Relic

9

Though the Myssari were by nature not an especially demonstrative species, there was even less visible enthusiasm than usual among the team from the outpost as the trio of driftecs skimmed across the slime toward Dinabu. The enervating dullness of the journey over the monotonous yellow-brown landscape was broken only by the occasional attack. Mounted by local predatory lifeforms that dwelled beneath the viscous surface of the endless mudflats, these attacks took the form of the desperate upward thrusting of arms, tentacles, and assorted alien gripping apparatuses for which Ruslan had no name. Preoccupied with thoughts of what they might find in the desolate city they were approaching, he spared these occasional fruitless assaults only the most cursory of glances. His Myssari hosts evinced an equal lack of concern. Too slow and too clumsy to present any real danger, the flailing limbs of local predators immersed in mud clutched only the empty air that was warmed by the wake of the speeding driftecs.

Limited in resources and modest in aim, the expedition touched down on the opposite side of Dinabu from the previous search site. Although this was also much farther from the location where the outpost’s automatic scouts had made their sighting, Ruslan did not object. He was fully aware his presence and that of his not-so-esteemed Myssari colleagues was resented by many of the researchers assigned (some said condemned) to Daribb. The present outing had barely been approved. Voicing objection to any part of it at this early stage was liable to see it terminated prematurely.

If naught else, the visit was rich with nostalgia. Living as he had for decades on Myssar, he had fallen out of familiarity with many of the simpler accoutrements of human life. Seeing abandoned eating utensils, entertainment displays, food storage and preparation facilities, even the mechanisms necessary for performing basic hygiene, brought back memories of a happier youth on Seraboth before the arrival of the Aura Malignance. Both children’s and adult toys were scattered throughout the corroding buildings. Noting them, he flashed an ironic smile at no one in particular. Now all the players were gone and only one functional toy remained: him.

That was not being fair to the Myssari, he knew. Specimen or not, they had treated him with respect, if not outright reverence. How he reacted to that was his problem, not one imposed on him from without.

“Do not wander off by yourself,” the escort leader had warned him. “Remember what nearly happened last time.”

Ruslan remembered. He also had never been one for taking orders. At least, not since his last human order-giver had expired in a hospital in Seraboth’s capital city. Ruslan recalled the death day clearly. Lying on the bed, his aged supervisor had drawn a last, desperate breath, eyes bulging in desperation. The awful sight had quickly been blocked by the attending physician, who less than an hour later collapsed and died on top of his patient. There had been very few patients or health professionals left alive by the time the plague-resistant Ruslan left the building for the last time.

The structure through which he was presently walking was definitely no hospital, he reflected as he edged away from Bac’cul and the others. When he wanted to be by himself, not even the devoted Kel’les could keep up with him. From their very beginnings humans had always been good at hiding. The ancient survival trait now lent stealth to his curiosity as he turned sharply to his right and disappeared behind a small escarpment of oversized but lightweight storage containers.

He was not wholly reckless. Making his way across the platforms and walkways that rose above the murky surface, he took care to stay inland wherever possible, aware from the driftec flyovers of the greater dangers that lurked in deeper holes in the mud. The section of city through which he was walking bore some resemblance to the small fishing villages he remembered from visits to ocean shores on Seraboth, though there were no fish on Daribb and, for that matter, no oceans. But the mudflats teemed with hidden life; not all of it lethal, no doubt some of it edible.

One of the first things settlers of a new world strove to learn was which local organics were ingestible and which were toxic. Crumbling craft of local design, warehouses, cranes, and deactivated shocknets all pointed to a local industry that, if not designed to catch fish, was clearly intended to gather something. In the absence of sea or field, they suggested a once-thriving local commerce founded on gathering the bounty of the mudflats.

A gap loomed ahead in the walkway he was traversing. While his athletic days were largely behind him, the breach was not significant and he jumped it easily. Nothing rose from the muck below to snap at him, though the stink of organic decay was pronounced. He wrinkled his nose. Daribb was ripe with the stench of decomposition. A moon would have helped, nudging tides that would have washed the shores of the city. But Daribb had no moon. And not much else, he was coming to believe, save the ghosts of the long dead. Fatigue magnified his dejection.

