Double Contact

CHAPTER 13

It was a rule of interspecies medicine to which no exception had ever been found that pathogens which had evolved on one world could not affect or infect any creature belonging to another. There was nothing in this world’s microbiology, therefore, that could threaten her. But that did not stop Danalta, in the respectful manner befitting a subordinate, from insisting that Murchison take no chances with the life-forms that were large enough to see.

The shape-changer had already scouted the beach, shallows, and the trees and undergrowth inland to a distance of five hundred meters, for evidence of large and possibly harmful life-forms. A few varieties of water-breathing and amphibious creatures inhabited the shallows, tiny animals and insects crawled or flew among the tree roots and branches, but none of them were large enough to constitute a physical threat. This did not mean that they could be completely ignored. Pathogens could not jump the off-world species barrier, Danalta reminded her unnecessarily, but insects secreting organic toxins in poison sacs were capable of delivering painful if not lethal stings, the crablike sea-dwellers could nip, and all of them, should they feel threatened or hungry enough, could bite.

That was why she was walking along a golden beach without the gentle abrasion of hot sand between her toes while, “from her uncovered face and the backs of her bare hands, much of the sun’s heat was being reflected away by her white rails In this situation she would have preferred to wear much and the other members of the team would neither have cared or noticed if she had worn nothing at all because Earth-humans were one of the few intelligent species with a nudity taboo. The others covered themselves only when their working environment required the wearing of body protection. In spite of her advancing years, Peter kept telling her with maximum ardor and minimum poetry — and when his brain was not so busy with other-species mind partners that he was unsure of who and what he was and why they were lying together — that she was in very good shape.

She wished he were with her now, under this real sky rather than the artificial one on the hospital’s crowded recreation deck, with his mind his own, its professional concerns forgotten, and his attention concentrated entirely on her. But, she supposed, being the life-mate of the renowned Conway, Sector General’s Diagnostician-in-Charge of Other-Species Surgery, had to have a few disadvantages. He couldn’t take a vacation of opportunity like this just because she wanted to and he probably needed it. She sighed and continued walking.

Beside her Danalta rolled silently over the sand. In keeping with the occasion, and because it liked to give gratuitous exhibitions of its shape-changing prowess, it had adopted the form a recreational plaything much-favored by Earth-humans, a large beach ball. It was covered overall by triangles of garish red, yellow and blue; the eye, ear, and mouth were inconspicuous —. the visual effect was quite realistic, but the track that it made in the sand was too deep to have been made by an air-filled ball. Danalta regardless of the shape it took, was unable to reduce its considerable body-weight. The pretty ball would never bounce. Would you like to move inland?” said Danalta, stopping suddenly and extruding a bright green, Earth-human hand and index finger to point. “That hill is only a mile away and seems to be the highest point on the island. From there we might be able to see features of special interest to explore later, and possibly the nearer islands.”

As well as being a show-off, the polymorph was intensely curious about everything regardless of shape or size, and the harder it was to mimic, the better it liked it.

“Fine,” said Murchison. “But in case we’re needed urgently I want to stay as close as possible to our patients. There’s a stream that runs past the med station into the sea. We’ll go back and follow it inland to its source, which should be on high ground. Do you agree?”

It was a rhetorical question, and even though she wasn’t in the habit of pushing her rank, they both knew it. For the first hundred meters or so, the nearby environment could have been that found on any sun-drenched, tropical island on her home world. The stream was less than two meters wide but fast-flowing so that the stones on its bed were washed clean and showed many different colors and patterns of veining. It was only when her walk, and Danalta’s roll, took them inland and under the trees that the differences began to show. The chlorophyll-green of the leaves looked the same but the shapes were subtly different as was the soft carpet which was not of grass that grew along the banks of the stream from damp earth that was not of Earth. A little shiver of pure wonder made her twitch her shoulders, as it always did when she encountered a completely alien planet that looked and felt so entirely familiar. Then as they moved deeper under the trees, the amount of vegetation bearing large, sunflower-like blooms increased. The petals on many of them had dropped away to reveal clusters of pale green fruit buds. There would be no problem with cross-pollination here, she thought as the insects began to swarm.

