"Your mating coloration, your pheromones, your flirtatious small talk. I can"t bear to wait any longer. Are you really in- terested in mating with me, or should I just die unfulfilled?"
I couldn"t figure out how a Borrak was supposed to smile, so I just made my voice sound warm and receptive. "I would be greatly honored to make love to you."
The Borrak seemed uncertain and afraid, but hookermorphs have to deal with that all the time. I coaxed her and boosted her confidence, then let her usher me up the motivator ramp, crossing a webbed catwalk to get to her room.
She had selected one of the nestlike dwellings. Inside, she had stocked the place with colored gelatinous blocks of sug- ar-based foods. Every spare niche was stuffed with brilliant fresh flowers. Water dripped from a fountain off in the comer.
Despite the cloying perfume of the sweet foodstuffs and the flowers, the place did have a romantic look about it.
The Borrak hummed, then flickered her wing casings, pal- pitating a membrane in her abdomen with a sound very much like a love song. I was mentally noting all this to turn in a re- port to the compilers of the Lexicon.
"I am so glad you like me," she said. "I have been ready THE HAPPY HOOKERMORPH.
225.
to sp.a.w.n for so long. I don"t know how I could have waited another day. My entire body aches for you!"
Dancing on my multiple legs, I sidled up next to her.
"Well, then, let us get on with it. I"m also anxious to mate with you."
"I"m so glad you understand," she said. Then she stung me in the soft part of my thorax.
I found it amazing how rapidly the paralysis struck me down.
My mind wasn"t clouded in the least, but I felt no pain as I tum- bled to the floor in a clamor of chirin and disjointed legs. My face was not turned toward her, but the dome eyes had a wide enough field of view that I could see her movements. I could breathe, but I could not speak. What had I gotten myself into?
Her abdomen seemed to be pulsing, and I could see her ex- truding something sharp from where I imagined the s.e.x organs would be. It appeared to be a long tube, like a pipe with a pointed end. An ovipositor.
Panic gushed through my glands. I wondered if that was a normal reaction for male Borraks, or if my own self- preservation instinct had merely kicked in. I couldn"t move.
The paralysis from her sting had put me completely out of commission.
Raising the ovipositor in the air like a spear, the female Borrak strode over to me. "I have been carrying these larvae around altogether too long. It"ll be a great relief to get rid of them. I really appreciate this, you know." She leaned over to nuzzle the colorful crest on my head.
Then she backed up and thrust her ovipositor through the chitinous sh.e.l.l of my wing casings, burying it deep within my body cavity. That time I felt the pain! She squirmed and dug the hollow point around and around until she finally managed to deposit one of her squirming larvae inside of me.
She heaved a big sigh, withdrew her ovipositor, then shoved it in a different place, laying another voracious Borrak grub. She repeated the procedure six times, then finally re- tracted her ovipositor and sat down next to me, looking ex- hausted but fulfilled.
She surprised me by igniting a tobac-stick, then sucking in a long breath before blowing a cloud of smoke dreamily into the cloying air. "Ah, that feels so much better," she said. With 226 Kevin J. Anderson a foreleg, she patted my exoskeleton near where she had de- posited her larvae. "You"re a great lay."
Inside me, I could feel the grubs beginning to stir.
The Borrak hauled herself to her numerous feet and preened in front of a mirror. "As you can see, I"ve provided everything they"ll need. Plenty of food and fresh vegetation, just the right environmental conditions. I"ve got the room re- served for three weeks, and by that time they should be ready to fend for themselves. I"ll let them know at the desk that the childrens" return tickets to Borrakus should come out of your account. That is the father"s duty, you know." She raised her antennae in question, but of course I could not respond. The only functional nerves in my body seemed to be the ones transmitting jabs of pain as the grubs began to devour me from within.
"Well, at least that"s over with for another year," she sighed to herself, then left. I heard her seal the door behind herself, illuminating the Do Not Disturb sign- From within my body, I could feel seven distinct paths of agony where the grubs continued to munch. They seemed to be very hungry....
John-23 thought it greatly amusing that a hookennorph would take time off for maternity leave. But hey, everyone else is ent.i.tled, so why shouldn"t I be?
"Stay away from that edge!" I called to the seven babymorphs lurking too close to the zero-g swimming pool.
"Wait until you team how to change into a water-breather be- fore you mess around in a pool."
All of the little ones sulked into their protoplasmic state for a moment; then with the short memory of children, they bounded off in different directions, a kaleidoscope of chang- ing shapes, imitating parts of whatever they found interesting around them. Very precocious kids-I"m proud of them.
I had never even thought of reproducing myself before.
While I understood the mating habits of countless other sen- tient creatures, I had somehow remained ignorant about "the birds and the bees" for my own species. Hookermorphs don"t spend a lot of time learning how to become parents; that"s not what hookermorphs consider a desirable skill. It"s a good thing something in our inbred instinct triggered a reaction in THE HAPPY HOOKERMORPH.
227.
me, though, and I did exactly the right thing while the little Borrak grubs were having me for lunch.