He was ready to turn back, more than ready, when for the second time in as many visits dank and depressing Dinabu tantalized his hearing with unidentified sounds. One hand dropped to his sidearm as he listened intently. This time he would not be surprised, would not be caught off guard by whatever came gnashing out of the ruins. Shrieks and rumbles, rapid-fire coughs and chitterings, assailed his ears. He let his hand relax. Somewhere in the depths the local lifeforms were disputing among themselves and it was none of his business.

He didn’t care how fascinating they might be, or if they comprised representatives of one or more new indigenous species. Let the exploration team’s xenologists assemble themselves to record the goings-on. He wanted none of it. Rising from the twisted ceramic beam where he had paused to rest, he turned to rejoin his companions. Bac’cul and Cor’rin might not be ready to leave, but he was. He found that he was looking forward to the return to Myssar. There would be no retirement for him there, only comfort and a tending to his needs. Even his death would be valuable to the Myssari scientists who were fascinated by all things human. They would watch and study his passing with as much interest as they had his life, carefully recording his last wheezing breaths, solicitously noting the stoppage of his heart, the shrinking activity of his synapses, the final forceful exhalation of his collapsing lungs….

He turned so sharply he nearly fell on the weather-warped walkway. That last sound—had he imagined it? Strikingly different in tone and timbre from the preponderance of guttural hooting and hollering, it had pierced him as cleanly as a surgical probe. While he was trying to analyze it, to decide if he had really heard it or if his hearing was playing tricks on him, it resounded again. Several times, increasing in pitch.

A scream. An undeniably human scream. Underscored by overtones he had not heard in decades except in recordings salvaged and offered up for his inspection and explanation by Myssari xenologists. Feminine overtones. The screamer was female.

He began to run, drawing his sidearm as he did so. As he raced in the direction of the screaming, he silently cursed every obstacle in his path, every shortened stride that kept him from reaching its source that much sooner. As he ran he spoke, haltingly and with difficulty, to the aural pickup that clung to his chest like an iridescent blue insect.

“Kel’les! Bac’cul, Cor’rin! I’m monitoring what sounds like local creatures fighting, but there’s something else. It sounds hu—” Mindful of earlier disappointments and opprobrium, he leavened his call with caution. “I think it might be human. I don’t have visual yet.”

Initial exhilaration gave way to prudence. What if the screams were being made by the Daribbian equivalent of a Serabothian mocking climber? What if what he was hearing was nothing more than the mindless replication of shouts once made by now long-dead inhabitants of the city, perfect reproductions passed down through generations of masterfully imitative indigenous creatures?

As to the source of the wild howling and bleating, he had no illusions. This was confirmed as he rounded a corner and came upon a choice chunk of chaos.

The fight between two groups of the long-haired hunters, one of whom had nearly killed him in the course of his previous visit, was ongoing and fierce. Battling with clubs, spears, and crude axes, more than twenty of the creatures were flailing away madly at one another. In the absence of anything resembling a combat strategy, sheer unfocused energy prevailed. Skulls were bashed, limbs broken, bodies sliced and stabbed. Whether they had noticed his arrival or not he could not tell, but none of the combatants paid him the least attention. Formed into a semicircle, one group was attempting to defend a pile of still-intact building supplies while being assailed by their adversaries. Though slightly outnumbered, the first group was managing to hold their assailants at bay.

Then Ruslan saw that what the first group was so zealously defending was not building supplies.

Initially he was so stunned he did not react. More than half a century had passed since he had last set eyes on another living human being. Despite the scouting report that had brought him and his companions to Daribb, he had not really, in his heart, expected to encounter one. Now he found himself staring through the red flush of battle at a struggling, unkempt figure that even at a distance the cynical Twi’win herself not could mistake for a native.