Very definitely they were like nothing on Earth. They ranged in size from the virtually invisible to several stick-insect varieties whose bodies were nearly six inches long. A few of them were rounded, black and shiny, with wings that beat so rapidly that they seemed to be surrounded by a grey fog, but majority were brightly colored in concentric circles of yellow and red with multiple sets of wide, slower-beating gossamer wings that threw back constantly changing, iridescent highlights.

They were gorgeous, she thought, and some of them made even Prilicla look dowdy.

Most of them were heading towards Danalta, obviously attracted by the garishly colored beach-ball body it had adopted.

“They seem to be curious rather than hungry,” said the shape-changer. “None of them has tried to bite me.”

“That’s sensible of them,” said Murchison nervously as they lost interest in Danalta and began moving towards her. “Maybe they’ve realized that you’re indigestible.”

“Or I have the wrong smell,” it replied. “I’ve just now extruded an olfactory sensor pad. There are a lot of strange smells in this area.”

Smells, Murchison thought, was not the word she would have used to describe them. The subtle combination of scents being given off by the aromatic vegetation around them was something that the fashion perfume houses on Earth would have sold their souls for. But the insects were now homing in on her.

Instinctively she wanted to swat them aside, but knew that might make them excited and hostile. Instead she raised one hand very slowly to her opened helmet visor so that she could snap it dosed at the first sign of an attack. Her hand remained there, tense and motionless, for several minutes while the insects large and small swarmed around her head without actually touching her race, until they lost interest and returned to their own concerns.

Relieved, she lowered her hand and said, “Apparently they’re non-hostile, They don’t want to bite Earth-human DBDGs, either.”

Which meant that, should their stay on this island paradise be delayed for any reason, the Terragar casualties could be moved outside for a few hours every day. She had always been a believer in the efficacy of natural fresh air and sunshine in the post-on treatment of casualties, a form of treatment not available in Sector General.

Puzzled, she said, “No animal or insect species, regardless of its size, can be universally friendly and hope to survive. These seem to be the exception that proves the rule. Let’s move on.”

The ground began to rise gently, the trees opened out into a large clearing and the stream became a wide, shallow pool whose bottom was covered by broad-leafed plants, each of which floated a single, radiant bloom on the surface, and they saw their first non-insect life-form.

Three fat, piglike animals with mottled yellow-and-brown skin, narrow, conical heads, and sticklike legs were wading in the shallows, nibbling at the flowers or pulling up the subsurface greenery. When Murchison’s shadow fell across them they made bleating noises and ran splashing up the bank to disappear into the long vegetation that was not grass. From all over the clearing and under the surrounding trees came the sound of more bleating, and a much larger version of the same animal pushed through the greenery to stand and look at them for a moment before apparently losing interest and moving away.

“That must have been Mama or Papa,” said Murchison. “But have you noticed, even the adult life-form is placid and unafraid and without aggressive tendencies or obvious natural weapons, and so far we’ve seen no sign of any predators or prey. Prilicla would just love this place. Have you seen any signs of bird life?”

Murchison went down on one knee and shaded her eyes with both hands in an attempt to reduce sky reflection while she studied the subsurface features more closely. A few minutes later she stood up again.

“None,” said Danalta, “but one must expect strangeness on a strange planet. Are you ready to move on?”

The ground ahead began to slope more sharply, and a few minutes later they found the natural spring that was the source of the stream bubbling out of a crevice in the ground that was showing several flat outcroppings of rock. The trunks and branches of the trees competing for the green areas between them were stunted and carried fewer blossoms and buds so that the insect population was proportionately diminished. But it was still a beautiful and relaxing place, especially with the breeze off the ocean finding its way through the thinning vegetation and cooling her face. Murchison took a deep breath of fresh, scented air and let it out again in a sound that was a combination of a laugh and a sigh of sheer pleasure.

