The Flavors of Other Worlds Read online

  “Yeah.” Stefan was immediately on guard. “I remember it. So what?” He slapped at his forehead, smashing something small, irritating, and resistant to the day’s cocktail of insecticides that he had liberally applied earlier.

  Perv gestured grandly at the newcomer, who was gazing around at the interior of the station with eyes that were even wider than normal. “Meet your new native assistant!”

  Stefan blanched, recovered when he thought it was a joke, eyed his friend in disbelief when it began to sink it that it was not. “Don’t try to be funny, Perv. It’s too hot today.”

  “And it’ll be too hot tomorrow, and the day after that, and the one after that also. But this blob of gray goo is still your new assistant. Morey says so.”

  “Screw Morey!” As if the native was not present, Stefan gestured in its direction. “We don’t have indigenous assistants. No local works inside the Outpost.”

  “We do now,” Perv shot back. “They do now.”

  The other man’s eyes narrowed. “Then where’s your assistant?”

  “Regulations say that, at this point in the Outpost’s development, we only need one. She’s it. She’s yours.” His smile flattened. “Lack of seniority says so.”

  “‘She?’” A dubious Stefan studied the lumpish native, who continued to ignore the two young humans as she gawked at the interior of the trading room. “I thought the biologists hadn’t figured out how to sex them yet.”

  Perv stood away from the counter. “Far as I know, they haven’t. But that’s the classification I’ve been given.” He winked and turned to go. “I’ll leave you two alone now.”

  The other man gestured wildly. “Hey, wait a minute! What am I supposed to do with this—with ‘her’?”

  Perv kept walking. “Not my concern. Morey says she’s your new assistant. Get her to assist. Me, I’ve got work to do on the bromide concentrator or the delay’ll go down on my record.” He exited at a brisk clip, not looking back.

  Stefan was once again alone in the room. Well, not quite.

  Maybe if he ignored the native, it would go away. Sitting back down, he muttered the “unpause” command and resumed watching the word play he had been engrossed in prior to the trading clan’s arrival. Images danced in the air half a meter in front of his eyes. After a while, he became aware that he was not alone. As was often the case, it was the smell that tipped him off.

  Advancing silently on its sheet of motive slime, the Allawout had sidled up as close behind him as it dared, and was dutifully gazing up at images whose origin, meaning, and purpose must be as alien to it as tooth gel.

  Nostrils flexing in revulsion, he looked over his shoulder and down at the creature. Morey had declared it was his new assistant. Until he could make the notoriously gruff Outpost administrator who supervised all the young apprentices like himself see reason, Stefan realized with a sinking feeling that he was probably stuck with the creature. But fortunately, he told himself, not to it. If he abused it physically, there could be trouble. Members of the station’s scientific contingent, who infrequently mixed with the much younger and less experienced team of trader apprentices, would report him. His advancement up the company ladder would be questioned, and he might even be dropped down a rating or two. That could not be allowed to happen. Not after the horrid half year he had already been forced to put in on Irelis.

  Swallowing his distaste, he asked in terranglo, “Do you have a name?”

  The dumpy alien quivered revoltingly, as if trying to slough off its skin. Flesh-protecting mucus oozed from pores and slid down its sides. “I am chosen Uluk.”

  At least it could talk a little, the apprentice reflected. Come to think of it, the staff would not have selected one to work inside the station, with humans, unless it had acquired at least some facility with the language of the visitors. Then something happened that completely broke his train of thought.

  Raising a tentacle, the Allawout pointed at the hovering word play image and said, “Pretty—what means it?”

  It was the first time in nearly six months that Stefan had heard a local ask a question not directly related to trading. Minimal fluency he had expected: intellectual curiosity, if such it could be called, was something new. Without pausing to wonder why he was bothering to reply, he struggled to explain something of the subtle nature of a word play.

  She did not understand. That was not surprising. Had she comprehended even his childishly simple explanation, he would immediately have passed her along to the scientific staff as an exemplar of Allawout acumen. On the indigenous scale of intelligence she doubtless qualified as quite bright. About at the level of a human eight-year old, only without any book learning to draw upon. It was unlikely she would grow any smarter.