He knew he ought to wait for the others. Intervening on his own might get the both of them killed. But at any moment a stray blade, a thrown spear, might destroy his last chance to feel the flesh of a fellow live human pressed against his own. Blurting his discovery into his pickup, he raised his sidearm and rushed heedlessly forward, yelling and firing as he went. His charge would have been more impressive had he been a few decades younger. His speed would have been better, and his reaction time. The avalanche of adrenaline that shot through him helped to compensate for the passage of years, however, and he did have on his side the significant benefit of complete surprise.

Neither of the two contesting groups of primitive bipeds had ever seen an advanced weapon before. While the flashes of light from the muzzle of his sidearm were little more than distractions, the devastating consequences of the energy bursts they unleashed manifested themselves in the form of obliterated heads, severed limbs, and flowering guts.

When one or two of the creatures showed signs of challenging him, they were quickly dissuaded by the hasty departure of their fellows. Deprived of backup, these braver members of the two tribes joined their colleagues in flight. Low on the intelligence scale they might be, but they possessed enough cognizance to recognize superior firepower when it was shown to them. Smoke and the smell of burning flesh rose from the corpses they left behind. They made no effort to take the bodies of their dead with them. It was likely that as soon as Ruslan left the scene the survivors would return; to recover, to bury, perhaps to consume. He knew next to nothing of the biology of the local aborigines, nor did he much care. His attention was focused solely on the small figure that was huddling at the back of the mountain of material. Dust coated the surfaces of boxes and crates like brown sugar, indicating that they had not been touched in a very long time.

Slowing down as he approached, he lowered his weapon and extended his other hand, fingers splayed in open invitation.

“It’s all right. It’s okay. I’m human, like… like you are. My name is Ruslan.” In the absence of a response, he continued. “I come from a world called Seraboth. Like this world, Daribb, it was once part of the human expansion. Now I live with a race called the Myssari. They’re not very human, but they’re quite nice. They’ve taken good care of me.”

He was starting to worry that after a probable lifetime of scrambling and hiding to survive, this singular survivor might bolt in fear. It struck him that he had no proof of her existence to show his companions. As a non-researcher, he carried no recording device with him. His roughly modified clothing was not equipped with the integrated scientific instrumentation that smoothly adorned Bac’cul’s and Cor’rin’s attire. If this individual ran from him, he would have to somehow convince the Myssari that he had indeed encountered another live human, and that might not be so easy. In the absence of any confirming facts or visual proof, even Kel’les would be reluctant to accept such a claim.

He maintained his cautious approach to the survivor. Fearful of doing something to spook her, he kept his voice low, the tone insistent but gently pleading.

“I can help you. My friends can help you. I’ve lived among the Myssari for many years. They only want to ask questions of us. They can get you away from here, off this world, to a safe place. I’ll be with you every step of the way.” He swallowed hard. “Can you speak? Please, won’t you at least tell me your name? I haven’t heard a nonrecorded human voice in decades and I’m… lonely. Aren’t you lonely?”

Save for the peculiar songlike thrumming of small creatures moving within the pile of debris, it was completely silent around them. Then, from within the mass of containers, came something he never thought to hear again: the unrecorded voice of a human female. It shocked his ears.

“My name is Cherpa.”

An enormous smile creased his face and he halted his advance. “It’s very nice to meet you, Cherpa. Won’t you come out so I can see you better? I’m sure you can see me, and so you can see that I won’t do you any harm.”

A human shape emerged from the shadows. It was short and slender and nearly cloaked in hair the color of weak chocolate. No wonder the brief, indistinct recording made by the outpost’s automatics had been so inconclusive. With hair that reached to the backs of her knees, the survivor, from a distance, would look very much like a small example of the indigenous tribal bipeds. Cherpa had the barest nub of an upturned nose and wide, curious blue eyes. His heart fell even as his spirits rose. The clash of images and thoughts that had dominated his imagination ever since he had identified the survivor as female vanished in a puff of wishful thinking.

