Star Wars_ The Adventures of Lando Calrissia - L. Neil Smith [139]
Lehesu, on the other fin, was a genius of curiosity—or a totally demented mutation. The conclusion depended on whom you sought for an opinion, Lehesu or any other individual of his species. In his thirst to know what unlooked-for wonders lay beyond the cloying safety of the ThonBoka, he was utterly alone. He could not so much as begin to explain the burning need that drove him into the Open Sea—not to anyone his own age, certainly not to any of the Elders, no, not even to the younger ones.
Well, perhaps one day he would have young of his own. And if curiosity were something that could be passed on, they would understand and share his thirst. He chuckled to himself: how he would ever find a mate who could tolerate him might constitute something of a problem.
Then again, it might not. It was highly unlikely he would survive traversing what amounted to a desert. Every fiber in his great and graceful body ached with hunger. He had been cruising for what seemed an eternity without encountering a molecule of nutriment, and it was far too late to go back. He lifted his enormous wings once more, unable to ignore their rapidly failing strength.
Lehesu had never seen or even heard of a cat, but he would have understood what killed it, how, and why. Still, he couldn’t really bring himself to regret what he had done. Curiosity may have killed him already, but it was vastly better than dying from boredom.
Perhaps.
Lehesu estimated that he had, at most, only a few hours before he expired. His people fed continually as they moved about through life, automatically, almost unconsciously. There was little capacity in his gigantic body for storage of nutrients. As he weakened, and the effect was increasingly noticeable, increasingly painful to him, he reflected that at least he was dying in the Open Sea, away from all the—
But wait! What was that? There was something else in the desolation! Far beneath him in the depths, another entity swam, one that pulsed with life and power. Stretching his sensory abilities to their limit, he could feel that it was comparatively tiny, yet it virtually sang with strength—which meant there had to be sustenance around somewhere.
He did another uncharacteristic thing then, something no other Oswaft would have done: he dived for the object. Lehesu was not a predator. Nor was he herbivorous. Such distinctions had no meaning in his time and place, under those circumstances. It was the habit of the Oswaft to eat whatever they found edible, leave everything else alone. They knew of no other intelligent species, and the entirety of creation was their dinner plate.
At least he could discover what the thing had found to eat. He realized there was a possibility that it would find him, and he had little strength for fighting left, even if he had been inclined to fighting, which he was not. Yet he had less hope, even, than strength.
Down and down he went. Yes, there it was, a mote less than a tenth his size, yet he could feel that it was stronger than he was by a substantial margin. Better armored, as well, much like the small carapace-creatures that swam the calmer currents of the ThonBoka.
They were delicious.
As he approached the thing, he could see that it was not shaped terribly differently from himself. To judge from its direction of travel, it was a bit broader than it was long, more rounded in its major contours than he was. Like Lehesu, it had two nondescript projections on its frontal surface, although whether they were sensory arrays, like his, was another question.
Lehesu’s senses were not strictly limited to straight lines. He could “see” that the creature possessed no manipulators on its underside. He had hundreds, Yet it appeared that part of the surface was capable of opening; perhaps its tentacles folded into its belly. He knew of organisms that—
Lehesu recoiled in shock! He