The creepler was an Todd vehicle with six articulated legs on each side, each leg moving independently, lifting and setting a broad foot down with slow care, guided by a thick array of visual sensors so it wouldn’t step on any of the juvenile forms. It followed a preprogrammed path with all the alacrity of an arthritic land tortoise.
The Kliu guard propped himself into the arrangement that Kliu used as chairs, a complicated mix of bellybands and stout rods. Shadith rode in the reed chair that had belonged to the former xenobi, an unpadded contraption that ground against her exo straps.
The area near the lakeshore was fairly deserted, but after the creepier picked its way through a stand of low, broad trees, climbed up a hill covered with grass tall enough to brush its frame, grass that looked capable of stabbing through solid wood, she saw a grove of taller trees, widely scattered, with clumps of vines growing about dryland reeds. Under those trees a score of odd creatures moved in a loose herd. ’
“Red Riding Hood,” she said aloud, remembering a child’s tale from a world she visited in her first incarnation.
The bodies of adult Gestalts looked approximately like mottled green and black grasshoppers the size of a large dog, long insectile legs bending through a sharp angle, six knees raised above the carapace. A flexible nose tube brushed along the ground, sucking up bits and pieces of plant stuff. There were two eyepits on the subsidiary head at the base of the nose tube, but these had either grown over or like a viper’s pits collected heat rather than light. Above the first set of shoulders the chitinous material that covered the body turned a bright cherry red and rose into a sort of hood with the main head of the Gestalt tucked into the hollow of the open front. This head was round and soft, with huge dark green eyes, a doughy greenish tint to the skin; it had a button nose and a handsome, mobile mouth. There was a fringe of tentacles around the body head, their skin sharing its consistency and color.
These tentacles were in constant movement like a nest of snakes; she watched their movements for a short while, decided that they might be sense organs as well as graspers.
Under the feet of the adults in this array dozens of tiny body replicas were skittering around, whistling and making small chuckling sounds, chasing each other, playing with a cheerful intensity that brought a smile to Shadith’s face. Tiny blobs pulled themselves along by nests of tentacles growing beneath their rudimentary chins; these were the infant heads. There were fugitive movements in the litter of grass and old leaves, but she never got a good look at any of these bits of the array.
The adults were hosing up seeds and insects from the ground, nuzzling at the trees, and poking among the leaves of the vines. She watched one of them fooling about a bush for several minutes, the neck tentacles busy about something. It was only when the Taalav moved on that she saw it had been tying stray canes to smaller reeds it had thrust into the ground.
All this while the adults were silent, going about their activities as if they were alone, though they sneaked glances at the creepier as they moved about.
The largest Taalav moved closer, scuttling sideways on those long, bent, tippy-toe legs. It stopped a body length away and stared at her, ignoring the Kliu almost as if it considered the guard a part of the machine.
It started making noises. Excited noises. Exchanging noises with the other Taalavs as they gathered around. Noises that blending into song, complex and lovely music.
Sudden pain jagged behind her eyes; intensified by the itch from the distorters in the exo.
Shadith clutched at the chair as she sought to make sense of what was happening. The translator didn’t work on animal sounds, only on organized speech. And that meant the Taalav were not animals, they were sentient beings.
The more they chattered, the worse her head felt. This langue had to be a mass of peculiarities because she’d never felt the translator labor so hard. I’ve got to get out of here. Now
She slapped at the controller, got the creepier moving once more on its programmed path, this time turning round to head back to the lake.
As soon as the machine began moving, the Taalavs.backed cautiously away, then stood watching as the creepier picked its careful way up the slope and into the trees.
5
She lay in semidarkness, a damp compress spread across her eyes and dripping into her pillow. Despite the exo’s support, the days she’d spent on this world kept layering exhaustion on exhaustion so even in the best of circumstances, thinking would have been difficult. Now she had a moral dilemma to complicate matters.
If the nu didn’t know the Taalav Gestalts wereintelligent beings rather than beasts, they had to suspect it. So if she piped up like a good little phenom with her discovery, the least she could expect was a sudden accident that would leave her a grease spot on some mountain between here and Base. No wonder they wanted to erase all instances of the Taalav outside their control. Discovery of the Gestalt’s intelligence would complicate their lives enormously. And it wouldn’t help the Taalav all that much either. Instinct said this is slavery and it has to stop. Instinct was an ass.
Even if she managed to get them taken from the Kliu, how long would they last without an equally powerful protector? Protector? Call it what it was. Exploiter. Once they’re discovered, they’re going to be exploited. The only big weapon that small people have is Helvetia’s adamant stance against slavery. Getting that evoked would take a whole lot of proof not just her word.
There were a few comforting things she’d noticed. They seemed healthy enough, and the abundance of the tiny body forms meant that reproduction was continuing. She’d felt no rage or fear or frustration from that lot. And loathsome exploiters as the Kliu were, they were also protection as long as the Taalav kept producing their crystals.
Well, Digby, I think I’ve just quit. 1 can’t do this, but I can’t not do it either. Can’t take your pay and work against you. Can’t let the Taalav array be murdered. Because that’s what it would be. How do I I.
hmmm… I’m going to keep working to find that smuggler and hope I get to him before the Kliu. 1 wouldn’t put it past them to use a planet cracker on the place just to make sure they eradicated the array. Can’t leave them with that thief either. He’s no better than the Kliu… get them away… take them somewhere… they’ll need looking after for a while… Sar! What do I do with them? I have to think… hunk! Maybe I’d just better ask them what they want. If my head ever settles down…
The decision made, tension drained from her; her breathing slowed and she slept.
She sat in the chair on the creepier, listening to the Taalav chatter their symphonies and growing fonder of the odd, ugly creatures as the hours slipped past. They were as playful as otters, and they punned relentlessly in a langue that was a gift to wit-snappers and persifleurs. She nearly fell out of the chair in her efforts to stifle laughter when they threw quips back and forth describing the Kliu guard, especially when they were speculating about his sexual involvement with the creepier.
She sobered rapidly as the implications of that came clear. This new xenobi might be studying the Taalav, but the Gestalts were studying them back with an equal intensity and making some amazingly accurate deductions despite their isolation here.
They were more serious about her.
It took a while, gathering hints from the flow of their speech, to understand why. Their eyes were very good; they saw finer detail in the reddish twilight that was Pillory’s high noon than a hawk hunting in the brilliant light of a yellower sun. And they were clever at patterns, not just with words. They noted the basic similarities between her and someone else. They wondered if Shadith and this other woman were a separate species from the men in the lake place. They didn’t say men and women, of course, but talked about the diamond-shaped ones with the double-lumped high front and the wedge-shaped ones with the single smaller lump at the crotch.