She looked to be about eleven.

His very wide smile subsided somewhat. With as deep a sigh as his more than middle-aged chest could muster, he extended a hand once more. “It’s very, very good to meet another human, Cherpa.” His gaze rose to scan the mountain of material behind her as he tried to frame the question he dreaded but which had to be asked. “Where are your parents?”

“Gone and dead, dead and gone, their bones gnawed and their faces flawed.” Her reply took the form of a girlish singsong leavened with melancholy. In front of him, she began to dance. “Mary, Mary, relativistically contrary, how does your gravity flow? Depends on the size of your bottom, gottum, sottum.” She ceased twirling, staring up at him. “Do you have any food? I like mine live, but I can eat dead things when I have to, when I have to. Too much to do but got to eat to grew, to grew you. To grew you? Who knew?”

The muscles around his eyes tensed but he held back. Not for his sake but for hers. It was going to take time, he knew. Time to mend, time to see if a change of surroundings would help. Until then he could only guess at how crazy she was and how far from reality she had slipped. He extended his arms, offering a hug, but she skipped warily out of his reach. Her gaze narrowed as her tone turned ferocious.

“No touch! Touching is bad. Touching is kills.”

“I’m not one of them.” He gestured in the direction taken by the fleeing natives. “I’m human just like you.”

She shook her head violently. “Different meant. You’re big and strong, like them.” Turning her head, she spat in the direction of the departed predators. “Gnaw Cherpa’s bones while she moans.”

“No.” He made no further move to advance toward her, relying on reason and his voice. “I’m just…” It struck him then. He had no way of knowing how old she had been when her parents had died. It was possible she did not recall her father and, not remembering, saw this new mature male only as something different. He didn’t want to be a father figure. He had wanted… he had wanted…

It didn’t matter what he had wanted. It didn’t matter what he had twirled and danced with in his mind’s eye. She was eleven. Or so.

“I’m a man, Cherpa. You’re a girl. Yes, we’re different, but we’re a lot more alike than we’re different. I’m like your father. We’re the same species.”

“Big,” she repeated warily. He stayed where he was, being patient, giving her time to study, to evaluate him.

Finally she came forward, advancing hesitantly, the wide blue eyes glazed. Glazing over the haunting, he decided. He could not imagine what her life had been like, surviving alone and abandoned in a place like Dinabu. When she finally spoke again, it was decisively.

“I’ll call you Bogo.”

He could not quite swallow his quick responsive laugh. “That’s not a very dignified name for the last man alive. My name is Ruslan.”

“Bogo.” She seemed pleased with herself. He gave a mental shrug. If it made her happy, if it led her to cooperate—Bogo it was.

“You can call me whatever you want, Cherpa.” This time when he extended a welcoming arm, she did not retreat. But neither did she allow him to embrace her. Within her protective psychosis she remained guarded. He would have to deal with it as best he could and hope; hope that with time and care and tenderness the protective mask of madness would fall away. “Let’s go and meet my friends. You’ll like them. They’re… funny.”

His respected, highly educated companions probably would not have appreciated his description, but his sole concern of the moment was to get her away from an area where she surely knew every hiding place and back to the outpost before she could change her mind about him.

One childish hand reached out to touch his bare forearm. The small slender fingers should have been soft and smooth. Instead they were tough and wiry. The callused tips stroked his skin. He didn’t move; just stood still, letting her explore him like a kitten with a new toy. Her hand withdrew.

“You feel like me.” Her tone was as solemn as her expression. “I remember others like me.” Turning her head, she nodded in the direction taken by the departed two-legged predators. “Others like me gone to food, every one.”

“I’m sorry,” he murmured. “But if you will come with me, I promise you won’t go to food.”

Her eyes widened still further as she turned back to him. “Promise? Cross your heart and hope to remove it?”

“Cross my heart and—hope to remove it.” Putting his hands on his knees, he squatted so that his face was level with hers. “In fact, if you come with me and decide that I’m lying, I’ll let you remove it yourself.”