You see, the way we morphs reproduce is to surround an- other living organism, and then transform back to the basic state, dragging the enclosed organism along for the ride.
You"ve never read that in the Lexicon, now have you? With seven Borrak grubs gnawing away inside of me as the paral- ysis gradually began to wear off, the best I could manage was to transform back to my basic state, formless, like a bag of old soup. And that did the trick. Inside me were no longer any voracious larvae, but seven squirming babymorphs.
The babymorphs came out of it delighted, ready for me gal- axy and eager to learn. John-23 thinks they"re cute, at least in some of their incarnations, and the rest of the hotel staff seems tolerant at least.
Over by the pool, one of the guests was walking a spiny- backed dragon dog, who sprayed acid on some of the comer shrubs. It lunged on its leash, snarling at the cl.u.s.ter of babymorphs. Feeling a surge of maternal protective instinct, I jumped to my feet, but the little ones reacted all at once, changing into an array of hideous monstrosities. One of the babymorphs became a fanged Putter-clam, opening wide its jagged sh.e.l.l and snapping at the dragon dog, which fled back behind its owner"s legs.
I smiled- They already know how to defend themselves.
Now I just need "to teach them how to flirt.
With a sigh, I settled back into the chaise lounge and let the sunlight photosynthesize my green skin. I"ve earned a rest, haven"t I? I need to write a letter to the Lexicon people, since I have two new listings for them. one for Borraks and one for morphs. And while I"m at it, maybe I"ll try my hand at writ- ing my memoirs. That should surely scandalize the galaxy"
Just the type of thing people will pick up to read on an out- bound starflight. It"ll sell millions.
Besides, I"d better make my fortune soon. As precocious as the babymorphs seem to be, I"m bound to have compet.i.tion before long. I"ll really need to stay in shape.
VOLATILE MIX.
Jerry Olfion
David Wikondu was walking down the corridor toward the best of the hotel"s three restaurants, antic.i.p.ating a lavish dinner on his expense account, when he heard the scream from around the corner. It was a long, warbling howl, and sounded as if it had come from an alien throat, which didn"t surprise him. There were maybe half a dozen other humans in this whole wing of the hotel, tops.
He hesitated, wondering if he should simply turn around and let whatever was happening unfold without him, but cu- riosity got the better of him. Curiosity and the suspicion that it hadn"t been a cry of joy. Someone was probably in trouble.
Rare as they were, another human collided with him as he turned the comer, knocking him off his feet to land with a thump against the wall. The other guy tripped as well, and the pistol he carried in his left hand skittered away down the cor- ridor toward the restaurant.
David had just enough time to wonder what Loren Larue, 229.
230 Jerry Oltion the vid star, was doing with a gun at an interspecies peace conference in the experimental multi-environment wing of the Hotel Andromeda before the actor jumped to his feet and took off running up the corridor David had just come down- He ran with a peculiar gait, bobbing up and down and stumbling as if on uneven ground, and as he receded David saw that he carried a small air tank strapped to his back. David couldn"t imagine why; the whole advantage to the hotel"s new wing was that force fields held a person"s own atmosphere in an in- visible bubble around them no matter where they went. It also provided whatever gravity they were used to; Lame shouldn"t have been wobbling like that. Had he been wounded? Maybe that"s why he was running.
Whoever screamed had stopped now; David looked up to see a pet.i.te, light blue-furred alien bending over what looked at first to be a colorful rug, but which proved on second glance to be another alien of different species lying flat on the floor. It was one of the floating-gas-bag variety, probably a Ranthanik, now deflated.
The s.p.a.ce around the furry one-a T"klar, David realized, and probably female by its size-glowed with a soft blue radiance; most likely something in her air fluorescing in the overhead lights. David pushed himself to his feet and took a step toward her, but when she looked up and saw him coming she yowled another earsplitting, warbling screech and backed away.
"It"s all right," he said, taking a few steps closer. "I Just got here."
The T"klar wasn"t rea.s.sured. Without another sound, she turned and bounded away on her long, slender legs, disappearing into the crowd that was gathering at the restaurant entrance. A faint trail of blue fluorescence glimmered in her wake.
David saw no sense in chasing her. He bent down next to the Ranthanik to see if there was anything he could do for it, but the charred hole in its leathery hide was big enough to shove a fist through. All its methane had leaked out, and by the looks of it, all its life, too.
He stood up and turned toward the gathering crowd. The hotel"s force-field life system was living up to its advertise- ments; among the less exotic species he saw a heavy-planet Nirulo standing next to a gangly ammonia-breathing Cheedon VOLATILE Mix 231 and a fuming, sulfurous Grota, and none of them seemed dis- tressed at all by the others* proximity.
"Has anyone called Hotel Security?" he asked.
No one replied. He knew they understood him; the same system that monitored each person"s position for their force coc.o.o.n of atmosphere also provided translation of any alien speech in the vicinity.
"Someone, please call Security," he said more forcefully.
"And get somebody here who knows Ranthanik medicine. We might still be able to save him." David had no idea whether that was true or not, but he figured it would be better to en- on the side of caution.
