With the realization that these were not animals but one form of sentient life on the Well World, something else hit, as well. He tried to turn his head to see himself, but could not. He opened his strangely rigid mouth and stuck out his tongue. It was more than three meters long, as controllable as an arm, and covered with an incredibly sticky substance.
I’m one of them, he told himself, more in wonder than in fear.
He raised his head up and brought his two forward legs into view. He had been right, he saw. Three joints, all bendable in any direction. The tips were spikes; like hard rubber, and he experimented by reaching out and picking up a small rock. As his legs touched the rock, a sticky secretion gave him a grip. When he let go, the secretion turned to a solid film and fell away like used skin.
He noticed immediately that, when the dropped rock hit, he did not hear it. Rather, he felt it, as a sharp, single pulsation. The antennae, he told himself. They sense air movement, but not as sound.
Suddenly he was aware that he was getting thousands of tiny pulses through them, and, incredibly, he almost sensed the source and distance of each.
This has possibilities, thought Datham Hain.
Using his tongue he surveyed his own body, being careful not to come near the stinger at the rear which he now realized he could feel when he wanted to. No use in possibly poisoning myself this early in the game, he thought cautiously.
He was about three meters long and almost a meter high, he discovered. About medium-sized for those creatures down there.
He flexed his wings—six pairs, he found—long but looking extremely thin and frail to support his weight. He decided he wouldn’t try them out until he knew more about his anatomy. Even birds have to be taught to fly, he thought, and sentient creatures probably had less instinct—if any at all—than the lower species.
Now how do I get down off this ledge? he wondered. Finally, he decided to experiment, moving his body close to the edge. As his front legs touched the side they secreted that substance and stuck, he saw with satisfaction.
Emboldened, he pushed off and started walking down the side.
Doing so was incredibly easy, he found, confidence growing with each step. He realized he could probably walk on a ceiling, if the sticky stuff would support his weight. The main problem would be getting used to the fact that there was so much of him in back of his head. The legs worked in perfect coordination, as if he had been born with them; but the body was hard and rigid, and took some practice to maneuver without spilling end over end.
It took several minutes to descend the low cliff, although he realized that, with practice, he could probably come back and do it in seconds. Once down, he faced a problem that his reason wouldn’t solve for him. He wanted to get introduced quickly, to get settled in here, and to check out the sociopolitical system, the geography, and the like. Also, he was feeling hungry, and he hadn’t the slightest idea what these creatures ate.
But how did they communicate? Not only language, but even the means weren’t all that apparent.
Well, that Ortega had said that the brain would provide for such things, he told himself; but he was exceedingly nervous as he approached one of the creatures coming down the road.
The other saw him and stopped.
“What are you doing just standing there, Markling?” the newcomer challenged sternly. “Don’t you have any work to do?”
Hain was stunned. The language was a series of incredibly rapid pulsations transmitted in some way from the creature’s antennae to his own, yet he had understood everything! All but the last word, anyway. He decided to try to talk back.
“Please. I am newly born to this world, and I need help and guidance,” he began, then felt his own antennae quiver incredibly quickly as he talked. It worked!
“What the hell?” responded the gruff stranger, although not really in those terms. Hain’s brain automatically seemed to translate into familiar symbols. “You sick or something?”
“No, no,” Hain protested. “I have just come from Zone, where I have just awakened as one of you.”
The other thought about that for a minute. “I’ll be damned! An Entry! Haven’t had one in over ten years!” Suddenly the old skepticism returned. “You’re not just saying that to shirk, are you?”
“I assure you that I am what I say, and that up until a very short time ago I was of a totally different race and form.”
“You adjust pretty well,” the other noted. “Most of ’em have the creeping fits for days. Well, I’ll take you over to the nearest government house and it’ll be their problem. I have work to do. Follow me.” With that, it started on down the road, and Hain followed.
His guide was almost a third larger than he was, Hain saw. Most of the creatures he passed seemed to be about the same size or smaller than he. A few big ones were around, and they seemed to be the bosses.
They walked past several of the huge cones, then up the side of one that looked no different from the rest and into the hole on top. Hain noted that the opening was so even because it was rimmed with metal, like an open hatch. He almost lost his nerve on entering. The aboveground part of the cone, about ten meters worth, was hollow to the outside structure. They were not only walking down, but at an angle.
When they passed ground level, they walked onto a floor which was also some kind of metal. Tunnels lined with tile, with neon or some similar lighting stretching down in long tubes, led away like spokes on a wheel. They were wide enough to hold two of the creatures abreast, and they passed several as his guide led him down a near one.
Doorless openings into large chambers filled with all sorts of strange stuff, often with dozens of the creatures working, were passed before they reached one with a hexagon in lights over the doorway. Inside the hex was a wide gray ring, then a smaller black one, then a white dot. It reminded Hain with some amusement of the view of his guide’s posterior, with its menacing stinger.
Several small and medium-sized creatures were working, apparently at some sort of paperwork, Hain noted with curiosity. Huge printing machines, like typewriters, were all over, with television screens displaying what the creatures, using their forward legs, were typing on a strange keyboard. The keyboard was a series of apparently identical cubes, forty or fifty of them, which lit momentarily as they were touched. A crazy dot pattern emerged on the screens in no apparent logical order or pattern. When the screen was filled, a hind leg would kick a large stud and the screen would go blank—and they would be back to typing again.
So I can’t read the language, Hain noted to himself. Well, can’t have everything.
The guide waited patiently until somebody noticed him and looked up from its keyboard.
“Yes?” asked the worker and the communicated tone was one of irritated nastiness.
“Found this Markling on the road, claims to be an Entry,” said the big guide in that same annoyed tone he had used with Hain.
There was that word again. What in seven hells was a Markling, anyway?
“Just a moment,” the clerk or whatever it was said, “I’ll see if His Highness will see you.”
The office worker went into a side door and stayed several minutes. Hain’s hunger was increasing, and so was his apprehension. A hereditary empire, he thought. Well, it could be worse.