Phylogenesis (3 page)

She was right. He didn’t.

2

T
he thranx do not bury their dead: the deceased are lovingly recycled. Like so many components of thranx culture, this was a tradition that reached back to their primitive origins, when hives were ruled by pretech, egg-laying queens, and anything edible was deemed worthy of consumption, including the remains of a demised fellow citizen. Protein was protein, while nourishment and survival continued to take precedence over emerging notions of culture and civilization. The manner in which the traditional recycling was carried out was more decorous now, but the underlying canon remained the same.

Farewell giving was far more elaborate and formalized than it had been in the times before talking, however, though the one whose praises were presently being sung would doubtless have dubbed them overwrought. For a poet famous on not just Willow-Wane but all the thranx worlds, Wuuzelansem had been even more than conventionally modest.

Desvendapur remembered the last time he had sat with the master. Wuuzelansem’s color had deepened from the healthy aquamarine of the young beyond the blue-green of maturity until in old age his exoskeleton had turned almost indigo. His head had swayed uncontrollably from side to side, the result of a nonfatal but incurable disease of the nervous system, and he but rarely rose up on only four legs, needing all six all the time to keep him from falling. But though they might flash less frequently with the fires of inspiration, the eyes still gleamed like burnished gold.

They had gone out into the rain forest, the great poet and his master class, to sit beneath a yellow-boled
cim!bu
tree that was a favorite of the teacher’s. Possessed of its own broad, dense canopy of yellow-gold, pink-striped leaves, this was the time of year of the cim!bu’s flowering. Nectar-rich blossoms of enormous length saturated the air with their perfume, their dangling chimelike stamens thick with pollen. No insects hummed busily about those blooms; no flying creatures lapped at the dripping nectar. Attendants looked after the pollination of the cim!bu. They had to. It was an alien, a foreigner, an exotic outsider that was native to Hivehom, not Willow-Wane. A decorative transplant propagated by settlers. It thrived in the depths of the native forest, even though surrounded by strangers.

Beneath the cim!bu and the rest of the dense vegetation, Yeyll throve. The third-largest city on Willow-Wane, it was a hive of homes, factories, training institutes, recreational facilities, and larvae-nurturing chambers. Technologically advanced they had become, but when possible the thranx still preferred to dwell underground. Yeyll wore the preserved rain forest in which Wuuzelansem and his students strolled on its crown, like a hat. Though it exuded the scent of wildness, in reality it had been as thoroughly domesticated as any park.

There were benches beneath the cim!bu. Several of the students took advantage of them as they listened to the poet declaim on the sensuousness of certain lubricious pentameters, resting their bodies lengthwise along one of the narrow, rustic wooden platforms and taking the weight off their legs. Des preferred to remain standing, absorbing the lesson with one part of his mind while the other contemplated the lushness of the forest. The morning had dawned hot and humid: perfect weather. As he scanned the surface of a nearby tree, his antennae probed the bark, searching out the tiny vibrations of the creatures that lived both on and beneath its surface. Some were native insects, ancient relatives of his kind. They paid no attention to the declamations of the revered Wuuzelansem or the responses of his students, being interested only in eating and procreating and not in poetry.

“What do
you
think, Desvendapur?”

“What?” Dimly, it registered on his brain that his name had been invoked, together with the attached verbal baggage of a question. Turning from the tree, he saw that everyone was looking at him—including the master. Another student might have been caught off guard, or left at a loss for words. Not Des. He was never at a loss for words. He was simply sparing with them. Contrary to what others might believe, he
had
been listening.

“I think that much of what passes for poetry these days is offal that rarely, if ever, rises to the exalted level of tendentious mediocrity.” Warming to the subject, he raised his voice, emphasizing his words with rapid, overexpansive movements of his truhands. “Instead of composing we have composting. Competitions are won by facile reciters of rote who may be craftsmen but are not artists. It’s not all their fault. The world is too relaxed, life too predictable. Great poetry is born of crisis and calamity, not long hours whiled away in front of popular entertainments or the convivial company of friends.” And just in case his audience felt that he was utilizing the opportunity to answer the query in order to grandstand before the master, he concluded with a choice, especially coarse, expletive.