  But as the months progressed, she did. Or at least, her vocabulary increased. Struggling with the most fundamental concepts, she did everything he asked of her, from laboriously dragging trade goods into the back chamber to be sorted, catalogued, pre-priced, and packaged for shipment off-world; to making suggestions to visiting locals about what goods the strange dry-skin folk preferred and would pay well for.

  It was funny to see how the other natives deferred to her. Even mature males, muscular of tentacle and sharp of eye, seemed to shrink slightly in her presence. For a wild moment he thought she might be some kind of local equivalent of royalty, much as the notion of an Allawout princess seemed a contradiction in terms. Belleau Lormantz, one of the xenologists, assured him that could not be the case.

  “In the nearly twenty years there has been a human presence on Irelis, no evidence has surfaced of any level of government above that of the extended family or clan. They haven’t even achieved the tribal level yet. They’re just starting to emerge from the hunter-gatherer stage.” Belleau had a nice voice, Stefan mused. About the nicest voice on Irelis. And unlike most of the scientists, she was nearly the same age as he was.

  They were sitting together on one of the elevated walkways built atop balumina pilings that had been driven down through water and muck into the reluctant bedrock far below. Redder than that of his homeworld, Irelis’s sun was setting behind tall strands of red and yellow fiberthrush, the light peeking through the fronds to illuminate the station’s sealed, welded-together, prefabricated modules. Belleau was almost as reflective as the metal walls, he decided.

  A voice sounded behind them, plaintive yet insistent. “Stef-han, what should I do with kaja bowls just buying today?”

  He looked around irritably. “They go in the back, on the bottom shelves on the right-hand side. You know that, Uluk!”

  Her tone did not change, and she had no expression to alter. “Yes, Stef-han. I will make it so.” It took her several minutes to slip-slide back inside.

  He returned to contemplating the sunset, the violet underside of the evening cumulus filling his head with thoughts that did not belong in as unpleasant a place as the Outpost.

  “I hear that you’re leaving the station.”

  She nodded. “Sabbatical. On Rhenoull V. To consolidate my reports, put some into book form, give lectures—that sort of thing. I think I’ll be back, to start in on my advanced work. There’s a lot about these creatures we still don’t know.”

  “Is there that much more to learn?” When she did not comment, he added, “How do I know you’re coming back, Belle?”

  “Because I say so. Because my work is here.”

  He peered deep into her eyes. Perspiration glistened like pale pearls on her forehead and cheeks. She was wet, tired, unkempt, and beautiful. “Is that the only reason?”

  She turned away from him, seeking surcease in the sunset. “I’m not sure—yet,” she replied candidly. “I like you, Stefan. I like you a lot. But I’m so deep into my work that much of the time I feel like I’m drowning.”

  “Drown in me,” he told her with more intensity than he intended.

  Her hand slipped sideways to cover his. “Maybe when I come back,” she told him frankly. “When I have more confid
ence in my own future. Then, maybe—we’ll see. You’re a little young for me, Stefan.”

  “I’m not that young.” When he reached for her, she leaned away, laughing affectionately. “No, not now. As sweaty as we are, if we hold each other too tightly, we’re liable to slip right past each other and into the water.”

  He laughed too, and settled for squeezing her hand while waiting for the alien sun to finish its day’s work.

  He sweated out another six months, her absence made all the more frustrating by his having to deal with Uluk. Just when it seemed she was acquiring some real skill, she would do something supremely stupid. He was forced to reprimand her, sigh in exasperation, and explain the procedure all over again. She would listen patiently, indicate understanding, go along fine for a while, and eventually repeat the same mistake. Something about the Allawout seemed to render them incapable of retaining any pattern of information for more than a few weeks at a time. It was as if the entire species was afflicted with attention span deficit disorder. To make matters worse, he had to endure the endless jokes and gags the rest of the staff enjoyed at his expense. His only compensation was the occasional reluctant, approving grunt from Administrator Morey, who recognized the strain his most junior underling was operating under. That, plus praise from the scientific staff. The behaviorists in particular would seek him out to query him interminably about his conversations with the Allawout.

