Quofum

by Alan Dean Foster

  He did not have to go looking for the technician. Araza answered promptly when the captain buzzed him. The miniaturized communit clipped to Boylan’s right ear served as both pickup and speaker.

  “Water condenser again,” he snapped. “Got to be condenser. There’s nothing coming out of any of the pipes.”

  “Irrigation also?” Araza was a master of the terse interrogatory.

  “I haven’t checked it for leaks, but I don’t see why that part of system should be any different. We know it can’t be vapor problem.” On this part of Quofum, at least, the air was saturated with moisture. With that kind of spongy atmosphere to draw upon, even a partially functioning condenser should have been able to provide plenty of water to all parts of the camp.

  “I will check Irrigation,” Araza replied. “If it is dry also, I will get right on the condenser.”

  Boylan was not in the mood for delays. “I told you, there no reason to check Irrigation. I’m heading up to the installation. Meet me there.”

  There was a pause at the other end. “I would really like to run a system’s check on Irrigation first.”

  “Condenser installation,” Boylan snapped in his best no-nonsense tone. “Now.” He shut down the commlink.

  Maybe he was being too rough on Araza, he mused as he headed for the life-support wing of the camp. Give him his due: the tech did work hard. But he had on more than one occasion demonstrated a proclivity for overanalysis, for wasting time on checking that which had already been noted and dismissed. Even if water was flowing to Irrigation, the condenser’s condition still needed to be checked and its status determined before they could rule it out as the cause of the shortage. He knew from experience that every so often it was important, even in small ways, to remind others who was in charge. Perhaps the occasion of the loss of flow to the camp was not the best time to make the point, but it was already done. He smiled thinly to himself. Araza was tough. The man would survive another brief bout of criticism.

  When Boylan surmounted the roof of the third and southernmost wing of the camp he found the tech already hard at work on the condenser. Seeing the captain, Araza waved. Boylan, who had ascended via a different set of steps, responded with a brisk gesture of his own. While rising to little more than a single story in height, the top of the gently arching snap-together roof sections offered a pleasant change of view from that available at ground level. As he made his way across the dimpled gray-green surface toward the roof-mounted condensing unit and the waiting technician, Boylan reflected on what the expedition had accomplished thus far.

  There was reason to be proud. With minimal staff, they had erected a small but complete camp. Preliminary contact had been made with not one but with an unprecedented four species of native sentients. The planet had proven to be both a biological mine and an evolutionary minefield of new genotypes. When the official report of the expedition was filed upon their return home, the science team would be showered with honors. As for himself, he could look forward to a significant promotion within the civil service ranks as well as the approval and admiration of his peers.

  Assuming, of course, he and his people didn’t die of thirst first.

  Despite the ongoing condenser problems, that likelihood was sufficiently improbable as to verge on the impossible. After all, the pink-tinged sky gave up rain periodically and there was a sizable river nearby. Both sources could be drawn upon in an emergency. However, purer, safer water for drinking, bathing, and scientific work was to be had by extracting it directly from the atmosphere, so it would be better to fix the condenser.

  Kneeling on the rooftop, Araza had his repair kit spread out to one side and several dissembled components of the big, boxy condenser unit carefully placed elsewhere, well within reach and where they would not be likely to slide off the roof.

  “How it coming?” In a pinch, Boylan could probably have performed the necessary repairs himself. Modern scientific equipment was designed to self-diagnose. Repairs usually involved simple module replacement. But he would have been the first to admit that Araza could do the work better, and faster.

  “Same problem as last time,” the tech told him. “This is the second antibacterial third-stage purifier that has failed on us.” His voice was accompanied by a slight reverb since he spoke while his head and upper body were inside the condenser’s protective shell. “I have run checks. The preliminary indication is that the module in question is overpowered. As a temporary fix and until I can run tests on the remaining replacements, I am putting in a bypass via a reduction circuit. This will lower the power to the third-stage purifier while allowing it to continue to function normally.” Scooting backward on hands and knees, he straightened and used a cloth to wipe perspiration from his forehead.

  Araza was considerably taller than the captain, slim and muscular as a marathon runner. His shirt and shorts were soaked with sweat. Working on the ground was hot, making repairs on the roof hotter still. There was no breeze this morning.

  “How long?” Boylan inquired.

  The technician considered. “Five more minutes. Ten at the most.”

  “Then we have water?”

  The taller man smiled thinly. At times it was impossible to tell what the man was thinking, Boylan knew. Not that he cared. All that mattered was that the tech did the necessary work.

  “Then we will have water,” Araza assured him. Kneeling again, he picked up a tool and thrust his torso into the open condenser housing.

  Bending over to peer inside, Boylan rested one hand on the lip of the opening. “You know,” he essayed conversationally, “if you’d fixed this right the first time you wouldn’t be stuck up here now, sweating away the morning.”

  “The problem could not be anticipated.” Araza spoke while continuing to work, his voice emerging slightly distorted from the depths of the condenser. “It is very uncharacteristic for such simple modules to fail. An official note of complaint to the manufacturer would not be out of order.”

