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"I've, uh, heard good things about him."
"Anyway, we're trying to put together a program to extrapolate the physiology of the Chtorran animal from its genes, but we don't have anyone who can write a program for it yet. You're not a programmer, are you? The lack of a good hacker will probably add anywhere from two to three years to our research schedule. And it's a very important problem-and a double-edged one. We don't know what the genes are supposed to do because we don't know the creature, at least not very well. And we can't figure out the creature because we don't understand the genes. Some really peculiar things." She took a breath. "Like, for instance, half the chromosomes seem to be duplicates of each other. Like a premitosis condition. Why is that? We have more questions than answers."
"I'm sure," I said, trying to assimilate what she was telling me. "What about the millipedes? Didn't they give you any clues?"
"You mean the insectoids? They're another whole puzzle. For one thing, they all seem to be the same sex-did you know that? No sex at all."
"Huh?"
"We haven't found any evidence-nobody has-that there's any sexuality in them at all. Not physically, not genetically; no sex organs, no sexual differentiation, no secondary sex characteristics, no markings and not even any way to reproduce."
"Well, they must-"
"Of course they must, but the best we've found are some immature structures that might-just might, mind you-be undeveloped ovaries or testes-we're not sure which-and a vestigial reproductive tract, but they've been inoperative in every specimen we've dissected. Maybe they're just growth glands. But even if they were sexual structures, why are they buried so high up in the abdomen with no apparent co
She stopped at the main gate just long enough to flash her clearance at the sca
"Oh, yes. Quite a bit. We're just not sure how it works. The one we have-we thought it was a female. Now we're not sure. Now we're guessing it's a male. At least, I think it is, but ... we don't have anything to compare it with. We've been able to dissect some dead ones in the past couple months-two we think were females, one pretty definite male and two we're still not sure of. The big one was definitely male," she repeated. Her voice went fu
"Um," I said. I didn't know what else to say. I was begi
The floater slid to a stop before the building. It wasn't Lshaped, but X-shaped. We had parked in one of the corners. Bright lights illuminated the whole area. As I got out, I paused to look up at the poles. Just as I thought, there were snoops on every tower; that's what the lights were for. Security. Nothing was going to get in-or out-without being recorded.
I wondered if anyone was looking at the recordings. And then I wondered if it mattered.
There were eleven other people already in the room. It was long and narrow and dimly lit. Two rows of chairs ran the length of the room, facing a wall of glass. I could make out five women, six men. The men all seemed to be civilian types, but I couldn't be sure. I didn't know if the women were their colleagues or their companions for the evening. If the latter, I couldn't help but wonder at their choice of entertainment. The men waved to Jilla
Jilla
"Smitty's just getting ready."
"What's on for tonight?"
"Coupla dogs they picked up from the shelter."
One of the women, the redheaded one, said, "Oh, that's awful."
"It's in the interest of science," someone answered. I wasn't convinced.
Jilla
The glass slanted diagonally out over a deep room below us; we overlooked it as if on a balcony. The light was dim below, hardly much brighter than the viewing room. There was a distinct orange cast to the illumination. I felt pleased at that-so someone else had discovered the same thing!
Deep, slow-paced sounds were coming from two wall speakers. Something breathing.
I stepped forward to look. There was an inclined notebook rack at the bottom of the glass; I had to lean out over it to see.
A layer of straw-it looked orange in this light-was spread across the floor. The room was high and square, a cube, but the bottom half was circular. The corners had been filled in to make a round enclosure four meters high; the top of it came right up to the window. There were cameras and other monitoring devices on the resulting shelves formed in the corners.
The Chtorran was directly below me. It took a second for my eyes to adjust.
It was a meter thick, maybe a bit more; two and a half, maybe three meters, long. Its fur was long and silky and looked to be deep red, the color of blood-engorged skin. As I watched, it humped forward once, twice, a third time, then stopped. It was circling against the wall, as if exploring. It was cooing softly to itself. Why did that u
"That means he's excited," breathed Jilla
It slid forward into the middle of the room then, began scratching at the straw on the floor. From this angle, I could see its cranial hump quite clearly-underneath that fur, it was helmeted across the shoulders. A bony carapace to protect the brain? Probably. Its long black arms were folded now and held against its sides like wings, but I could see where they were anchored to the forward sides of the helmet. The brain bulge was directly behind the creature's two thick eyestalks. From this angle, the Chtorran looked more like a slug or a snail than a worm.
"Does he have a name?" one of the women asked. She was tall and blond.
Her date shook his head. "It's just it. " Sput-phwut went the speaker. Sput-phwut.
"What was that?"
Jilla
"It's facing the wrong way."
"Well, wait. He'll turn."
"Be a good show tonight," the guy at the end said as he lit a cigarette. "Saint Bernard and a Great Dane. I'm betting the Bernard puts up a better fight."
"Aah, you'd bet on your grandmother."
"If she still had her own teeth, I would."
Jilla
Sput-phwut.
The Chtorran humped around and looked at us with eyes like black disks. Like dead searchlights. It humped up, lifting the front third of its body into the air, trembling slightly, but focusing its face-like the front end of a subway, flat and emotionless-toward us. I stepped back involuntarily, but Jilla
Sput-phwut.
It had blinked. The sound was made by its sphincter-like eyelids, irising closed and open again. Sput-phwut. It was looking right at me. Studying dispassionately.
I didn't answer her. I couldn't speak. It was like looking into the eyes of death.