  “Look,” he would object in exasperation, “we don’t have ‘conversations.’ I give the thing orders, and she carries them out. Except when she forgets what to do, which is all the time, and I have to explain them all over again. Slowly and repeatedly, in the simplest terms possible.”

  “But within those constraints,” a much older xenologist had pressed him, “the native in question is capable of performing the complex tasks she is assigned by you.”

  “Sure,” he joked, “if you can call stacking carvings and sorting voull horns ‘complex.’ Anything that involves actually thinking I have to guide and help her with. Initiative doesn’t exist among the Allawout. Except where it concerns food and shelter, I personally don’t think they have any understanding of the concept.”

  “But the other locals obviously respect her deeply.” The scientist had been persistent.

  “Sure!” Stefan agreed. “She’s big stuff because she has a job in the House-of-Wonders-That-Stands-in-Water, and speaks freely to the visitors from the cloud rafts. I suppose,” he conceded, “that gives her some kind of rank, or status, that places her a notch above her fellow weed munchers.”

  A few such carefully chosen comments were usually sufficient to send the behaviorists on their contemplative way, muttering to themselves. One nice thing about Stefan’s assistant, as far as Morey was concerned, was that the native never questioned her status. She accepted payment in trade goods, never asked for a change in the amount or kind of remuneration, worked silently and steadily, and was a real help in communicating the wants of the human traders to the indigenes who arrived to partake of the marvels to be had at the station. She slept in an old concentrate barrel Perv had welded to one of the balumina stilts, just above the waterline. Each morning she would ooze out, drop into the water to clean herself, and then slide up the ramp that had been erected to provide her kind with easy access to the station. With their strong tentacles they could easily climb a ladder, but that would not allow them to bring goods into or take them out of the Outpost. Stefan had despaired of ever seeing Belleau again. Then one day, slightly less than a month before his tour was up and he was due to be promoted off-world, suddenly she was there, having arrived without notice on the monthly shuttle. They did not exactly fall into one another’s arms—not with Customs officials and everyone else watching. But their glances met, spoke, and smiled. Certain decisions were arrived at without the use of words.

  “I told you I’d come back,” she whispered to him later that morning.

  “To finish your work?” He left the question hanging, too fearful to add the anxious corollary he was burning to ask.

  “To do that, yes—and perhaps,” she added mischievously, “to attend to other matters.”

  “I’m done here in a few weeks.” They were standing in the Outpost, its familiar overheated surroundings for once the equal and not the excess of what he was feeling inside. “The Company has offered me my choice of positions. On civilized worlds, at a higher salary. I have a lot of flexibility.”

  “Hmm. That does open certain possibilities, doesn’t it? For example, I’ve taken a lectureship on Mathewson III.”

  He managed to maintain an even tone. “There are two Company operations on Mathewson. Big ones.”

  She nodded thoughtfully. Then she leaned forward, kissed him once, adequately, and almost ran from the room. He remained behind, dazed and relieved and overflowing with contentment.

  Behind him, an odor preceded a query. “Stef-han is happy?”

  His expression fell. The wondrous contentment rushed away like water through the bottom of a broken jar. Work called.

  “Yes, Uluk. Stefan happy. Stefan go away soon.”

  “Go away?” Crescent pupils swam within disc-like eyes. “Why Stefan go away?”

  “It’s time to go,” he muttered irritably. “All sky folk eventually go from Irelis. Go back to home.” At her uncomprehending silence he added, “Back to own raft.”

  She appeared to consider this. “Outpost not Stef-han’s raft?”

  “No, dammit. Don’t you have something to do?”

  “Yes. I forget.”

  Lifting his eyes heavenward, he moved to check the duty scan for the day. But nothing, not even Allawout doltishness, could entirely mitigate the joy Belle’s arrival and greeting had engendered.