Danalta, who found no pleasure in fresh air, smells, or environmental beauty, extruded a pointing hand and said impatiently. “We’re within fifty meters of the highest point of the island.”

The rounded summit was covered sparsely by trees, but not enough of them to obstruct their all-around view over the island. Through the gaps in the intervening foliage, Murchison could make out tiny areas of ocean, beach, and a section of the white medical-station buildings. A scuffling sound on the ground made her swing around to look at Danalta.

Its beach-ball configuration was collapsing, flattening out and spreading across the ground like a mottled red, yellow, and green pancake. Suddenly it rolled itself up into a long, cylindrical, caterpillar shape with a great many legs, before heading for the highest tree. She watched as it wound itself around the lower trunk corkscrew-fashion and began to climb rapidly. The view from up there will be much better,” it said.

Murchison laughed and moved to follow it. Silently she was calling herself all kinds of a fool because if she were to become — Casualty through falling out of a tree she would never live it down. But she was feeling like a child again, when tree-climbing had figured high among her accomplishments, and the sun was shining and all was right with this world and she just didn’t care.

“Earth-human DBDGs can climb trees, too,” she said. “Our prehistoric ancestors did it all the time.”

A few minutes later she was as close to the top as it was safe to go, with one arm wrapped around the trunk and a branch that looked strong enough to bear her weight gripped tightly between her knees. Danalta, whose latest body-shape enabled it to distribute its weight more evenly than her own, was clinging to the thinner branches a few meters above her. The view over the island and beyond was perfect.

In all directions they could see across the dark green, uneven carpet of treetops and clearings to the ragged edges where it met the beach. The medical station looked like a collection of white building-blocks standing in the dark, lengthening shadows of approaching evening, and the ocean was empty except for a tight group of pale blue swellings that were probably the mountaintops of a large island that was below the horizon. Danalta extruded an appendage to point slightly to one side of the distant mountains.

“Look,” it said. “I can see a bird. Do you?”

Murchison stared hard in the indicated direction. She thought she saw a tiny, fuzzy speck almost touching the horizon, but it could just as easily have been her imagination.

“I can’t be sure. ” she began, and broke off to stare at the thick cylindrical member that was growing out of the top of Danalta’s head. “Now what are you doing?”

“I’m maximizing my visual acuity,” it replied, “by positioning a lens of long focal length the required distance from my retina and making small focusing adjustments. Since the material is organic and the viewing base is moving perceptibly in the wind, some distortion is to be expected, but I’m sure that I can resolve the image to show…”

“You mean you’re growing a telescope?” she broke in. “Dr. Danalta, you never cease to surprise me.”

“Definitely some kind of bird,” it said — obviously pleased at the compliment — and went on, “with a small body, wide, narrow wings and a triangular tail whose outer edges are uneven. At this distance the size is uncertain. It appears to be dark brown or grey in color and non-reflective. It has a short, thick neck but I cannot resolve any details of the head and there are no other body projections, so presumably its legs are folded for aerodynamic reasons. The wings do not appear to be beating and it seems to be soaring on the air currents. It is close to the horizon and shows no sign of dropping below it.

“Birds did not evolve on my home planet,” it went on, “but I have studied the various species with a view to possible mimicry. So far, the general appearance and behavior of this one resembles that of a carrion-eater found on your own planet. At this range anything else I could tell you would be mostly guesswork.”

“Let’s go back to the station,” said Murchison quietly. “I want to be there before sunset.”

Danalta had spotted the planet’s first bird, she thought, as she climbed to the ground, and it seemed to be the equivalent of an outsized vulture, with all that that implied. It was silly to feel so disappointed just because this perfect-seeming world had shown its first imperfection.