So morals weren't the issues. Instead, Takk was focused on the practical matters of eating humans: namely, that they tended to come with a number of indigestible components, like watches and communicators and plastic zippers and metal shoe bits and occasionally some things that you simply couldn't know about until after you've eaten someone. That sheep rancher, for example, had had some metal pins and screws in him; Acuna told him that some humans had broken bones screwed back into place rather than fixed up by a QuickHeal session. It was a cost thing. All Takk knew was that they poked uncomfortably, like every other indigestible item of human accoutrement Takk eventually had to spit them out, otherwise they'd just pile up in his digestive sac and Takk would jangle when he walked and feel them clanging together inside of him. Takk hated that.
Optimally, Takk thought, he'd be able to strip a human out of his stuff before ingesting them. But Takk realized that a situation like that probably wasn't going to happen. The whole advantage Takk had in dealing with humans was the element of surprise. No human being actually ever expected to be eaten. Ridding them of their clothes and personal objects would pretty much telegraph Takks intentions. He had to accept the occasional watch and leg screw as an occupational hazard.
With that in mind, Takk was eyeing McClellan to see how much indigestible crap the human might have with him. Takk was pleased to see that the human appeared to be Wearing no jewelry, save for a watch, and especially no earrings, which were small and pointy and difficult for Takk to remove afterward. The huclothes likewise appeared fine; digesting humans had made Takk something of a connoisseur of human clothing fabrics, and he could tell by the hang and crumple of Archie's clothes that they were primarily natural fibers rather than artificial. That meant less of a lump of plastic fibers a day down the line. Then there was that thing Archie had in his hand, which he'd been looking at off and on since Acuna brought him back and told Takk to watch him.
"Hey," Takk said, his first words to Archie since he was dragged back into the room. "What is that in your hand?"
Archie looked up. "It's a book," he said.
"What is it made out of?" Takk asked.
Archie held it up so Takk could see it. "Plastic. You hold it in your hand, and the heat from your body powers the optical imager to project the pages."
"So, plastic," said Takk. He could handle a little bit of plastic.
"Yeah," Archie said, and went back to his reading.
After several minutes, Takk's now-awakened curiosity got the better of him. "What's the book about?" he asked.
"It's a book of poems," Archie said, not looking up.
"What kind of poems?" Takk asked.
Now Archie looked up. "You actually care?" he said.
"I'm just as bored as you are," Takk said.
"They're prophetic poems," Archie said.
"They tell the future?" Takk asked.
"Sort of," Archie said. "It's more like they suggest things that could happen, and it's up to us to decide what to do about it."
"Why are you reading them?" Takk asked.
"Because I'm trying to figure out what I'm supposed to do next," Archie said, turning back to his book.
Takk was taken aback. "You're on a religious quest?" he asked Archie.
Archie shrugged. "I suppose I am," he said.
Almost instantly Takk was overcome with a rush of affection for this little human. The Ftruu was a difficult passage for any young Nagch. The Nagch were a people who thrived on family and tradition; tossing young Nagchs out to experience the universe was a paradoxically isolating experience for most of them and made them yearn to return to their homes and rituals (a fact not in the least lost on older Nagch).
Takk had been on Earth for a better part of two years; he'd come there because it was the planet that had been randomly selected for him to visit two Nagch years prior—just enough time to learn to read and speak English. He'd been given a transport ticket and a small stipend and told not to return until his Ftruu was completed.
In that time, Takk had largely consorted with scumbags; his stipend was small and his visa was tourist, and being unencumbered by the worries of sin he had no qualms about working under the table for questionable people and their even-more-questionable aims. However, it did leave him with a general perception that humans were spiritually bereft beings. Takk understood that Earth was positively littered with houses of worship and that people were always claiming that their god of choice wanted them to do one thing or another. But in his personal experience the only time he heard people invoke their deity was when Takk was about to beat the hell out of them or turn them into a snack. And even then, more than half the time they invoked defecation instead. Takk found that inexplicable.
And thus, Archie McClellan became the first human Takk had met who actually appeared to have a religious component to his personality—or at the very least a religious component not motivated entirely by fear of imminent injury or death. Meeting someone with a religious impulse activated a dormant section of Takk's personality very much like a turned-on faucet expands a desiccated sponge. Takk advanced on Archie enthusiastically. Archie quite understandably flinched.
"Tell me about your quest," Takk said.
"What?" Archie said.
"Your quest!" Takk said. "I am on a religious quest also."
Archie looked at Takk skeptically. "But you're doing this," he said, sweeping his arm about.
"So are you," Takk said.
Archie blinked. Takk had a point, there. Archie glanced down at his book, which had turned its optically generated page thanks to his flinch, and his eye caught the poem there:
Lo! The screw turns, yet the direction is not set
Those who teach may let learn, and those who learn, teach
When we pass beyond what is left but what we tell?
We may yet reach from beyond to turn the screw once more.
Among the scholars of the Church, who liked to use study of the stanzas as an excuse for barbecues and the consumption of beer, this was one of the minor "exhortation" stanzas, encouraging Church members to share information with each other so that Church aims could be accomplished further down the line. Direct, simple, and uncomplicated, like the stanzas encouraging good hygiene and flossing (which were generally followed) and the avoidance of fatty foods and—ironically for the alcoholic Dwellin—too much imbibing (which, given the beer-fueled cook-outs, were not). These were generally regarded as the least interesting of the prophetic poems, for much the same reasons as the layout of dietary laws in the Pentateuch failed to set afire Jewish and Christian theologians.
Right here and right now, however, Archie McClellan felt his eyes bulge and the Empathist impulse—that creepy feeling that Dwellin really did unintentionally connect with something larger, whether he meant to or not—flared in his chest like heartburn. Archie was already clearly and sickly aware that he was a dead man walking; after about the 30th time Acuna pressed that vending machine button Archie reconciled himself to the idea that the rest of his life would be counted in hours and that at the end of it he was likely to be a snack for the monstrous alien that was now asking him about his religion. And yet here was a fragmentary bit of wisdom—scrawled by a consumptive hack decades back, but even so—telling him that even when he was gone, there was still work to be done.
Archie looked back up at Takk, who was standing there, still rather too close for Archie's comfort zone. "Can I ask you a question?" Archie said.
"Yes," Takk said.
"Aren't you going to have to kill me soon?" Archie said. "Isn't that what you're watching me for?"