Phylogenesis - Alan Dean Foster [72]
When they were revised to his satisfaction he would submit them to the appropriate sources on Willow-Wane for criticism and publication. That they would cement his celebrity he had no doubt. Then he would gladly submit to the public revelation and exposure of his true self, in the process reclaiming his identity. If this connected him with the death of the transport driver Melnibicon, he would deal with the consequent ramifications as required. What happened after that did not matter. His fame would be assured. The honor and renown he would bring to his much-reduced family, to his clan and his birth hive, would blaze forth no matter what his eventual disposition at the hands of the authorities. There was even a good chance he would escape punishment. Great art traditionally excused a multitude of sins, as well it should. He did not dwell long on the morality of this conviction.
But his compositions would have to be exceptional indeed.
It was with growing confidence that he made ready. The thrill of preparing to do something as illicit as it was extraordinary inspired him to fire off half a dozen scrolls filled with screaming hot stanzas. Reviewing them, he decided that they represented his best work to date. And they only anticipated the sights he expected to see, the experiences he proposed to have. He could foresee that any creative difficulties that might develop were not going to arise from insufficient inspiration, but from a need to channel and guide a surfeit of illumination.
And then, falling upon him as heavily and abruptly as a collapsing tunnel, the chosen day was at hand. He bade temporary farewell to Jhywinhuran and his friends and coworkers within the food preparation section, assuring them that he would return from his temporary reassignment to their quadrant of the colony within a single moon cycle. Returning to his quarters, he made certain that everything was in order and that, should anyone come calling and enter uninvited, they would find a chamber in a state reflecting the continued residence of its occupant. He had arranged everything just so, even to programming his favorite relaxation music and visuals to power up at appropriate times of the day.
There was only so much he could do. If someone should post a watch on his living quarters they would quickly discover that the cubicle was not in use. But why would anyone do that? As jointly devised by humans and thranx, colony security was designed to keep a lookout for wandering strangers on the surface. It was intended to keep outsiders sealed out, not residents locked in.
The supplies he had so patiently and laboriously accumulated were packed within a waterproof commodities sack appropriated from food preparation. Anyone observing him in transit would think he was making a delivery. The fact that he would be traveling outside the usual food freighting routes was unlikely to give rise to a great deal of comment. It was not as if he were transporting a bomb.
Strapping the sack onto his back, he used a reflective surface to make sure that it was properly balanced against the long, narrow sweep of his abdomen. The fact that he had not been mated and still retained his vestigial wing cases helped, since the additional layer of hard chitin served to shoulder some of the weight. Slipping a carry pouch over his thorax found him heavily burdened, but not intolerably so. Taking a last look around the comfortable chamber that had been