With Bac’cul’s and Cor’rin’s postures conveying a mix of excitement and resignation, he hardly knew what to think. They were quick to enlighten him.
“We have struck a compromise.”
He nodded tersely. “As is always the Myssari way. Is the compromise in our favor or against it?”
The two researchers exchanged a look before Cor’rin turned back to the human. “Twi’win has agreed to authorize one more full-scale visit to Dinabu and to nowhere but that city. That is where the single disputed sighting by the outpost’s automatics took place, and she is convinced there is no reason to look elsewhere. After that, if we wish to continue searching, we will have to request additional resources from Myssar.”
“I understand. In that event, do you think your department will provide them?”
“Difficult to say.” The pupils of Bac’cul’s orange-red eyes narrowed. “Two expensive failures would be unlikely to inspire calls to underwrite any subsequent excursions.”
Ruslan’s mouth tightened. “Then we’d better make the best of this forthcoming outing.”
Cor’rin gestured her agreement. “We have to make our own preparations. The day following tomorrow the weather is supposed to be amenable. We should go then, as soon as possible and before the director has additional time to reflect on options and change her mind.”
She departed with Bac’cul, the two of them moving with commendable speed, their three-legged gait looking as unsteady to Ruslan’s eyes as his bipedal stride undoubtedly did to them. He turned back to his minder.
“Tell me your opinion, Kel’les. Honestly—do you think the outpost’s automatics saw a human?”
His friend demurred. “I am hardly in a position to comment, Ruslan. I am neither scientist nor engineer.”
“But you saw the images. The same ones as everyone else. If I wanted a researcher’s opinion, I’d ask Bac’cul or Cor’rin. I want yours.” He eyed his companion intently.
Trapped by the human’s words and stare, a clearly uncomfortable Kel’les could do nothing but answer. Honestly, as his friend had requested.
“I must confess I found them to be, at best, inconclusive.”
Ruslan was silent for a moment, then nodded solemnly. “Thank you, Kel’les. But we’re going to conduct the second search anyway.”
“Of course we are. One must be certain, and the chance may not present itself again.”
“I know that it won’t,” he replied.
Because by the time any kind of similar opportunity materialized, he told himself, he would in all likelihood be little but a valued memory in the annals of Myssari science.
9
Though the Myssari were by nature not an especially demonstrative species, there was even less visible enthusiasm than usual among the team from the outpost as the trio of driftecs skimmed across the slime toward Dinabu. The enervating dullness of the journey over the monotonous yellow-brown landscape was broken only by the occasional attack. Mounted by local predatory lifeforms that dwelled beneath the viscous surface of the endless mudflats, these attacks took the form of the desperate upward thrusting of arms, tentacles, and assorted alien gripping apparatuses for which Ruslan had no name. Preoccupied with thoughts of what they might find in the desolate city they were approaching, he spared these occasional fruitless assaults only the most cursory of glances. His Myssari hosts evinced an equal lack of concern. Too slow and too clumsy to present any real danger, the flailing limbs of local predators immersed in mud clutched only the empty air that was warmed by the wake of the speeding driftecs.
Limited in resources and modest in aim, the expedition touched down on the opposite side of Dinabu from the previous search site. Although this was also much farther from the location where the outpost’s automatic scouts had made their sighting, Ruslan did not object. He was fully aware his presence and that of his not-so-esteemed Myssari colleagues was resented by many of the researchers assigned (some said condemned) to Daribb. The present outing had barely been approved. Voicing objection to any part of it at this early stage was liable to see it terminated prematurely.
If naught else, the visit was rich with nostalgia. Living as he had for decades on Myssar, he had fallen out of familiarity with many of the simpler accoutrements of human life. Seeing abandoned eating utensils, entertainment displays, food storage and preparation facilities, even the mechanisms necessary for performing basic hygiene, brought back memories of a happier youth on Seraboth before the arrival of the Aura Malignance. Both children’s and adult toys were scattered throughout the corroding buildings. Noting them, he flashed an ironic smile at no one in particular. Now all the players were gone and only one functional toy remained: him.
That was not being fair to the Myssari, he knew. Specimen or not, they had treated him with respect, if not outright reverence. How he reacted to that was his problem, not one imposed on him from without.
“Do not wander off by yourself,” the escort leader had warned him. “Remember what nearly happened last time.”
Ruslan remembered. He also had never been one for taking orders. At least, not since his last human order-giver had expired in a hospital in Seraboth’s capital city. Ruslan recalled the death day clearly. Lying on the bed, his aged supervisor had drawn a last, desperate breath, eyes bulging in desperation. The awful sight had quickly been blocked by the attending physician, who less than an hour later collapsed and died on top of his patient. There had been very few patients or health professionals left alive by the time the plague-resistant Ruslan left the building for the last time.
The structure through which he was presently walking was definitely no hospital, he reflected as he edged away from Bac’cul and the others. When he wanted to be by himself, not even the devoted Kel’les could keep up with him. From their very beginnings humans had always been good at hiding. The ancient survival trait now lent stealth to his curiosity as he turned sharply to his right and disappeared behind a small escarpment of oversized but lightweight storage containers.
He was not wholly reckless. Making his way across the platforms and walkways that rose above the murky surface, he took care to stay inland wherever possible, aware from the driftec flyovers of the greater dangers that lurked in deeper holes in the mud. The section of city through which he was walking bore some resemblance to the small fishing villages he remembered from visits to ocean shores on Seraboth, though there were no fish on Daribb and, for that matter, no oceans. But the mudflats teemed with hidden life; not all of it lethal, no doubt some of it edible.
One of the first things settlers of a new world strove to learn was which local organics were ingestible and which were toxic. Crumbling craft of local design, warehouses, cranes, and deactivated shocknets all pointed to a local industry that, if not designed to catch fish, was clearly intended to gather something. In the absence of sea or field, they suggested a once-thriving local commerce founded on gathering the bounty of the mudflats.
A gap loomed ahead in the walkway he was traversing. While his athletic days were largely behind him, the breach was not significant and he jumped it easily. Nothing rose from the muck below to snap at him, though the stink of organic decay was pronounced. He wrinkled his nose. Daribb was ripe with the stench of decomposition. A moon would have helped, nudging tides that would have washed the shores of the city. But Daribb had no moon. And not much else, he was coming to believe, save the ghosts of the long dead. Fatigue magnified his dejection.