for it is ‘doll.’ As you point out, there is no Myssari equivalent.”

Cor’rin gestured her bemusement. “Why would any juvenile wish the companionship of something artificial when they could have the company of others?”

“Dolls and playmates aren’t mutually exclusive among human children. Sometimes children would play with one another’s toys, or even trade them.”

She looked horrified. “You mean they would establish a relationship with the device and then voluntarily part with it?”

He smiled. “You should know from your studies, Cor’rin, that our bonds with objects aren’t as powerful as they are among the Myssari.”

Hoh’nun held the doll out at arm’s length. Oola stared back in silence. “There is more to this than it appears. I believe further examination of such relationships may lead to greater insight into the human psyche, perhaps even to the cause of the ultimate species self-rejection embodied in the creation of the great plague.”

Ruslan frowned slightly. “It’s just a doll.”

The chief researcher lowered the artifact. It hung limply from one three-fingered hand. “Everything that motivates a mature sentient species is latent in the childhood of its individuals. Sometimes such things are only perceptible to distanced outside observers.”

Ruslan shrugged. “Observe away.” There was no point in arguing with a Myssari researcher. They were going to derive their opinions about humankind irrespective of anything he might say.

Cor’rin sensed his irritation. “The request has been transmitted for the next ship in the vicinity to detour to pick us up. We have achieved everything here that we hoped would be possible. Prior to our departure you must take time to prepare the juvenile as best you can for her new life on Myssar.”

Yes, the specimen has to be preconditioned for a healthy life in the zoo, he thought unenthusiastically. It is incumbent on the senior ape to instruct the younger. Despite Cherpa’s slight mental unbalance he did not foresee any difficulty. He had spent enough time on blighted Daribb to know she would be far happier on civilized, sanitized Myssar. In fact, he couldn’t wait to leave, either. He’d seen more than enough of Daribb and its aggressive native lifeforms and its grime-frosted landscape to last him a lifetime.

Unhappily, there were other aggressive lifeforms who were not native. They soon manifested themselves.