“We heard noises.” Cor’rin was staring at him out of her small violet eyes. “Then the sound of a weapon being discharged and we came as fast as we could.” She looked past him, in the direction taken by the fleeing natives and the pursuing Myssari. “Your survival is a tribute to the skill of our escorts. I would not have dared to take a shot while you were held so close in the native’s embrace.”
“Weapons schooling comprises only the most peripheral portion of our field training.” Though Bac’cul had an irritating fetish for elucidating the obvious, an exhausted Ruslan could not find it in his heart to venture even the slightest dollop of his usual sarcasm.
He was exhausted, and crushed. Twi’win’s pessimism had trumped his original zeal. Observed in passing from a distance and from the air, the ferocious native creatures he had encountered could easily pass muster as possible humans. While it was not conclusive that the ones who had attacked him were representative of the same species that had been spotted and recorded by the Daribb outpost’s airborne automatics, neither was it an unreasonable assumption. Discouraged and depressed, he felt that he could hear Twi’win’s acerbic comments already.
He did not have long to wait to hear the actual ones.
“You must allow us to continue searching.” There was as much intensity in Bac’cul’s voice as Ruslan had ever heard from the usually even-toned Myssari.
Strange the situation was. Though he was sitting with his back to the discussion, Ruslan did not miss a word. As he stared out the back of the outpost’s three-sided observation tower, his gaze swept over the interminable sea of shallow mudflats. In the distance a wan sun was setting, its sickly hue unable to render the sunset anything other than ailing. From within the mud a few desultory bubbles rose and burst, signifying the presence of something unwholesome beneath the surface whose sole current activity consisted of breaking alien wind. Nothing that was not artificial rose above the murk; not a tree, not a bush, not a blade of grass. Daribb was a world ruled by suck and slime—sad, smelly, and sinking in upon itself.
Yet his kind had seen fit to settle here, to lift buildings and travelways above the murk, to raise children and expand civilization and find, as always, something to exploit. Now they were gone and all was ruin, falling in upon itself and left to the haunts of local bipeds who resembled their past masters only in the most rudimentary shape and size.
He was very tired. He had helped the Myssari on Seraboth. He had helped them on Myssar itself and most recently on Treth. Surely there was no more they could learn from him. He had explained and demonstrated and utilized and performed. He was done remembering. They could preserve his exhausted body however they wished, alongside the many others they had recovered from the unpremeditated catacombs of a dozen worlds. Dimensional recordings of him talking and moving would live after him to amaze each new generation of Myssari youth. He would not be present to hear their muted equivalent of laughter and endure their stares and gestures.
There was no question that they valued what he had done in helping to explain and preserve something of human culture. Having lived an ordinary life until the coming of the Aura Malignance, he was proud of the fact that he had contributed something special, if only to the knowledge base of another species. Who else could make such a claim? Certainly not any human inhabitant of Daribb: there were no human inhabitants of Daribb. He had already acknowledged as much to the outpost’s director.
Bac’cul and Cor’rin, however, were not so willing to give up. Having traveled a long way from Treth at considerable cost to their department, they were not ready to concede to reality, pack their belongings, turn around, and go home. Besides, Cor’rin was arguing as she confronted Director Twi’win, it would be several sixparts before a ship could be designated to pick them up and take them back to Myssar. Why not utilize the time remaining to continue the search? Smiling tautly to himself as he continued to stare out the window, Ruslan knew the answer. Twi’win’s reply to Cor’rin confirmed it.
“You must think we have no other use for our limited resources here than to escort you around Dinabu. There are other human settlements and cities that cry out for exploration.” She gestured with all three hands, executing a complex pattern in the air in front of her. “Should we return to Dinabu, I am sure there is an excellent chance that we would once again encounter the same welcoming ‘humans’ there that your party did yesterday.”
“Just because our initial search was interrupted by hostile indigenes does not mean there are no surviving humans in the city.” Cor’rin was emphatic. “Absence of proof is not proof of absence.”
“You will need to come up with more than clever words to persuade me to allocate additional resources to what I have regarded from the beginning as a wasteful undertaking.”
Though he paid close attention, Ruslan did not participate in the ongoing debate. It would have been useless to do so. His words would have carried no weight and he saw no point in opening himself to embarrassment. He was an artifact. A highly valued one to be sure, but one that retained precious little control over his own destiny. Where the Myssari were concerned, expediency always took precedence over compassion. Just because he wanted to continue the search, which despite his near-fatal encounter with local lifeforms he very much wished to do, did not mean that his desires would make one whit of difference to the outpost director. Or, for that matter, to Bac’cul and Cor’rin.
Kel’les, now—Kel’les had become friend enough to side with Ruslan against the others. At least Ruslan thought so. He was unsure what the actual result would be if he ever put that friendship to a serious test. He was uncertain he wanted to.
He urged on Bac’cul and Cor’rin’s efforts silently, knowing that to inject himself and his opinions aloud would only be likely to stiffen Twi’win’s opposition. If the outpost director would not yield to the urging of two esteemed scientists of her own kind, she surely would be immune to the entreaties of a single alien.
Having no standing in what was essentially a disagreement involving science and economics, Kel’les sidled over to stand beside the human. “Bac’cul and Cor’rin are making as good a case as they can. I feel that their reasoning is sound.”
Turning away from a panorama that featured endless muck and sallow sunlight, Ruslan murmured softly to his trisymmetrical friend. “I’ve lived among your kind long enough to know that one thing both our species had in common was the inevitable triumph of cost over reason.” He nodded to where the three Myssari continued in passionate but characteristically soft-voiced debate. “Though in this case Twi’win is such a disbeliever in the possibility of finding any human survivors that I think she would refuse our requests even if she had access to ten times the needed supplies and personnel.”
As he finished, something fist-sized, dull red, and multi-legged slammed into the observation tower’s transparent wall. The resulting organic splatter was unpleasant to look upon and he turned away even as the structure’s automated maintenance gear swung into action to remove the stain left behind by the unfortunate leaper.
Kel’les’s small, lipless mouth flexed. “The director is required to accommodate us. The orders came directly from Myssar.”
Ruslan nodded, a gesture his companion knew well. “She’s required to do so only insofar as is practical with respect to local conditions.” He gestured in the direction of the dispute, which, by Myssari standards, was growing positively heated. “Orders or not, it all comes down to a decision by Twi’win.”
As he and Kel’les looked on, the debate came to a sudden end. Feeling that the abruptness of it did not bode well for their continued efforts, Ruslan was apprehensive when his companions ambled over to rejoin him. Twi’win did not join them, disappearing into the lift shaft that would carry her away from the topmost portion of the observation tower. He was not upset that she departed without speaking to him. There was no reason for her to deal directly with what was nothing more than a valuable specimen.