“Give me a knife and I can do that.” He did not think she was boasting.

“Well then.” For a third time he extended a hopeful hand. This time she took it.

“You have nice hands, Bogo. No claws.”

“No claws,” he agreed. “My friends the Myssari don’t have claws, either. In fact, their hands are smoother than a human’s. They don’t even have fingerprints.”

“What’s a fingerprint? Is it like a scratch?”

“More like art. I’ll show you, later.” Addressing his pickup, he uttered a key word. Nothing. Puzzled, he looked down.

He had forgotten to activate the communications device. No wonder none of his companions had arrived in response to his frantic calling. Nudging the appropriate tab, he was pleasantly surprised when Kel’les answered instead of one of the scientists or escorts from the outpost. His minder’s tone was anxious.

“Ruslan? We have not heard from you in some time. We were about to—”

“I’m fine and on my way back,” he said, hurrying to allay his handler’s concern. “And I have company. When you see her, you’ll understand the confusion that arose from the automatics’ report.”

“You make funny sounds.” Cherpa was looking up at him. He was careful to let her hold his hand instead of gripping hers. He did not want her to feel as if he was attempting to pull her along.

“That’s Myssarian, the language of my friends,” he explained. “It’s very straightforward and not hard for a human to learn. I’ll teach you myself. Until then you’ll have to wear a translator. I did, too, when they first found me.”

She pondered this as they made their way across pedestrian walkways that were strewn like disembodied tendons above the mudflats and throughout the empty city. “So you were alone, too? Like me, except that these Miserables found you?”

“Myssari,” he corrected her. “They’re very nice people. Don’t let their appearance frighten you. They have three arms and three legs and more joints than we do.”

Her reaction was not what he expected. She clapped her hands and looked delighted. “An extra arm and an extra leg! You’re right, Bogo—they are funny. I don’t think I’ll be scared at all.”

After the life you’ve likely had, he thought somberly, I doubt there’s much that could scare you. Still, he didn’t want to take any chances. It would be heartbreaking if, after having found another living human, something caused her to panic, flee, and lose herself back in the dark viscera of the city. Nor did he want to do anything that might result in having to restrain her against her will. Given her apparently precarious state of mental health, pushing her too hard might well result in sending her over a psychological cliff from which her remaining degree of sanity might never recover.

He knew what the Myssari reaction would be. Restraining their eagerness to study her was not going to be easy. Presented with a second living representative of the species, and one of the opposite gender at that, they were going to want to poke, probe, measure, and record the girl down to the smallest detail. He was going to have to impress on them that she was not only immature but mentally unsettled. Examine the crystal too closely and too often and you are liable to shatter it. An outcome like that would crush both him and his alien associates.

An ancient human expression come down through the centuries would have to define his position. What was it… “Cave canum”? No. “Back down”? No… “Back off.” Yes, that was it. Where Cherpa was concerned, the impatient Myssari were going to have to back off lest they damage the very subject they wished to appreciate.

That would extend to the removal of any viable eggs whenever the girl became sexually mature. Desperately as they wished to reestablish the human species, they were going to have to continue to focus on cloning his cells and those of the recently deceased rather than actual breeding. Theoretically, his own sperm ought to be serviceable for another twenty years or so, if not longer. While he did not wish to contemplate such activities, he knew that he must, if for no other reason than that it would be one of the first issues the Myssari would raise.

Was her psychosis inheritable? Had she been crazy from birth? He had a sudden vision of a successfully resurrected humankind—all mad. Would that, after all, be so very different from the species that had created and disseminated the Aura Malignance?

For now, he pushed the unsettling images from his mind. The girl had just been found. She was about to be introduced to aliens and an alien society. Unlike the mature individual he had been when a Myssari exploration team had found him wandering on Seraboth, she had no reference points for such an encounter. In contrast, he’d had access to more than a hundred years of studying and learning, albeit largely self-directed. In the absence of such experience, he would have to direct for her. He would have to explain, to teach, to assure. Whether she would let him or not remained to be seen.

