Phylogenesis - Alan Dean Foster [107]
There was something not quite right about the food preparator Desvenbapur, something simultaneously irresistibly enticing and edgily off-putting. Try as she might, she could not get him out of her mind. She considered visiting a senior matriarch for counseling but decided that her condition had not yet advanced from the merely affected to the obsessive. Until that line was crossed she would deal with the situation herself.
One way to do so would be to go and visit the object of her anxiety. As in any hive, the colonists had been assigned not only labor but living quarters and sectors. While with certain specific exceptions the length and breadth of the hive was open to all who dwelled within and no permit or permission was required to wander beyond those sections that had been individually apportioned subsequent to arrival, it was infrequently done. There was no reason to explore beyond one’s assigned territory. Everything a colonist needed could be found within an individually prescribed zone. It was a system that was traditional and efficient and that contributed mightily to the efficiency of every hive, whether on Hivehom, Willow-Wane, or the alien world known to its dominant inhabitants as Earth.
Humans, by contrast, the colonists had been told, were far less orderly. Superficially well organized, they tended to scatter and move about with considerably less regard for the effective organization of the whole. Life in their hives frequently bordered on the anarchic. Somehow, out of confusion and turmoil, they had succeeded in raising a civilization.
She determined to resolve the contradictions that were boiling within her. The very next off-period, she identified the location of the hive’s subsidiary food preparation facility and headed in its direction, following the directions provided by her scri!ber. As she entered unfamiliar parts of the colony she paused from time to time to converse with thranx never before encountered, and they with her. No one questioned her presence. While out of the ordinary, there was nothing unlawful about it.
She spent some time talking with sanitation workers who supervised the hive’s other waste terminus. The colony had been designed with at least two of everything in mind. If a critical component broke down, there was no hailing a neighboring hive for repairs or replacements. The nearest supplies lay parsecs away, and support could not be provided as soon as it might be needed. Between their incompatible technology and the restrictions placed on their movements, the hive’s allied humans could provide only limited help. Of necessity, the colony had to be as self-sufficient as possible.
Despite diversions both enjoyable and educational, she eventually found herself in the auxiliary kitchen area. From there it was a simple matter to obtain permission to visit food preparation. What she saw there was a duplicate of the station where Desvenbapur had worked previously, identical down to the individual appliances and utensils manipulated by its work force. At present they were engaged in cleaning and treating a variety of native plants, rendering them suitable for thranx consumption. Without the ability to digest terrestrial vegetation, the rapid growth of the colony would have been greatly reduced.
She chatted amiably and casually with members of the staff, who were curious as to the presence in their midst of an unfamiliar representative of the sanitation division. No, an assistant preparator named Desvenbapur was not currently a member of their team. In fact, none of them had ever heard of him. Perhaps he worked exclusively on the night shift.
She knew she ought to make the journey back to her cubicle so she could get some rest before she had to report for the new day’s work. She was being foolish, letting an incidental interest grow into