Phylogenesis - Alan Dean Foster [106]
Besides, what was the thranx going to do? Report him to the nearest branch of the Global Association for the Advancement of Science? If he and his absent multilimbed companions were carrying out their observations under the umbrella of a special scientific dispensation, he could hardly go shooting off his mandibles about the status of a human who claimed to be doing essentially the same thing.
“Well, hoorah for you. You’ve found me out. So what? It means nothing.”
“On the contrary, it means a great deal.” The thranx was staring at him now, Cheelo was sure of it. “It means that if you are not a naturalist, as you have claimed, then you are something else.” Painfully, using foot- and truhand, he manually repositioned his injured leg.
“The question then becomes, What are you?”
18
Electric with the realization that the colony was in the fore-front of developing human-thranx relations, the terrestrial hive was an exhilarating place to work. The knowledge that it was also illicit, an operation whose very existence was unknown to all but a few enlightened members of the human government and scientific establishment, only added to the excitement. Rising to work every shift, one never knew when the operation might be discovered. Having been as thoroughly briefed on humankind and its peculiarities and distinctive foibles as was possible before their journey to the colony, every assigned thranx had been made fully aware of the inherent irrationality built into each individual human. If anything went wrong and they were subject to unforeseen exposure, there was no telling how the great mass of seething humanity might react to the presence of an unauthorized alien colony in its midst. Consequently, even as they went about their commonplace, everyday tasks, the colonists had to be ever vigilant and prepared for anything.
As weeks and months passed without discovery, a modest sense of security invariably settled over the colony. If even the apprehensive rogue humans who had cooperated and conspired in the secret establishment of the hive could relax, then certainly their thranx associates could do no less.
So it was that Jhywinhuran’s thoughts were far from such matters as she busied herself at the end of the day’s work, running a final check and chemical disbursement before signing off her station to her shift replacement. Instead of concentrating on the admittedly rote toil at hand, her mind strayed to remembrances of the time spent in the company of a particularly distinctive male. Somewhat to her chagrin, her thoughts had been repeatedly drawn in that direction for several days now.
Why she should have found an assistant food preparator so fascinating she could not quite explain. Certainly her attraction had nothing to do with his vocation, which was even more prosaic and mundane than her own. Within the bustling colony there were many unmated males who found her attractive, stridulating softly in her presence in an attempt to attract more than polite attention. Some she spent time with, chatting and disporting, but always her thoughts returned to a certain singular food preparator.
What it was about him that she found so distinctive proved elusive, no matter how often she tried to define it. Something in his manner, perhaps, or in the way he modulated communication: not only his vocalizations but the attendant clicks and whistles that were as much a part of thranx speech as strings of individual words. Maybe it was the way that when he became excited, exquisitely inflected snippets of High Thranx slipped into his conversation; something not to be expected from an assistant food preparator. There were other distinctions: the way he spoke of the