Slither - Edward Lee [3]
Professor Nora Craig simply sat there and frowned.
She lapsed back against the cabin wall as Loren attempted to dazzle the others with information about the remarkable scarlet bristleworm. Nora herself let the helicopter's rotor noise lull her away from the creeping trickle of low self-esteem. Why am I letting that blond calendar girl posing as a photographer make me feel insecure? Perhaps it was just a case of raging hormones.
She let her eyes move across the cabin, trying to consider everyone in objective terms. Lieutenant Trent looked more like one of those guys who work in a department store appliance section. Pushing forty, smirking, not much going on behind the eyes except a lack of enthusiasm. Evidently he was assigned to the army's public relations unit, the "PR mouthpiece between the military and the civilian contingent," he'd explained. "Whenever civvies need to be shown around army property, I'm the guy they send." Trent's fatigues were crumpled, which might indicate how often this desk driver wore them. If it weren't for the distraction of the blond photographer's cleavage, he would probably be asleep.
Loren Fredrick was Nora's teaching assistant at the university. Totally unsocialized like many professional academics, he sat as gawkily as a textbook nerd. Tall beanpole physique, knobby knees, and a long neck that showcased what had to be one of the biggest Adam's apples in human evidence. Buckteeth, too, and a mop of wiry dark hair. He sat at the edge of his cabin seat, animatedly explaining the evolution of bristleworms in general and their unique "parapodic" means of loco motion more specifically. He's boring them silly, Nora thought, and he doesn't even realize it.
The army warrant officer was a typical Neanderthal with his green helmet and ham-hock-sized jaw, and the two pilots up front were little different. Somebody peed in the pool, Nora mused over their brute, caveman features. The gene pool, that is. They clearly bore no interest in this excursion, and if they were even listening to Loren's grueling dissertation, it was to look at the blonde sitting next to him. They're just here for the ride and the eye candy, Nora realized.
"Right, Nora?" Loren asked.
Nora blinked, reined her attention back in. "Oh ... what?"
"I was telling Annabelle about the reproductive habits of some bristleworms, such as the Eunice didacta."
Annabelle, Nora thought through the bored daze. Oh, right. The blonde. He's calling her by her first name, like they're best buds. "The female didacta will actually ingest the entire posterium of the male."
'Posterium?" Annabelle pronounced.
"'The rearmost tip of the worm's body," Nora defined.
"Which, in the case of this species, also contains the spermatic reservoir-its penis, if you will," Loren finished, grinning. "That's how the Eunice didacta has sex."
Annabelle's eyes grew wide. "How fascinating!"
The huge-jawed warrant officer elbowed Trent. "Ain't that somethin', Luey? The chick worm eats the dude worm's works. That's how it gets knocked up!"
"Charming."
The warrant laughed along with the two pilots, while Trent simply frowned at the image.
"It sounds like such a specialized subject," Annabelle said. She perkily pointed to Loren's T-shirt, which read POLYCHAETOLOGISTS DO IT BETIER! "That word you keep using. Polych-"
"Polychaetes," Loren was happy to reply. "That's the class of worm that your employers have sent you all this way to photograph."
Nora felt negligent by not contributing to the conversation. "The scarlet bristleworm, for example. Scarlata is the genus, or type, Polychaete is the class, and it comes from the phylum known as annelida-which covers all segmented worms." ---- -- - -- - -- - -- -
"Oh," the blonde said, then returned her attention to Loren. "So that word on your shirt-"
"Polychaetologist," Loren explained, "is a scientist, such as myself and Professor Craig, who- specifically studies this type of worm. That's our job."
"Great job," Trent said, dimly astonished.
The WO called to the pilot, chuckling, "Hey, Flappy,