  “Record it,” Boylan replied testily. “I’ll second and sign it.” Raising his gaze, he squinted at the sky through his tinted visor. “We just lucky we set up camp in a wet forest and not in a desert.” Shifting his stance, he leaned back against the unit and folded his hands over his belly. “Of course, we set up in desert, then air-con fails, or something similar. Is first unwritten rule of exploration.” He concluded the observation by drawing the sidearm he always wore at his waist. “Another rule is that indigenous life-forms will have no fear of humans or thranx. Like for example, the ones that are having a go at me right now.”

  Araza quickly scrambled backward out of the unit. His own weapon lay close at hand among the rest of the tools. As Boylan crouched down nearby, using the square mass of the condenser unit for cover, both men took aim at this latest manifestation of predatory Quofumian wildlife. It was not, the captain reflected as he sighted carefully over the back of his pistol, that the outrageous diversity of native life was atypically hostile. It was simply that with so many life-forms running amuck in the sky and river and forest where they had chosen to set down, a certain proportion were bound to be carnivorous. Carnivores are intrinsically curious. When presented with something entirely new, the only way for them to find out if it is good to eat is to taste it.

  Declining to be tasted, he and Araza fired almost simultaneously.

  The nearest of the half dozen or so toothy arboreals diving toward the roof of the building flew apart in a shower of alien bone, guts, and what more than anything else resembled an exploded ball of yellow twine. For an instant, a small portion of sky was stained darker than its usual pink. Now missing most of the body to which they had formerly been attached, membranous wings flapped and fluttered to the ground, coming to rest in the circular clearing that had been sheared around the camp’s three interlocking living modules.

  The explosive demonstration had a salubrious effect on the rest of the plummeting feral flock. While they had no idea what had caused the sudden disintegrat
ion of their leader, collective prudence declared that hovering in the immediate vicinity of the attacking matriarch’s noisy and messy demise might prove unhealthy. Banking sharply, they whirled and fled back toward the trees from which they had emerged.

  Rising, a satisfied Boylan walked to the edge of the roof to stare down at the shattered corpse of the aerial predator he had shot. Unraveling on impact, the peculiar cluster of stringy organic material reached halfway from the mangled body to the inner edge of the camp’s charged perimeter. Araza had come up alongside him. Despite his quiet, phlegmatic nature, the technician could be an inadvertently uneasy presence. There were times when he seemed to appear out of nowhere, making not a sound. Haviti had once stated that he didn’t walk—he floated. His tread could be as subdued as his voice.

  The captain pointed. “See all that stringlike material? I wonder at its function.”

  “Not for me to say.” Nevertheless, a curious Araza leaned forward and looked down to examine the carcass. “Some kind of internal support, perhaps. Sinewy integuments, tendons—N’kosi will know. Or Haviti.”

  “Yes, Haviti will know,” Boylan murmured. “Quite a woman, that.”

  The tech shrugged his lean shoulders. “Too smart for me. Sometimes when I listen to her it makes my head hurt.”

  While he could have continued the chat, Boylan decided not to. In the course of the journey out from the Commonwealth he, like the rest of the team, had learned that pretty much any kind of conversation seemed to make Araza’s head hurt. Though he was not in any way overtly antisocial, the technician managed to make it clear without having to come out and say so that he preferred the company of his tools and manuals to that of other humans. Or thranx, for that matter. This insight upset no one. Boylan also cherished his privacy. And as he had just reiterated, there was little Araza had to contribute to casual conversation among four experienced and knowledgeable researchers.

  Anyway, it was not banter Boylan wanted from the team’s technician. It was water.

  Araza was as good as his word. Discounting the time he had been forced to pause in his work to help drive off the attacking aerial carnivores, final replacement of the failed filter unit had taken less than ten minutes. It took only a few more to replace the exterior panel on the condenser and secure it in place.

  “Finished,” he declared as he began to pack up his tools.

  “I hope so.” Boylan grunted. “The perimeter has been solid, but I want to get rest of the lab equipment unpacked and shelled in. Be a nice welcome back for our friends. With all they have seen, they will be wanting to dive right into follow-up studies, I think. It will be nice for them to find all equipment online and functioning when they return.”

  “I will get right on it.” Araza started toward the steps he had used to climb up onto the roof. They were embedded in the side of the building. “It is what I was doing when the water pressure went down.”

  “Disappeared, you mean. We don’t want it happen again.”

  “I think it will be all right now.” As he started down the side of the building, the technician looked back up at him. “I promise. If I have to ask you to help me with the condenser again, I will shoot myself first.”

  Boylan was quietly startled. It was the tech’s first attempt to make a joke that the captain could recall. A good sign, certainly. Not that he expected the placidly dour Araza to suddenly metamorphose into the expedition’s comic relief. The very idea was itself amusing. No one, he told himself as he retraced his own steps across the roof while keeping a wary eye out for the return of any winged predators, appreciated the hygienic benefits of shared merriment more than he did. Even if others did tend to say that Nicholai Boylan was apt to confuse disdain with humor. What nonsense! True, he could be stern, but that was only out of concern for the safety of his companions, those whose well-being had been entrusted to his care. There was that old joke about barbarian cream pie, for example, which he felt he told as well as anyone.

