The structural complex that had been singled out by the outpost’s scouts was a warren of interconnected rooms and chambers. A hospital, he thought as he glided ever deeper into its unidentified recesses and examined his surroundings. Or perhaps some kind of food-processing facility. There were no signs to guide him, print having given way millennia ago to electronic identifiers that could easily be attached to or embedded in walls. Take away their respective power sources, though, and you took away the words. Thousands of years after the invention of printing, there was still something to be said in favor of ink and crushed graphite.
A touch of anticipation sparked through him as he found a cabinet, its transparent doors broken out, that was filled with actual printed books. Some higher-up’s private collection, no doubt, or treasured symbols of the facility through which he strode. He was perusing one, delightedly flipping through the manually operated pages, when he heard the noise.
“Hello?” He placed the book he had been studying back into its home in the cabinet. “Who’s there? Can you speak?”
Had he imagined it? No—the sound was repeated. Something was moving, rustling, deeper within the complex, teasing his hearing, teasing his imagination. A Myssari would have answered him; therefore it was not Myssari. Paralleling his rising excitement, a hundred possibilities flashed through his mind.
If the source of the noise was the subject of the scouts’ disputed report, it might have forgotten how to talk. Or it might have suffered an injury that prevented it from speaking. Forced to subsist alone on a ruined world, a plague survivor might be naturally suspicious of any new sound, even one that was made up of familiar words.
That was it, he told himself. Having for many years now spoken nothing but Myssari, he had called out in that alien language. He immediately repeated his query, this time first in the formal interstellar tongue utilized by all human-settled worlds and then in the colloquial dialect of Seraboth. His lips and tongue remembered the words without effort.
The rustling noises ceased. Whatever was making them had heard him and was responding. With caution, but responding. Had their positions been reversed, he was sure he would have been no less prudent. As he continued to advance he could not keep images so long repressed from expanding in his mind. Would it be a man, perhaps his own age? Or one younger; strong and able to assist him as he grew older? Would it be a woman?
“It’s all right.” He kept repeating the mantra in both formal and colloquial. “I’m human. A survivor of the Malignance like yourself.” Shuffling aside debris with his glider-clad feet, he entered a large, high-ceilinged chamber. The intricate, faceted skylight had long since fallen in. “My name is Ruslan. Ruslan…”
He couldn’t remember his other name. It didn’t matter. “I’m from Seraboth. I’m here with the nonhumans who operate a nearby scientific outpost. They’re friends. They’ve been good to me. They’ve… helped me.” He extended a hand in case the other was watching closely. “They’ll help you, too, if you let them. I’ll help you. They just want to—”
A dark shape exploded from the mound of debris off to his right. It was bipedal and human-sized. The proportions were right. Even the hair was right: light brown and long. But it was not human. A second’s glance, which was about all the time he had, was enough to show that. He felt sudden terror and crushing disappointment all at once. Out of the corner of an eye, he saw two more of the creatures emerging from behind the trash mountain, watching to see how the ambush went before they risked their own hides by joining in the attack.
Reeling, stumbling backward, Ruslan managed to throw himself to one side an instant before powerful four-fingered hands could wrap themselves around his neck. His reflexes were not what they had been as a young man, but they were good enough. As the creature landed and turned, Ruslan fumbled for the sidearm he had been issued. He had argued with Twi’win about the need for him to carry a weapon. If he made it back, he would make it a point to apologize to her in person.
The creature’s wiry hair extended all the way to the backs of its legs. Like the Myssari, it was multi-jointed, though not so extensively as the Vrizan. Two bulging, round eyes were arranged in a pair facing forward, while two smaller orbs protruded from either side of the ovoid of a skull, giving the animal superb peripheral vision on a world noted for its murky atmosphere. With the exclusion of the exceptional mane, its brown, ochre-splotched body was utterly hairless. For all Ruslan could gather from his one hurried glance at its nakedness, it might just as well reproduce by budding or spores as sexually.
All of this impressed itself on his mind as he drew his weapon and took aim at the crouching alien. Before he could depress the trigger, something hard and muscular struck his right side. His impact-shocked fingers released the sidearm, which went tumbling to the damp, grimy floor. As he struggled with what felt like a massive bundle of live wires, the second creature turned to face him. Up close he could see that it had a protruding ridge of bone where a nose would be but no visible nostrils. No such ambiguity clouded the identity of the gaping mouth, whose parted jaws revealed sturdy incisors and molars arranged in double rows. A maw that could both rip and chew, it was presently inclining toward his face.
A part of him realized dimly that from a distance, and not a great one at that, such a being could easily be mistaken for human by even a well-programmed Myssari automatic. The matter of multiple joints aside, the native possessed the requisite number of limbs in approximately the same places, four manipulative digits instead of five, a head in the right location, and similar proportions. The flowing hair could easily conceal the left-skull and right-skull flanking eyes, while from anywhere but up close the central facial bony ridge looked very much like a human nose. Yes, the confusion was understandable. That his demise was imminent in no way affected the disappointment of his realization.
A bright light flashed in his eyes, blinding him. It was due not to the release of his body’s protective endorphins but to a perfectly placed discharge of energy from a weapon wielded by one of his Myssari escorts. As he blinked in furious pain, Ruslan’s vision cleared enough for him to see that where tooth and maw had loomed ever closer to his face, smoke now rose from a small crater where the alien’s head had been. The decapitated body slowly fell to its left. Maintaining their grip even in death, the powerful four-fingered hands that held him now dragged him to the ground.
More shots were fired, driving the remaining pair of frustrated, screeching creatures from the chamber. As the outpost escorts pursued them, familiar figures rushed to Ruslan’s aid. Kel’les arrived first, followed by Cor’rin and Bac’cul. Their largely inflexible faces prohibited expressions of concern, but he could see the apprehension in their eyes and hear clearly the strain in their voices.
“I’m fine,” Ruslan assured them. Balancing on two legs, Bac’cul used his third to brace himself against the headless native corpse. Utilizing all three arms, he soon had the human free from the dead creature’s death grasp. “It was a near thing, though,” he added as he rose to his feet.