Dirge - Alan Dean Foster [57]
Inevitably, gradually, the rotating military and forensic teams that were assigned to investigate Treetrunk completed their work. As one contingent after another was withdrawn, that hospitable world with its ringing waterfalls, racing streams, and globe-girdling forests was abandoned to its indigenous life-forms. No possibility had been overlooked, not even the remote chance that some advanced native civilization had managed to keep in hiding while their planet was settled, only to emerge one day to murder every unwary, unprepared settler. The highest form of life on Argus V was an arboreal saurian with sloe eyes and an accusative yip. Although it displayed some rudimentary tool-using behavior, it could not cope with the larger, dull-witted carnivores that preyed upon it, much less wipe out so much as a handful of well-armed humans.
Reldmuurtinjak was a member of one of several thranx teams that had offered their services to help try to resolve the appalling riddle. Together with specialists from the Pitar and Quillp worlds, they, along with their human counterparts, poured over and through the scant available evidence, finding very little light in the unwholesome darkness that now shrouded the planet.
If anything, the exceedingly organized thranx were more frustrated than their human colleagues. Such things simply did not happen in a part of the galaxy where sentience and civilization held sway. Yes, death and dissention and violent disagreement were still present, but they could always be explained if not justified. In the absence of reason, there were still reasons.
Reldmuurtinjak was working in the ruins of one of Weald’s few surviving administrative buildings when he looked up long enough to observe the tall human advancing toward him. He had never met a human being prior to being assigned to this grim duty. Scrutinizing the barren devastation for clues was difficult enough for him: He could only imagine what it must have been like for the first human crews forced to deal with thousands of corpses lying amidst the destruction.
Like the rest of his kind he had heard a lot about the humans. Visuals had helped to put to rest some of the more outrageous tales that had been told about them. They did not tower over thranx; they were simply tall. Most could not bend their bodies into rubbery knots; they were merely flexible. And despite their ridiculous tailless longitudinal axis, they did not fall over. At least, not very often. While excitable and edgy, they could also relax and be pleasant. Personally, he found this last open to dispute. During his sojourn on Treetrunk, the researcher had not seen very many of them relax.
The one who now approached looked uneasy but not nervous. His name was Lee, and Reldmuurtinjak had struck up a causal, casual relationship with him as their respective groups labored side by side in search of answers in the ruins of Argus V’s capital city. Unusually intense even for a human, he spent more time in the company of the thranx than did any other of his colleagues. Reldmuurtinjak wondered at this. He was soon to find out the reason why.
Lee peered down at where the thranx was working in a slight depression in the floor. The space had somehow survived the collapse of the upper two floors. Lying within the shallow bowl was an intact desk together with contents. Typically, none of the desk’s linking electronics had survived the devastation, but there were always hopes of finding notes, scribblings, jottings that might shed some light on what had happened. Using a translating scanner, Reldmuurtinjak was examining these now, neatly filing each sheet of treated synthesized cellulose into one of three piles.
“Any luck?” the pale-haired