  He chuckled aloud to himself as he turned and made his way down the steps that were integrated into the side of the laboratory building.

  He did not need to retire to a central communications station to contact the scientific team. There was no central communications station because it was unnecessary. Every member of the expedition carried with them one or more compact communits that were capable of multiple functions. Besides the ability to carry out complex field analysis, conduct full and detailed on-the-spot medical evaluation of an injured member, and perform various other tasks, each unit was capable of serving as a full-scale, fully featured communications center. The camp had no need of a separate room, or even a separate console, devoted to communications.

  Out in the field a team member so equipped could even contact any developed world in the Commonwealth. Of course, once the communication in question had been relayed from communit to shuttle to mother ship and then via narrow space-minus beam, the time delay involved would be considerable. It would take far longer for the communication to reach its intended destination than one that was boosted by a planet-based beam. But it would get there, eventually.

  A striding Boylan placed the call while inspecting the inner border of the camp’s defensive perimeter. Though it had proven thankfully more reliable and trouble-free than the water condenser, he made it a point to personally examine it at least twice a day. He wanted no repeat of the spikers’ intrusion, nor any surprises by other terrestrial belligerents.

  As he paced along the inner barrier something blue, fist-sized, and active came tumbling out of the nearest undergrowth. Taking an evasive, zigzag path, it approached the boundary. Contracting its entire body, it unexpectedly leaped off the ground with the intention of entering the camp compound a meter or so ahead of the captain.

  There was a bright flash of light and the singeing stink of ozone. Blackened and smoking, the small body lay on the ground where it had been knocked backward, just outside the perimeter. Boylan paused in his inspection to study the tiny body. A viscous, greenish gunk was leaking from the creature’s cracked core. In both directions all along the perimeter could be seen the blackened, crumpled corpses of a wide assortment of unsuspecting Quofumian fauna that had attempted to penetrate the camp perimeter, as well as several examples of mobile native plant forms.

  There was no sign that any of the confrontational spikers, either singly or in groups, had attempted to penetrate the enhanced perimeter subsequent to their initial failed assault on the camp. One could have tried and been fried, Boylan reflected, and the body hauled away by its surviving companions. But since that first attack there had been no alarms. The latter were programmed to alert the camp’s inhabitants only if the perimeter was breached. If they had been set to go off every time an attempt was made, just based on what he was seeing now in the course of his casual inspection, the ringing inside the buildings would have been continuous.

  There was an additional benefit to be gained from the lethal fence line. It was generating an abundance of specimens for the scientists to study, a collection that required minimal gathering activity. Admittedly, most of the samples thus unintentionally acquired were not in the best of condition. But as a supplement to the researchers’ fieldwork they would still be welcomed.

  He lingered a moment to study something the size of a large dog. It had six legs, though the shock of its demise had splintered two of them. Lying on its side he could not tell which was the front end, which the back, or in the case of this particular woodland denizen if such regional designations even applied.

  He was quite pleased. Every aspect of the fence line appeared to be in working order. One reason less to chew out Araza. As Boylan resumed his walk, he acknowledged the delayed response to his call.

  “Tellenberg here, Nicholai.” The scientist knew it was Boylan calling back because every one of the communits in use by the team had its own signature. Besides which, the researcher could see the captain on his own unit’s screen, just as Boylan could see Tellenberg. Neither
man adjusted his device to produce a full three-dimensional image. Each already knew what the back of the other man’s head looked like. Calling forth full fidelity was an unnecessary waste of power. He might have chosen differently, Boylan mused, if he were talking with Haviti.

  “Everything is okay?” Boylan inquired. “Everything is good with you and the others?”

  “Everything is good, yes.” Of the four researchers, it was Tellenberg who could manage the best imitation of the captain’s gruff tone. “Mother,” he finished.

  “That’s right, make fun of Nicholai. I am only responsible for camp, for success of this mission, and for your continued health and safety. I have no responsibilities and I can relax all day and watch bad tridee recordings. Not like you, who have arduous responsibility of spending a few hours each day collecting butterflies.”

  “Some of the ‘butterflies’ around here bite,” Tellenberg told him.

  Boylan’s concern was immediate and real. “Someone has been bitten? Already I see that on this world it could prove difficult to defend against so many possible dangers, small as well as large.”

  “No, no.” The scientist hastened to correct him. “As reported, we’ve had a few run-ins with some of the simpler local life-forms. You know how it is. Very typical for a planet where the predatory fauna has no reason to fear offworlders. Such attacks just enable us to add to our collections.”

  Striding along the inside of the fence line, Boylan came across another heap of dead wildlife. “Without even being directed to do so, the camp is also adding to your collections. Or to dinner. I will leave to your expertise the requisite categorizations.”