  The next several weeks passed in a haze that was more a consequence of his re-establishing his relationship with Belleau than of the heavy atmosphere. They spoke of her science and his business, and how the two might complement one another on a world like Mathewson III. When it was clear that the positives outweighed the negatives, their delight was mutual. They were both very practical people.

  When it was time to go, to finally leave behind Irelis and its miasmatic swamps and lugubrious atmosphere and multifarious stinks and smells, it was almost an anticlimax. Morey was there to see them both off and to wish them well, the taciturn old Company man unable to look his former employee in the face for fear of giving way to an actual smile. Pervasatha was long gone, having been promoted ahead of Stefan, but several others among the scientific and commercial community who had established friendships with the personable young trader on his way up turned out to see him and his lady off.

  They were waiting for the skimmer that would ferry them out to the distant shuttle site, an artificial island built out in the middle of a voluminous lake, when it occurred to Stefan that something was missing. A certain stench.…

  “Funny,” he mused aloud, “I thought she’d come to say good-bye.”

  “‘She?’” Belleau’s querulous tone mimicked one he himself had used some time ago.

  “My indigenous assistant. An Allawout nominated Uluk. You met her. Or at least, you encountered her.”

  “Oh yes, of course. I only saw her a couple of times. She was usually working in the rear storeroom whenever I came into the Outpost.”

  He found himself searching the station’s walkways, then the lethargic muck beneath. “I thought she’d be here.” He shrugged. “Oh well. No matter. She probably forgot.” Turning back to Belleau, he smiled lovingly. “After a year here I don’t know how I’ll cope with a normal, Earth-type climate.”

  “I give you about two days to become fully acclimated,” she replied teasingly.

  Henderson came huffing and puffing down the walkway. Reaching out, the panting behaviorist caught his breath as he shook first the trader’s hand, then Belleau’s. “Wanted to wish luck to you both. I’m sure you won’t need it.”

  Stefan nodded his thanks. “Say, you haven’t by any chance
seen Uluk around today?”

  “Your indigene assistant?” Henderson’s expression fell. “Oh. I thought you knew. They found her yesterday, about half a kilometer from the station. On Islet Twelve. Dead. Self-inflicted killing wound, the biologists tell me. Sorry.”

  Something very strange congealed in the trader’s gut. But it went away quickly. “That’s too bad. I wonder what happened.”

  Henderson cast a quick glance in Belleau’s direction before replying. She was a fellow scientist, after all, and the incident was an interesting comment on indigenous behavioral patterns.

  “You really didn’t know, did you? No, you wouldn’t, being always focused on commerce, and trade balances, and the like. The Allawout’s focus is on extended family groupings, or clans. Alpha males and females, Beta juniors, and so on. Didn’t you ever notice that Uluk was never seen interacting with a family grouping?”

  Stefan shrugged indifferently. “You’re right. I never thought about it. She lived alone at the station. That was her choice. Morey, myself, everyone else—we all thought that was her choice.”

  “Oh, it was, it was,” Henderson hastened to assure him. “I spoke to her several times, you know. My work.” He added almost apologetically. “You didn’t know that she was focused on you?”

  The trader eyed the behaviorist uncertainly. “On me? Why would I ever notice something like that?”

  Belleau’s response was more understanding. “Are you saying that this Uluk individual chose to imprint on Stefan in lieu of a normal Allawout extended family grouping?”

  “The two of them worked together. Almost every day.” Henderson looked contrite. “I thought surely you would have sensed something, Stefan, or I would have mentioned something about it to you. It makes for a very interesting case history. In the absence of any other extended family members, it’s not uncommon for the Allawout to terminate themselves instead of attempting to impose themselves on another family or clan.”

  “C’mon, Tom!” Even as he remonstrated with the behaviorist, Stefan found himself scanning the vegetation of the distant, fetid swampland. He remembered how Uluk had hovered about him, lingering in his vicinity even when work was done; watching him operate the projector and the viewers; asking questions to which he was sure she already knew the answers. How she was always there waiting for him in the mornings, and leaving reluctantly when it was time to retire to her barrel.