I followed behind him, wondering what he meant. Twice now, he’d called me "stinky"; was that just a sulky-kid insult, or did I really smell bad? Mandasars had tremendously more sensitive noses than humans, but they were also pretty broad-minded when it came to odors. A few things they hated, like the scent of their own race’s blood, but mostly they snuffled around, happy as dogs: interested in all sorts of smells, even ones humans thought were rude. Queen Verity once told me she thought Homo sapiens smelled "delicious"… which was kind of terrifying, coming from an alien the size of an elephant, but it definitely wasn’t "stinky."
The only stink I could think of was the corpses back on Willow. I’d walked through the lounge often enough; maybe the smell of folks rotting had soaked into my clothes.
As usual, I was wrong.
Zeeleepull’s hive-mates didn’t look happy to meet me, but at least they showed good manners. "Hello, good day, good afternoon, you’re wet."
Standoffish politeness was okay. I’d been afraid the Mandasars on Celestia might really be hostile toward humans; otherwise, why had Zeeleepull attacked me on sight? But as far as I could tell, these people just thought I was a nuisance — an unwanted stranger who’d dropped by at lunch.
Besides Zeeleepull, the hive had four other members: three white workers, Hib Nib Pib (all neuter, of course); and a brown gentle (female) named Counselor. At least that’s how she introduced herself… she must have had a hidden name, but she’d never reveal it to someone she’d just met. The only surprise was how she used an English word for her public title instead of something in her own language. Then again, maybe English was her own language — she spoke it a lot better than Zeeleepull, and immediately took over the conversation.
"You claim you’re with the navy?" she asked, looking hard at my uniform. It made me realize how bad I must look, all muddy and wet.
"I had to swim," I said, pointing back to the canal.
"No," she replied, her whiskers twitching. "You didn’t have to swim. You could have stayed in your capsule till someone came for you."
"Ahh," the three workers said in unison, as if they were tickled pink by Counselor’s logic. Workers tend to adore gentles the way grandparents adore grandchildren: fond and admiring, but along the lines of, "Oh how clever the little one is." In a hive like this, Hib Nib Pib would do just about anything Counselor asked, but always as if they were indulging the cute little whims of a five-year-old. "You want us to spend twelve hours in the blazing sun, digging up carrots? Well, dear, if that’s what you really think we should do, I guess we could manage." If I were a gentle, it would make me tired and sad and angry — all those people treating me like I was childish and just a bit crazy. But I guess that’s the way gentles expect things to be.
"I could have stayed in the escape pod," I told Counselor, "but I’ve been out in space for a long time and I felt like breathing fresh air."
"More air you need even now," Zeeleepull muttered. "Dirty stink on your fingers."
He made a great show of wiping his nose where I’d put my palm over his snout. All four of his hive-mates immediately poked their muzzles in to sniff me. Mandasars are like that: "You say it smells bad? Really, really bad? Really, really, really bad? Ooo, let me check." Hib and Pib aimed for my armpits while Nib took my crotch — I guess they knew the places where humans usually smelled strongest. Counselor, however, had paid attention to what Zeeleepull actually said; she pushed her nose toward my hands. One deep snort, then she jerked her head up and stepped back fast.
"What is that?" she demanded.
"Umm." I couldn’t help notice it was my right hand she’d been smelling. The same hand I put around Zeeleepull’s nose.
The same hand that’d got queen’s venom spilled on it. But the venom was only a tiny dose days ago. I’d taken plenty of showers since then… not to mention bathing in fever sweat while I was sick. Could Counselor really smell venom after all that? Or was it just dirty water and mud, maybe something I’d put my hand into without noticing as I pulled myself onto the canal bank?
One way to find out: I’d just had a lot fresher dose of venom squish onto my cheeks in the escape pod. "Um," I said, "do you, uhh, smell the same thing on my face?"
All five Mandasars leaned their muzzles toward me. Their whiskers quivered as they drew nearer, looking nervous and eager, both at once…
The workers jumped back like I’d whacked them in the snouts. Zeeleepull held his ground but whipped his head away, nearly gouging me with his nose spike by accident. As for Counselor, she just dropped in a dead faint, planting her face into the deep dark soil.
11
MEETING THE HIVE
Fast as I could, I knelt and lifted Counselor out of the dirt. Gentles are the smallest caste of Mandasars; they look frail and fragile in comparison to warriors or workers, but they still weigh as much as a hefty human adult. And they’re all floppy-awkward to pick up.
"Let’s get her inside," I said to her hive-mates. They didn’t answer. They were still all gaping in shock — fresh venom must pack quite a wallop to the Mandasar nose. Struggling on my own, I lugged Counselor through the door of the nearest environment dome, then set her on one of the lounging pallets around the dining-room table.
The communal water bowl was still half-full from lunch. I started to splash Counselor’s face and neck, mostly because I didn’t know a truly useful way to help her recover. When a gentle faints, it isn’t from shock or anything like that — it’s actually more of a trance, when she’s come up against something that needs a whole lot of thought. Her conscious mind shuts down so her unconscious can go into overdrive… kind of like a computer letting its external interface go blank so it can use all its processing power internally. Counselor would wake up when her brain had come to grips with the venom she smelled; but I still kept splashing, because I had to do something.
While I splashed, I had time to peek around the dome’s interior. More than anything, it looked like one of the "heritage chambers" at Queen Verity’s palace: a room where you stored stuff that was too historical to throw out, but too many centuries out of fashion to actually use. The dining table was a perfect example. Laminated on its surface was a glossy reproduction of a two-hundred-year-old Troyenese painting: the one of old Queen Wisdom rising from the sea after sporting with the first envoy from the League of Peoples. It’s as famous to Mandasars as the Mona Lisa is to humans… and that means it’s a great whopping cliche you’d never want to show in your home.
At least, that’s how people felt on Troyen. Things might be different on Celestia. I could imagine a hive buying the Queen Wisdom table as a joke, the way kids in their twenties get a kick out of kitschy old treasures; but maybe these kids didn’t know the Queen Wisdom painting was corny and old-fashioned. As one of the few works of Mandasar art known to the outside world, maybe they thought it was special and important — a connection to their lost home planet.
The same could go for the mish-mosh of other knick-knacks around the dome: a cheap little rain-stick from Queen Honor’s continent, Rupplish; a pair of sharp iron tips that bolted onto a warrior’s pincers… something no one on Troyen had used since preindustrial days; a little needlepoint sampler with words written in one of the ancient pictograph languages. I didn’t know which language, which continent, or how long ago these particular picto-graphs had been edged out by the unromantic efficiency of an alphabet.