‘We’re coming,’ I told him, activating the transmitter at my throat. Then, gesturing at the obediently climbing Kretzoi, I told Elegy, ‘He’s liable to get shaken out of that damn thing. And he’s probably going to need some help.’
‘Hold your hand lamp up for him, then.’
I shone my lamp up through the virtually impenetrable foliage, not knowing where exactly Kretzoi happened to be or whether he truly had the skill to fashion a basket-sling from the nylon rope Elegy had given him. To allay my irritation, I said, ‘You’ve put the Asadi’s ancestors on Earth between seven and twelve million years ago, and here on BoskVeld between three and seven million. Is that right?’
‘I don’t know if it’s right,’ Elegy responded indifferently, playing her lamp’s beam from side to side among the chattering leaves, ‘but it’s what I speculate. The Ur’sadi sent representatives to BoskVeld precisely because it was a virgin planet with no advanced evolutionary sequence of land-going fauna to alter or disrupt by their presence. Burgeoning speciation had undone their representatives on Earth, after all, so they opted for a world with a compatible botanical ecosphere and only a few primitive annual forms as potential competitors. Many of these they exterminated, for this time they were relocating portions of their population not from any altruistic research motive, but because deteriorating solar conditions in their own planetary system—’
‘Made it imperative that they find a brave new world upon which to lay their burden down,’ I concluded for Elegy. Drops of rain began pattering down, staccato annotations of my impatience.
‘Yes,’ Elegy said, shielding her face with her forearm. ‘They came to BoskVeld with their polychromatic optical language intact. They’d even invented an extrasomatic means of conveying the language – their eyebooks, I mean – maybe a million or more years before their ill-fated experiment on Earth. That experiment may have failed, in fact, because the processes of evolutionary speciation on Earth selected against the complicated optical equipment that had allowed the Ur’sadi to achieve mastery of both their own distant world and the corridors of interstellar space.
‘Of the twin children born of Ur’sadi mothers who copulated with terrestrial primate males, only the child with eyes more nearly like its sire’s managed to survive. And not all of these. Radiation was a factor. So was primate prejudice. Because copulation took place from the rear, the male protohominids servicing the Ur’sadi females didn’t have to deal with the disconcerting appearance of their partners’ alien eyes. But socialization requires many face-to-face contacts, and juvenile primates with threatening Ur’sadi optical structures were killed long before they could reach maturity. The prospect of a visual “language” for you and me died with them, Ben.’
Kretzoi began hooting above us. So seldom had I heard him vocalize that at first I simply mistook the sound for some weird intensification of the storm.
‘What does he want?’ I cried.
‘Keep your hand lamp focused on that spot right there, Ben!’ Elegy grabbed my wrist and pointed the beam for me. ‘I’ll try to light him a pathway on the other side of the trunk!’ She ducked beneath a root arch and took up a position almost immediately opposite mine.
I was in no hurry to greet Bojangles’s half-eaten brother. The longer Kretzoi took to lower the nest the happier I’d be. I was even prepared to spend a night licking rainwater off my lips if that’s what so long a reprieve required. For now – all too soon – the rain was coming down torrentially.
But my mind wasn’t on the storm or Kretzoi’s efforts to ease down to us the Asadi nest. I was helplessly mulling everything Elegy had said and trying to fit the jagged pieces together.
‘What do you think happened to the Ur’sadi who arrived on BoskVeld, then?’ I shouted at Chaney’s daughter. ‘What, besides a depletion of resources, brought them down?’
Her hair plastered to her forehead and water running from her jumpsuit, Elegy showed me her ill-lit, rain-blurred face. ‘What?’ she called. ‘What did you say?’
Like a fool I repeated my questions.
‘Not now, Ben! It’s impossible!’ Her shoulders went up in an uncomprehending hunch. ‘Look – there’s the nest! There’s Kretzoi!’ Her beam stabbed upward into the dripping, chattering mangrove bladelets; and I saw Kretzoi emerge from the higher limbs stiff-backed and straining, for in front of him, balanced across his matted thighs, was the huge, twiggy disc of the Asadi nest.
Kretzoi had shaped a complicated cradle of rope to hold the nest, and the ends of the rope were wrapped in a harness around his neck and upper torso. As he came down through the mangrove, lowering himself branch by branch, the strain in his triceps and neck muscles seemed almost to be unbearable.
‘Help him!’ Elegy shouted as I watched Kretzoi’s display of willful physical strength. ‘Ben, reach up and help him!’
After holstering my hand lamp so that the beam still shone upward, I stretched to receive the prickly-slimy bottom of the Asadi nest. Surprise – it was as light as a big inflated doughnut of rubber or plastic. But only at first. Its lightness had to do with the fact that Kretzoi, even after I’d slipped my arms beneath it, was supporting the nest entirely by himself. Only when he had dropped all the way to the ground did I begin to experience the nest’s full weight. I staggered back with it as Elegy helped Kretzoi free himself of the harness he had made.
There in my arms, a nightmare. The Asadi’s lower viscera outlined themselves in the downpour as if in rippling neon. The creature had no limbs to speak of, although stubs where its arms should have been may have signaled the beginnings of an arcane regenerative process. The eyes were empty bubbles, glinting with oily highlights. I could feel myself on the edge of a breathtaking faint.
Then, suddenly, Elegy’s thumb was pressing against my teeth, and before I
