Engineman - Eric Brown [72]
As for its sex... Ella could not be sure. They shared a friendship that was platonic, like that between girlfriends, but for some reason, as time wore on, Ella came increasingly to think of the Lho as a male, perhaps in compensation for the fact that at school no boy had yet shown an interest in her.
At one point every time they met, L'Endo would swim to the camel's hump and perform his strange ritualistic statue-impression, which could last up to thirty minutes. It seemed at these times that he was in a trance, oblivious of Ella and the lagoon around him. One day when he rejoined Ella on the flat rock and lay beside her, golden and spangled with water, she indicated the camel's hump and asked, "Why, L'Endo?"
He stared at her. "Why?" he breathed, and said no more. Ella shrugged to herself and reflected that she might never know.
The following week, before commencing his ritual, L'Endo pointed across to the rock. "Why," he said. Then, "Give thanks," he said, but without any indication that he understood the words. "For life."
Ella nodded, intrigued by the fact that there was a member of his tribe who could speak English.
The months passed, and they left the lagoon and explored the upper reaches of the plateau so far left undeveloped by the colonists. It was a magical realm of caves and grottoes, spectacular waterfalls and placid lagoons. L'Endo showed her tunnels which riddled the mountainside, secret passages leading from lagoon to lagoon, strange flowers she had never seen before and even stranger animals.
In return for L'Endo's showing her the wonder of the plateau, on one occasion Ella led him to a nearby dome whose owners were away on vacation. She broke in through a cooling vent and they crawled inside. She had become so accustomed to seeing L'Endo where he belonged, in his home environment where his alienness seemed natural, that seeing him in a human habitat once again made her aware of how very strange - how very alien, there was no other word for it - he was.
He seemed uncomfortable in the hi-tech dome, like a stone-age man in a spaceship. Ella showed him all the technological wonders; the synthesiser and vid-screen, the ultra-son shower and the walls of the dome which polarised during the day. L'Endo was quiet and watchful, his eyes half-cupped by their lower lids in an expression Ella thought might denote wonder or suspicion. They left after one hour, returned to the lagoon and sported in the water.
Then, two weeks later, L'Endo failed to turn up at the lagoon. Ella was there at the same time as ever, but there was no sign of the Lho. It was the first time he had failed to show for four months, and Ella was worried. Perhaps their meetings meant less to him than they did to her, and he had quite simply grown bored with the company of the strange human? She had no idea where she might find him, where his tribe was encamped.
Ella waited for three hours, and was about to leave when she saw, through the trees that partially concealed a narrow fissure in the rockface, a familiar alien form. She leapt to her feet, her heart skipping, but the alien was not L'Endo.
It approached Ella with long, nimble strides, an old, bowed Lho whose skin was mottled and faded. It regarded Ella through half-cupped eyes.
"Ella Hunter?" It asked her, and she knew then who L'Endo had spoken to in order to explain his ritual.
"Where's L'Endo?"
"L'Endo-kharriat wishes to see you. This way..."
"Is he okay?" she asked desperately. "Please, what's wrong?"
The old Lho turned and walked away without replying.
Now Ella sat cross-legged on the flat rock