Phylogenesis (27 page)

“Something is very wrong here,” declared the supervisor as she concluded her searching.

Jhywinhuran was still working her scri!ber. “I agree, but what? He told me, told everyone he worked with, that he was being transferred to food preparation in this sector. His name is on the work roster.”

“Just as his name is on the door to these quarters.” The two females considered the situation. “Let me run one more search.”

Jhywinhuran waited while the senior female waltzed the delicate fingers of her truhands over her unit. Moments later she looked up again, her antennae aimed directly at her visitor. “There is no record of a transfer to this sector being authorized for anyone in food preparation, or specifically, anyone named Desvenbapur.”

“Then…he lied.” Jhywinhuran could barely muster the appropriate clicks to underscore her reply.

“So it would seem. But why? Why would this friend of yours, or any thranx, lie about being shifted from one part of the hive to another?”

“I do not know.” The sanitation worker stridulated softly. “But if he isn’t here, and he isn’t there, then where is he? And why is he wherever he is?”

“I do not know either, but unless something emerges to indicate otherwise, what we have here is unequivocal evidence of antisocial behavior. I am sure it will all become clear when he is located.”

When he was not, something akin to alarm set in not only among those thranx charged with locating the errant assistant food preparator, but among their human associates as well.

Jhywinhuran found herself waiting in an empty interrogation chamber. It was of modest size and in no way remarkable except for the presence among the usual resting benches of a trio of very peculiar sculptures whose purpose she was unable to divine. They looked like tiny benches, much too small to provide surcease and comfort to even a juvenile thranx. Instead of being open and easily accessed, one side of each of the squarish objects was raised above the rest, so that even if you tried to settle your abdomen across it, the stiff raised portions would make it next to impossible.

The hive had been turned upside down in the search for the missing assistant food preparator. When it was determined to a specific degree of assurance that not only was he no longer present in the hive, but that his body could not be found, a startled Jhywinhuran had found herself called away from her labor and ordered to this room. There she sat, and waited, and wondered what in the name of the lowest level of the supreme hive was going on.

She did not have to wait long.

Four people filed into the chamber. Two of them between them had only as many limbs as she did. She had seen humans around the hive before, but not often. They did not frequent the section of the colony where she worked, and she had had no actual contact with them herself. From her predeparture studies she was able to discern that both genders were represented. As was common among humans, their skin and single-lensed eye color varied markedly. These and other superficial physical variations she expected. She also was not surprised when they sat down in two of the peculiar constructs whose function had so puzzled her. She winced inwardly, unable to see how any being, even one as flexible as a human, could call “relaxing” a posture that required the body to almost fold itself in half.

But she was startled when conversation commenced, and the humans participated—speaking not in their own language but in a crude, unsophisticated, yet impressively intelligible rendition of Low Thranx.

“How long have you known the assistant food preparator who calls himself Desvenbapur?” The human female blundered slightly over the correct pronunciation of the title.

Jhywinhuran hesitated, taken aback by both the nature of the question and its source. She looked to the two thranx present for advice, only to have the eldest gesture compliance. Not politely, either. Clearly, something serious was afoot.

“I met him on the
Zenruloim
on the journey out from Willow-Wane. He was pleasant company, and as there were only four of us bound for this world, we naturally struck up an acquaintance. I also met and became friends with the engineers Awlvirmubak and Durcenhofex.”

“They do not concern us and are not involved in this matter,” the eldest thranx explained, “because they are not only where they are, they are who they are.”

She gestured bewilderment. “I don’t understand.”

“Neither do we,” the elder responded. “That is one of the purposes of this meeting: to reach understanding.” His antennae bobbed restlessly as he spoke, indicating no especial sentiment: only a continuing unease. “Your friend has gone missing.”

“I know. I helped to file the report.”

“No, you don’t know,” the elder corrected her. “I do not mean that he has gone missing in the accepted sense. I mean that he is nowhere to be found anywhere in the hive.”

“Nor,” added the male human somewhat melodramatically, “is his corpse.”