No one spoke, and fixed thranx countenances were capable of little in the way of facial expression, but rapid hand movements showed that his response had elicited reactions ranging from resentment to resignation. Desvendapur was known to be habitually outrageous, a quality that would have been more readily tolerated had he been a better poet. His lack of demonstrated accomplishment mitigated against acceptance by his peers.

Oh, there were occasional bursts of rhetorical brilliance, but they were as scattered as the
quereequi
puff-lions in the trees. They manifested themselves just often enough to keep him from being kicked out of the master classes. In many ways he was the despair of the senior instructors, who saw in him a promising, even singular talent that never quite managed to rise above an all-consuming and very unthranx-like preoccupation with morbid hopelessness. Still, he flashed just enough ability just often enough to keep him in the program.

Even those instructors bored with his disgraceful outbursts were reluctant to dismiss him, knowing as they did his family history. He was the last of the Ven save two, the progenitors and inheritors of his family having been wiped out in the first AAnn attack on Paszex more than eighty years earlier. This harsh hereditary baggage had traveled with him all the way north to Yeyll. Unlike the wrong word or an inept stanza, it was something he would never be able to redraft.

“Ven, Ven? I don’t know that family,” acquaintances would murmur. “Does it hail from near Hokanuck?”

“No, it hails from the afterlife,” Desvendapur would muse miserably. It would have been better for him if he had come from offworld. At least then it would have been easier to keep his family history private. On Willow-Wane, where everyone knew the tragic history of Paszex, he could indulge in no such covertness.

Wuuzelansem did not appear upset by his comments. It was not the first time his most obstreperous student had expressed such sentiments. “You condemn, you criticize, you castigate, but what do you offer in return? Crude, angry platitudes of your own. Specious sensitivity, false fury, biased frenzy. ‘The jarzarel soars and glides, dips to kiss the ground, and stumbles, perspiring passion: contact in a vacuum.’”

Softly modulated clicks of approval rose from the assembled at this typically florid display of words and whistles from the master. Desvendapur stood his physical and intellectual ground. Wuuzelansem made it seem so easy, the right words and sounds spilling prolifically from his jaws, the precisely correct movements of his hands and body accompanying and emphasizing them where others had to struggle for hours, days, weeks just to compose an original stanza or two. The war was particularly acute within Des, who never seemed quite able to find the terminology to frame the emotions that welled up from deep inside him. A simmering volcano, he emitted much steam and heat, without ever really erupting creatively. Artistically, something vital was missing. Aesthetically, there was a void.

He accepted the lyrical rebuke stolidly, but the way in which his antennae curled reflexively back over his head revealed how deeply he had been stung. It wasn’t the first time, and he did not expect it to be the last. In this he was correct. Poetry could be a savage business, and the master’s reputation did not extend to coddling his students.

Looking back, Des was not surprised that he had survived the rigors of the curriculum. But despite being utterly convinced of his own brilliance, he was nonetheless surprised when he was graduated. He had expected dismissal with less than full ordination. Instead, he found himself armed with private blessings and official certification. Graduation had led to a boring but just barely tolerable position with a private company in the wholesale food distribution business, where he spent much time composing attractive jingles lauding the beauty and healthfulness of the concern’s produce and products. While it provided for the maintenance of his physical upkeep (he certainly ate well), his emotional and artistic wellbeing languished. Day after day of waxing lyrical about the multifarious glories of fruits and vegetables left him feeling like he was ready to explode. He never did, with the result that one vast, overriding fear dominated his waking thoughts.

Would he ever?

Dozens of invited guests were arrayed in the traditional circle in the garden where the dead poet was to be recycled. Notables and dignitaries, former students both famous and obscure, representatives of clan and family, all listened politely to the respectful speeches and ennobling refrains extolling the virtues of the deceased that droned out on the steamy morning breeze. The ceremony had already gone on too long. Much longer than the humble Wuuzelansem would have liked. Had he been able to, Des reflected amusedly, the master would long since have excused himself from his own sepulture.