In dreaming of finding another human alive, he had fantasized himself as a mate. Not a teacher. But he resolved to accept the destiny Fate had handed him with as much grace as possible.

The small, leather-tough hand that firmly gripped his made it easier for him to acquiesce to that inevitability.

She might have found his description of the Myssari amusing, but it turned out that his own estimation of her courageousness had been overdone. When she saw them approaching in their exploration gear, Bac’cul in the lead, she let out a cross between a scream and a squeak and tried to bolt. Gripping her hand tightly (he told himself it was for purposes of reassurance and not restraint), he knelt down and hurried to calm her.

“Hey, hey!… Relax, Cherpa. They’re friends, I told you.” He put on his best smile. “You said they sounded funny. Just look at them. They are funny-looking, aren’t they?” The pull on his hand, the frantic desire to escape, grew less insistent. Her wide-eyed gaze flicked rapidly between him and the approaching Myssari. He kept talking—fast, but not so fast as to suggest panic. “See how they walk? Sometimes the middle leg first and then the other two, sometimes one-two-three, one-two-three.” He leaned closer and she did not pull away. “You know what’s really funny?” She shook her head uncertainly. “Watching a Myssari trip over all three of its own feet.”

Her brows drew together, an indication that internal visualization was hard at work. Then she smiled. It was the second-most-beautiful thing he had seen that day, following his first full glimpse of the long-tressed girl.

“My friends will be your friends,” he promised her. “They can be a lot of fun. You know what else is fun?” The Myssari team was almost upon them now and he made sure to keep his body between them and her. “A haircut. See?” Reaching up, he ran his palm across a pate that was covered with very short gray follicles. “But we won’t cut yours this short. Unless you want it this short.” He hoped she would not say yes. Though it was an utterly unscientific, culturally antique thought, he was inordinately pleased when she did not.

To their credit, the Myssari slowed their advance despite their unconcealed excitement.

“Another human!” Cor’rin was breathing hard as she stared. “And an immature female at that. I never thought to see such a thing. Wonderful, wonderful!” Forcing her gaze away from the wide-eyed newcomer, she regarded Ruslan. “Is she healthy?”

Not “What is her name?” or “How is she feeling?” Ruslan thought. As a Myssari scientist, Cor’rin’s first concern was for the viability of the new specimen. He decided he could not blame her for being characteristic of her own species. Still, the researcher’s query rankled slightly.

“No, she’s not fine.” He looked on intently as Bac’cul and several other members of the exploration team formed a curious, reverential semicircle behind Cherpa. Reassured by Ruslan, she studied them in turn, more curious now than afraid. She could not understand anything they were saying about her, of course. Language learning would take time. Meanwhile there would be mechanical translators, perfectly efficient thanks to Myssari technology and his assistance with corrections.

They were examining her as if she were a new genus of arthropod. It was a look he knew intimately, having himself been subject to it on more occasions than he could count. Cherpa appeared to be handling the attention very well. What was actually going through her mind as she withstood the intense alien scrutiny remained unknown. At least, he told himself, she wasn’t running in circles and screaming or coiling into a fetal position. Thus far her madness seemed drawn from a source that, as such things went, was comparatively benign.

“Look at the extent of follicular growth.” Informed that Cor’rin was also female, the bright-eyed Cherpa was allowing the Myssari researcher to handle her long hair. Nine limber, soft-tipped fingers trolled through the auburn tresses. “Contrast it with Ruslan’s.”

“I could have had the same,” he pointed out. “Via simple genetic manipulation or chemical stimulation. I chose to let nature take its course.” He nodded at the now surrounded girl. “That’s what has happened with her. It will have to be trimmed back, if only for hygienic reasons. But not too much.” Moving closer, he smiled down at the girl. Her initial fears now banished by the humorous appearance and gentle touch of the Myssari scientists, she grinned loopily back at him.