“The inescapable conclusion,” the younger of the two thranx told her, “is that he has gone outside.”

“Outside?” Jhywinhuran’s confusion gave way to disbelief. “You mean, he has left the colony? Voluntarily?”

The elder genuflected sadness mixed with concurrence. “So it must be assumed.”

“But
why
?” Acknowledging her acceptance of the human’s presence, she included them in her question as well as the pair of somber supervisors. “Why would he do such a thing? Why would any member of the colony?”

The female human crossed one leg completely over another, an intriguing gesture no thranx could emulate half so fluidly. Jhywinhuran wondered at its hidden meanings. “We were really hoping you could shed some light on that, Jhywinhuran.”

Hearing her name emerge from an alien throat, complete to the appropriate whistle-and-click accentuation, was a novelty the sanitation worker did not have time to enjoy. “I assure you all I have no idea.”

“Think,” the elder prodded her. “This is important beyond anything you can imagine. We are already, with the aid of our human friends, searching the surface above and around the colony for this absent individual, but it would be of considerable use to know who and what we are searching for.”

“You keep speaking of Desvenbapur as though he doesn’t exist.” Something deep inside her felt bound to rise, however feebly or ineffectively, to the defense of an acquaintance who had brazenly lied to her.

The two thranx exchanged gestures. It was left to the younger to explain. “He doesn’t.
Crrik,
the individual you know as Desvenbapur certainly does, but that is not his identity. When your report was filed and it was determined that the individual was no longer residing within the colony, a thorough background check was run on him in the hopes of learning or at least obtaining some clue as to what might have prompted him to engage in such intemperate behavior. Given the seriousness of his apparent transgression, the check was correspondingly detailed.

“It included a search, via a surreptitious space-minus relay operated by our human friends, of records that extend all the way back to Willow-Wane—not only professional records but personal ones as well. A portion of the finished report was so extraordinary that despite the difficulty and expense a recheck was demanded. It only confirmed that which had preceded it.”

“What did you find out?” The two humans were temporarily forgotten.

The younger supervisor continued the story. “Something this serious activates, as one of multiple automatic searches, a full family background check. The records of the Hive Ba show no mention of a Desvenbapur living or recently deceased.”

None of the four thranx mandibles were capable of dropping, in the human sense, but Jhywinhuran succeeded in conveying her astonishment at this astounding announcement by means of a simple truhand gesture. “Then who is he?”

“We think we know,” the elder told her. “He is very clever, this individual, far more resourceful than one would expect of an assistant food preparator.”

“I always thought him so.” Her horizontal mandibles clicked softly while the verticals remained motionless. She was more than a little dazed by this latest revelation.

“It all fits together.” The younger supervisor was gesturing corroboration. “Tell me, Jhywinhuran: Did your absent friend at any time ever express a more-than-passing interest in the composition of poetry?”

This time she could only stare at her interrogators in stupefied silence. It did not matter. Her hush was sufficiently eloquent.

The senior supervisor continued, his mandibles moving methodically. “On Willow-Wane there was no Desvenbapur. Or Desvenhapur or Desvenkapur. Background investigation discovered a Desventapur, an elderly and well-known electronics mapper who lives in the Hive Wevk. Also a Desvenqapur, a harvester drone residing in Upper Hierxex.” He shifted his abdomen on his resting bench.

“There is also a Desvengapur who is not only the right age, but also shows an interest in formal composition for purpose of performance.”

“Is that the real person, the one we are talking about?” a shaky Jhywinhuran heard herself asking.

The supervisor gestured negativity. “Desvengapur is a mid-age female.”

The younger of the pair took over, his speech becoming harsh and accusatory, the clicks sharper, his whistles shriller. “No living representative of the Hive Ba bears the name Desvenbapur. But on Willow-Wane there
was
an aspiring young poet sufficiently accomplished to be assigned the designation of soother. He managed to have himself appointed to the human outpost at Geswixt.”

The human male chipped in. “Apparently this individual, for reasons we still do not know, desired contact with my kind.”

