Phylogenesis - Alan Dean Foster [59]
Nothing unfamiliar assailed their senses. Strong, lightweight composites had been sprayed on the walls of the excavation to form a solid seal against intrusion from outside. Familiar fixtures and markings indicated the location of side corridors, specific facilities, water, and utility conduits. It looked exactly like the hive facilities they had just left. To all outward intents and appearances, they might as readily be back on Willow-Wane.
He had a horrible thought. What if this and they were part of some extraordinary, extreme social experiment? What if they had indeed traveled through space-plus, but only to make a looping curve back to Willow-Wane, or to journey on to Hivehom itself? What if they were gullible volunteers in an experiment to see how humans and thranx would get along in close quarters—in a physical and mental environment faked to resemble the humans’ homeworld? The view out starship and shuttle windows could be simulated. What if they had simply landed on a thranx world? It was impossible to tell. Everything was the same; nothing was different.
Except for the air.
It stank of exoticism, of alien vegetation and musk. Even purified and cleansed before being drawn into the colony it was still ripe with the fragrance of the utterly foreign. Of course, an atmosphere could be falsified as easily as images. All manner of smells and stinks could be artificially introduced into a closed environment. If so, he thought, someone was doing a superb job.
Because of his unique personal circumstances he was inherently more distrustful than any of his companions. Aware of this he chose not to reveal his suspicions. He hoped they would be proved wrong.
If the gravity differed from that of Willow-Wane, the difference was negligible. He didn’t know whether to be uneasy or delighted at the realization. The transport turned down a second corridor and began to slow. That was when many, if not all, of his suspicions were laid to rest.
A trio of specialists were strolling down one side of the tunnel, chatting amiably among themselves, their antennae bobbing and weaving animatedly. They wore no special attire, nothing to mark their surroundings as unusual. Two humans were walking and talking with them, gesturing with their forelimbs. Compared to the lone human Desvendapur had encountered on the surface of Willow-Wane, these two wore virtually nothing. Their fleshy, multihued epidermi were blatantly exposed for all to see. Recalling his studies, Des decided that both were male. It was neither their presence nor their lack of clothing that particularly intrigued the poet, however. It was their nonthranx companions.
The pair of small quadrupeds that gamboled around both human and thranx legs were covered with a bristly substance that he managed to identify as fur before the transport hummed on past. One had covering that differed significantly from that of its counterpart. It was also considerably larger, though neither would have come up to the underside of the poet’s abdomen. They had long faces, intelligent eyes, and jaws that resembled those of the AAnn more than they did those of their human associates.
He fought to recall the details of human society. As he remembered it, the bipeds not only consumed the butchered flesh of other creatures, they kept representatives of certain species in their own homes, as if the company of their own kind was insufficient to sate their need for companionship. In this regard, certain subspecies were more privileged than others. Among the latter were dogs, of which the two furry quadrupeds accompanying the strollers appeared to be legitimate representatives. What was especially fascinating was that despite their lack of sapience, the dogs appeared to be paying as much attention to the three thranx as to the two humans.
To the best of his admittedly restricted knowledge, no such creatures had been imported to Willow-Wane. They did not occupy space reserved for humans on Hivehom. Support facilities