Phylogenesis - Alan Dean Foster [22]
At any time, he could have requested a transfer to a larger, more rewarding venue. Promotion within his calling also beckoned. He made no effort to procure either.
What he did do was strive to make friends with anyone engaged in transportation, be it the operator of one of the loaders that gathered the plump fruit from the scattered fields, the drivers of internal individual transports, or the occasional visiting cargo pilot. A check of maps showed that it would be futile to attempt to walk overland to Geswixt or anywhere in its vicinity. Without a full environment suit he would never get across the intervening ridge, and there was no viable reason why a poet should need to requisition that kind of extreme-weather gear. It left him no choice but to try and hitch a ride some day.
The difficulty was that despite their geographic proximity, there was little interchange between Honydrop and Geswixt. The produce harvested by Honydrop hive went directly out of the mountains and down to processing plants in the nearest city. Nothing was shipped from Honydrop to Geswixt, and all necessary supplies came straight up from the lowlands. For all the formal intercourse that took place between the two hives they might as well have been on opposite sides of the planet.
He was sitting in one of the two community parks, surrounded by supplementary humidity, dense tropical growth, and edible fungi, basking in the artificial light that filtered hazily down from the ceiling, when he was approached by Heulmilsuwir. A logistics operator who, like many, admired his work, she had become a good if casual friend.
“Sweet tidings to you, Desvendapur.”
He set his scri!ber aside, mildly irritated at having been interrupted in midcomposition. “Good day, Heul. Are you on off-time?”
“For a little while.” She settled herself on the bench next to his, straddling it with her abdomen, her trulegs splayed out to either side. “You’re still working, even here?”
“The curse of creativity.” He made a soft, humorous gesture to take the edge off his tone. “Even a soother needs soothing. I find that in all of Honydrop, this place does that for me.”
“Only this place?” Reaching out with a truhand, she stroked his slick, blue-green thorax just below the breathing spicules.
Idly, he mused on the slenderness of her ovipositors, curled up over her lower abdomen. “There are others,” he conceded with grudging warmth.
They made inconsequential but diverting chatter for a while. Then her tone changed. “Am I wrong, or in the intervals when we were talking days ago did you mention that you would like to visit Geswixt?”
He fought to suppress his initial reaction. While his face was inflexible, his limbs were not. He felt he largely succeeded in hiding from this female what he was feeling. “A change of scenery, however transitory, is always a welcome diversion.”
She indicated disagreement and clicked her mandibles sharply for emphasis. “Not if it means going outside. Personally, I can’t imagine why anyone would want to go to the trouble of visiting Geswixt. Everything I’ve heard about the place suggests that it’s a grim, spare little mining station, with nothing in the way of amenities.” She gestured with a truhand. “Less so even than Honydrop.”
“What do they mine there?” he asked absently. “What kind of ore?”
She gestured uncertainty. “I do not know. I think I remember hearing something about an ongoing dig for nonferrous materials, but I don’t believe they’ve actually hit an ore body yet. They’re still searching.”
“And tunneling a lot, I imagine. A mine would mean many tunnels.