“Will you let your hair be cut, Cherpa? I’ll do it myself if you don’t want the Myssari to do it—though I think one of their medical personnel would do a better job than me.”

“Funny Bogo; of course you can cut my hair! It’s just hair. I used to hide behind it. I don’t have to hide anymore, do I?” Looking around, she met many of the small-eyed stares that were openly marveling at her. “I embrace funny, run from nasty. No hasty-nasties here.” Her voice fell slightly as her attitude grew more serious. “We are going away from here, aren’t we?”

He nodded encouragingly. “No hasty-nasties where we’re going, I promise you. Just lots of real food and new clothes.”

“I’d like to have some new clothes.” Her voice faded. “I remember that I had some once, a long time ago. My mo… my mo—”

A great gush of tears erupted from her. Alarmed by the unexpected outpouring, the Myssari hastily retreated. Bac’cul looked downright terrified. Afraid of losing the new specimen, Ruslan mused unfairly as he moved to hold the girl and let her wring out her sobs against him. Even while they were staring concernedly, at least two of the researchers were checking to make certain their automatic recorders were functioning properly. Cherpa’s anguish constituted a unique display, one that outside of studied historical recordings of human children was entirely new to the Myssari. Dedicated researchers that they were, they were not about to miss preserving a moment of it.

Ruslan found himself thinking that the first one of them that mentioned possible reproductive possibilities was going to receive a punch to its facial foreridge. The girl was awakening in him all manner of instincts he thought long forgotten. Ancient genetic information was being roused. It was astounding. It was remarkable. For the first time in decades he felt… protective. Alien though the emotion might be, and unnecessary, he did not reject it.

Taking a small, individual specimen recovery tube from his pack, Bac’cul contemplated obtaining a sample of the lubricating fluid that was spilling from the immature human’s eyes. He was anxious to learn if its composition differed from that of the male mature specimen Ruslan. It was not the human who intervened to prevent him, however, but one of his own kind. Startled, he looked to his left. It was the intermet Kel’les who had interrupted the scientist’s proposed course of action.

“I believe I perceive your intention. I recommend postponement. As was often the case with Ruslan, I am certain there will be ample future opportunity to acquire the sample you wish to take.”

While Bac’cul technically outranked the human’s personal handler, the researcher decided not to make an issue of the minor confrontation. Not without fully satisfying his curiosity, however.

“Why should I not proceed?”

Kel’les gestured toward the humans. “Observe the interaction. Note the intimacy of the respective stances. An elder male is comforting a distraught juvenile. One whose mental state is, according to Ruslan, perilous. From the extensive time I have spent in Ruslan’s company, I deduce that interruption at such a moment could be interpreted as unnecessarily provocative.”

Bac’cul indicated his uncertainty. “I am not sure that I follow your reasoning.”

Kel’les obligingly abridged it. “There are times when Ruslan takes objection to being treated as a thing. Now that he is functioning in caring mode, I believe his reaction to what he might perceive as an insensitive intrusion would be detrimental to your ultimate purpose.”

The researcher was taken aback. “You’re not suggesting he might resist my attempt physically?”

“I am suggesting precisely that,” a tense Kel’les replied.

Bac’cul didn’t hesitate. He returned the collection cup to its holder. He was not fearful that the human might hurt him: he was afraid that the human might hurt himself. As he looked on he realized that there was wisdom in Kel’les’s intervention that could be applied beyond the immediate situation. The history of Ruslan’s presence among the Myssari had shown that it had taken some time to fully gain the human’s trust. Similarly, gaining the girl’s confidence was likely to take at least as long. As with Ruslan, it would be vital to have her full cooperation in order to best advance the field of human studies. As a specimen, she was plainly going to be around for longer than the older male. Bac’cul’s withholding his immediate interest was therefore based entirely on a respect for good science and not at all on empathy for a distressed fellow sentient. It was just good sense, if not good sensitivity.

Having lived long among the Myssari, Ruslan would have understood this reasoning. But that did not mean he would have liked it.