“His name,” the supervisor continued, “was Desvendapur. A real, existing person, according to all personnel background checks and official records.”

A poet, she found herself thinking. A designated soother. No wonder her friend’s “amateur” efforts had struck her as so wonderfully accomplished. There had been nothing amateurish about them, or about him, she reflected bleakly.

“He changed his name and his records.” Her voice was dull, methodical, the words rising without difficulty to her mandibles. “He falsified his history and learned the trade of assistant food preparator. But why?”

“Apparently, in hopes of gaining assignment to the colony there,” the female human responded. “Why he did this we still don’t know. We’d certainly like to.”

“Truly,” declared the senior supervisor, “an explanation of his motivation would be most welcome. This Desvendapur is an individual who has been driven to take extreme measures.”

Jhywinhuran indicated assent. “To make up a false identity, to equivocate repeatedly…” A sudden thought made her hesitate. “Wait. I can see how he could remake himself as an assistant food preparator named Desvenbapur, but what about his original self? Wouldn’t it be missed, not only at Geswixt but elsewhere?”

“This Desvendapur’s cleverness extends well beyond a talent for concocting agreeable phrases.” The supervisor’s tone was dark. “He participated in a short but unauthorized flight from Geswixt to the project outpost on Willow-Wane. On the return flight, the lifter that had conveyed him crashed in the mountains. It was presumed that everyone aboard perished in the fiery crash. Shortly thereafter, the name of one Desvenbapur appeared on the work rolls of the human outpost as an assistant food preparator.”

She gestured astonishment. “How fortunate he was. That must have been a remarkable stroke of luck for him and for his plans, for I assume based on what you have told me that he must have been intending something like that for a long time.”

“Certainly he was,” the other supervisor readily agreed, “however there is now some question as to how ‘lucky’ he might have been.”

“What are you implying, Venerable?” she stammered.

“The crash of his transportation on its return journey to Geswixt, leaving him an illegal and therefore unrecognized presence in the project outpost, is simply too convenient to be any longer considered a coincidence. Though much time has passed since this incident occurred, the appropriate authorities are even now reviewing the relevant records.” He gestured with all four hands. “It is considered a distinct possibility that your friend contrived the crash of his transportation on its return flight to Geswixt in order to obliterate his old identity while providing an opportunity for him to create and adopt a new one.”

While she was digesting this inconceivable volley of information, the female human commented, in that terse, tactless fashion for which humans were both famed and notorious, “What Eirmhenqibus is saying is that your absent friend, in addition to putting in jeopardy everything we have worked to achieve here, may also be a murderer.” She had some difficulty with the appropriate accents for the thranx term for “one who kills its own kind,” but Jhywinhuran had no trouble comprehending what had been said.

“I…I find that hard to believe.”

“Then you are in good company in this room,” the senior supervisor assured her. “Murder, falsification of identity, illegal assignation of profession, and now escapement. This Desvendapur has much to answer for.”

“It is not something I would have expected of a soother.” The other supervisor was quietly incredulous. “Your friend must be found, and quickly.”

Both humans nodded assent. “This part of Earth was chosen for the colony not only because the climate is conducive to your kind,” the female said, “but because it represents one of the last and largest regions on the planet in which the imprint of humankind has not been heavy. Very few people come here, and those that do travel about under strict supervision or professional guidance. But if anyone should see this Desvendapur, engaged in whatever purpose he is bent upon, he will immediately be recognized for what he is: an alien wandering about on a part of the Earth’s surface where no alien is supposed to be.”

“I do not think I need remind you,” the male roughly told her, “about the delicate nature of the ongoing negotiations between your species and ours. Your…appearance…unfortunately, is off-putting to those of our kind who have not yet learned how to look beyond shape in the course of establishing relations. The great mass of humanity is still not entirely comfortable with the realization that there are other intelligent species, nor the possibility that some may be more intelligent than themselves. There exists a historical racial paranoia that is only slowly being eroded by contact with such as the thranx.