Phylogenesis - Alan Dean Foster [31]
Among the humans there existed an equal if not greater number of concerns. With insects constituting a hereditary racial antagonist, the idea of becoming close friends with their giant, albeit distant alien cousins, the thranx, was difficult for many to stomach. Objections and concerns emerged less often intellectually than they did viscerally.
So each species continued to feel the other out, to study and to learn, and as they did so to keep a wary eye on the activities of the AAnn as well as the other known intelligences. The covert complex north of Geswixt was an attempt by the thranx to broaden and accelerate those contacts.
Though he experienced a delicious shudder of instinctive revulsion every time he called forth in his cubicle a three-dimensional projection of a human, Desvendapur relieved the nausea by composing a new set of sonnets, complete with appropriate accompanying choreography. These files he encrypted and secured with great care lest someone stumble upon them accidentally and wonder at the extraordinary aesthetic skills of a simple food preparator. The lines he devised were facile, the inventions clever, but they lacked the fire he sought. Where was the explosion of brilliance that would gain his work universal recognition? How was he to fabricate lyrical phrases so glorious that they would leave listeners stunned?
In his off hours he threw himself into a study of the humans’ principal language, after first dismissing as a hidden joke the revelation that they still practiced dozens of different tongues. That was an absurd notion, even for creatures as alien as humans. Different dialects could exist, to be sure, but different languages? Dozens of them? How could a civilization arise out of such a counterproductive babble? Deciding that the first linguists to make contact were having a little fun at the expense of those who came after, he ignored the assertion as he concentrated on the language of contact.
Recordings of their speech yielded a brutal, guttural mode of communication that made Low Thranx sound like a clear stream running over water-polished stones. It was not unpronounceable, but it was unwieldy. And where were the whistles and clicks that gave civilized speech so much of its color and variety? Not to mention the modulated stridulations that humans seemed utterly incapable of duplicating. Though it was difficult to countenance, the records indicated that some human linguists had succeeded in mastering portions of both High and Low Thranx. Furthermore, they had the ability, like the AAnn, to take in air through their mouths instead of through designated, specialized breathing orifices as did the thranx and others. Like the AAnn, their air intakes were located on their faces, resulting in a severe crowding of important sensory organs in the same place. And there were only two air intakes. The thranx had eight, four on each side of the thorax. Given such a deprived physiological architecture, Des thought it something of a minor miracle that the humans were able to take in enough air to supply their blood with sufficient oxygen.
With no one to practice on, he learned by means of repeating human phrases in the solitude of his cubicle. As he studied, he composed, waiting for the time when blinding inspiration would strike. What would help, what he wished for more than anything else, was to meet an actual alien. He knew their food, or at least the thranx food they could digest. Now he wanted to know them.
He had been at the complex for more than a year, long enough to experience the first feelings of despair, when the opportunity finally came.
6
Golfito wasn’t much of a city. Located in a fine natural harbor, it existed only to service the cruise ships and other tourist vessels that stopped to give their passengers a quick taste of the Corcovado rain forest. After making a wild flurry of purchases and embedding tridee cues into their