Phylogenesis - Alan Dean Foster [111]
“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