One of the aliens further inside the restaurant-or maybe the Tklar-had evidently already made the call. David was still dy- ing to think of anything else he could do when a gleaming silver robot slid out from a doorway partway down the corridor and glided up to him. Before David could react, one of its four sin- uous arms reached out and wrapped around his neck.
It hadn"t quite cut off his wind. "Hey, what are you doing?"
he croaked. "Let me go!"
"I"m sorry, sir," it said in a synthesized human voice, "but you will have to come with me."
The robot put him in a seven- by ten-pace room with a sin- gle chair in it. David sat sullenly on the chair, wishing he"d given in to his first impulse and just left the T"klar and the Ranthanik to fend for themselves. He didn"t know what sort of trouble he was in just yet-the robot had only told him that he was needed for questioning-but he didn"t tike the look of this room at all.
He couldn"t help examining it with a professional eye, though. He was an a.s.sistant manager for a rival hotel, the Hightower, and he was on a tour of other hotels, looking for new ideas he could incorporate into his own. So far he hadn"t seen anything he liked better than what the Hightower already had to offer, but when he"d heard of the Andromeda"s new life-system design he"d come to check it out.
He"d snooped around in as many public areas as he could find, but he hadn"t seen anything like the room he was in now. It was obviously an undifferentiated guest unit, the bare cubicle upon which an individual species" requirements could 232 Jerry Oltion be built. The walls were a uniform dull gray, as was the ceil- ing. Presumably whatever coloring or decorations were needed could be extruded from it or hung there by the service staff when a guest checked in.
The floor, like the floors everywhere, was dotted with tiny holes from which came the atmosphere that the personal force fields-also generated in the floor-held around each guest Da- vid couldn"t see the variable gravity generators, but he knew they were there, too. He even knew a little about how they worked. The whole system-force fields and all-was really just an elaborate enhancement of technology that existed in every hotel, including the Hightower. It was the way they put it all to- gether, the way it allowed mutually alien races to coexist within the same habitat, mat was the breakthrough.
He"d been considering buying the system from the An- dromeda until their security robot had dragged him away and locked him in here, but the longer he waited in the single chair, the less inclined he felt to give them his business. They would have to apologize, and apologize with a big cut in price, if they expected to see any of his credit.
The door slid open and a squat, cone-shaped Niruto wad- dled into the room, flanked by two of the silver security ro- bots. The Niruto"s twin trunks were coiled around its hemispherical head, parked there for support in the three g"s or so that pulled on them.
A buzzing sound came from within the coiled limbs, and an unseen translator said, "Your ID lists you as David Wikondu.
Is this correct?"
"Yeah, that"s right," David answered.
"You are not a member of the interspecies peace confer- ence delegation."
"No. I"m an a.s.sistant manager for the Hotel Hightower.
I"m here to look at your multi-environment system."
"That is your stated purpose. However, you are charged with the a.s.sa.s.sination of Hranda Nefanu Dnanda, the Ranthanik del- egate to the conference. Do you admit to the crime?"
David leaped up from his chair. "No! I showed up-hey!"
The robots advanced on him and shoved him gracelessly back onto the chair.
"Please remain seated," the Niruto said. "You were found at the scene of the murder. Witnesses said that the Ranthanik VOLATILE Mix 233 was killed by a human. You were the only human in evidence, therefore you are the murderer."
David shrugged off the robots" arms, but stayed in the chair. "No, there was somebody else. He knocked me down making his escape."
"Another human?"
"That"s right. He looked like Loren Larue. He dropped his gun when he ran into me."
The Niruto stepped closer to David. "We recovered the weapon, a microwave laser. It could just as easily have been yours."
"It was Loren Larue"s!" David shouted.
The Niruto paused momentarily, no doubt consulting a data base somewhere with its neural linkup. "Loren Larue is not a guest at this hotel," it said.
"Well of course not," David said. "It was obviously some- one else wearing a mask. They didn"t want to be recognized."
"Very few beings can tell humans apart," the Niruto said.
"A mask would be pointless."
That was probably true, David realized. He had a hard time telling most aliens apart, too, at least within species lines.
That would probably change if multi-species habitats like this one became more common, but for now the Niruto was right "Maybe it wasn"t a human," David said. "Maybe some- body else wanted to make it look like a human had done it.
They probably just used Loren Larue as a model because he was easiest to get a holo of."
"This is wild speculation," the Niruto said.
David leaned forward on his chair. "No, it"s not Whoever it was had an air tank on his back. I didn"t notice a breathing mask, so he probably had it piped into his Lame mask. I"ll bet he had a human ID card, so the life system was giving him hu- man air and he needed the tank to provide what he really needed."
The Niruto uncoiled a limb and rubbed the tip of it across the top of its head. When it spoke, its buzz was louder, as was its translation. "A human ID would not have availed him any- thing. We don"t track our guests by their ID cards."
"Does the murderer know that?"
"I suspect he just learned it"
"I"m not the murderer! Look, there was a T"klar there with 234 Jerry Oltion the Ranthanik. She must have seen me collide with whoever shot him. Ask her."
The Niruto waved its trunk toward the door. "We already did. She identified you as the killer."