Wandering through the crowd as the sonorous liturgy wound down, he was surprised to espy Broudwelunced and Niowinhomek, two former colleagues. Both had gone on to successful careers, Broud in government and Nio with the military, which was always in need of energetic, invigorating poets. He wavered, his habitual penchant for privacy finally giving way to the inherent thranx proclivity for the company of others. Wandering over, he was privately pleased to find that they both recognized him immediately.

“Des!” Niowinhomek bent forward and practically wrapped her antennae around his. The shock of familiarity was more refreshing than Des would have cared to admit.

“A shame, this.” Broud gestured with a foothand in the direction of the dais. “He will be missed.”

“‘Rolling toward land, the wave pounds on the beach and contemplates its fate. Evaporation become destruction.’” Nio was quoting from the master’s fourth collection, Des knew. His friends might have been surprised to know that the brooding, apparently indifferent Desvendapur could recite by rote everything Wuuzelansem had ever composed, including the extensive, famously uncompleted
Jor!k!k
fragments. But he was not in the mood.

“But what of you, Des?” As he spoke, Broud’s truhands bobbed in a manner designed to indicate friendliness that bordered on affection. Why this should be so Des could not imagine. While attending class he had been no more considerate of his fellow students’ feelings than anyone else’s. It puzzled and even unnerved him a little.

“Not mated, are you?” Nio observed. “I have plans to be, within the six-month.”

“No,” Desvendapur replied. “I am not mated.” Who would want to mate with him? he mused. An unremarkable poet languishing in an undistinguished job leading a life of untrammeled conventionality. One whose manner was anything but conducive to the ordinary pleasures of existence. Not that he was lacking in procreational drive. His urge to mate was as strong as that of any other male. But with his attitude and temperament he would be lucky to spur a female’s ovipositors to so much as twitch in his direction.

“I don’t think it’s such a shame,” he went on. “He had a notable career, he left behind a few stanzas that may well outlast him, and now he no longer is faced with the daily agony of having always to be brilliant. The desperate quest for originality is a stone that crushes every artist. It was good to see you both again.” Dropping his foothands to the ground to return to a six-legged stance, he started to turn to go. The initial delight he had felt at once again encountering old friends was already wearing off.

“Wait!” Niowinhomek restrained him with a dip and weave of both antennae—though why she should want to he could not imagine. Most females found his presence irksome. Even his pheromones were deficient, he was convinced. Searching for a source of conversation that might hold him, she remembered something recently discussed at work. “What do you think about the rumors?”

Turning back, he gestured to indicate a lack of comprehension. Suddenly he wanted to get away, to flee, from memories as much as from former friends. “What rumors?”

“The stories from the Geswixt,” she persisted. “The hearsay.”

“
Chrrk,
that!” Broud chimed in with an exclamatory stridulation. “You’re talking about the new project, aren’t you?”

“New project?” Only indifferently interested, Des’s irritation nevertheless deepened. “What ‘new project’?”

“You haven’t heard.” Nio’s antennae whipped and weaved, suggesting restrained excitement. “No, living this far from Geswixt I see that it is possible you would not have.” Stepping closer, she lowered her voice. Des almost backed away. What sort of nonsense was this?

“You cannot get near the place,” she whispered, her four mouthparts moving supplely against one another. “The whole area is fenced off.”

“That’s right.” With a truhand and opposing foothand Broud confirmed her avowal. “With as little fanfare and announcement as possible, an entire district has been closed to casual travel. It is said that there are even regular aerial patrols in the area to seal off the airspace all the way out to orbital.”

Mildly intrigued in spite of himself, Des was moved to comment. “Sounds to me like somebody wants to hide something.”

Using four hands and all sixteen digits, Nio insinuated agreement. “A new biochemical facility doing radical research. That’s the official explanation. But some of us have been hearing other stories. Stories that, in the fourteen years they’ve been being propagated, have become harder and harder to dismiss.”