James White SG 08 The Genoc

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tiny vessel's seating, the hand-to-hand fighting was over and four Cromsaggar
lay still on the ground.
In spite of the numerous bites and digitally inflicted wounds covering the
bodies, they were able to identify them as three dead males and one female
whose life expectancy would be measured in seconds. Dracht-Yur pointed
suddenly to the ground nearby where two separate trails of crushed and
blood-spattered grass converged toward the open door of one of the buildings.
The advantage of a longer stride meant that Lioren went through the entrance
seconds ahead of the Nidian, and his first sight of the two writhing, bloody
bodies locked together in mortal combat on the floor reinforced the anger and
disgust he felt at such animal behavior between supposedly intelligent beings.
Moving forward, he quickly interposed his medial arms between the tightly
pressed bodies and tried to push them apart. Only then did he make the
disconcerting discovery that they were not, as he had first thought, two males
fighting each other to the death but a male and female indulging in a sexual
coupling.
Lioren released them and backed away quickly, but suddenly they broke apart
and launched themselves at him just as Dracht-Yur arrived and blundered into
his rear legs. The weight of the combined attack toppled him over backward so
that he sprawled flat on the floor with the two Cromsaggar on top of him and
the
Nidian somewhere underneath. Within moments he was fighting for his life.
After the first few days on Cromsag had shown the natives to be too severely
weakened by the plague to warrant the use of heavy protective suits, all Corps
personnel had taken to wearing their cooler and less restrictive shipboard
coveralls, which gave protection only against the sun, rain, and insect bites.
It was with a sense of outrage that Lioren realized that for the first time in
his life the hands not to mention the feet, knees, and teeth of another person
had been raised in anger against him. On Tarla disputes were not settled in
this barbaric fashion. And even though the number of his limbs equaled the
total of theirs, they did not behave like plague-weakened Cromsaggar. They
were inflicting serious damage to his body and causing him more pain than he
had ever thought it possible to feel.
As he fended off the more disabling body blows and tried desperately to keep
the two Cromsaggar from pulling off his dirigible eye-supports, Lioren was
aware of
Dracht-Yur wriggling from underneath him and crawling toward the door. He was
pleased when his attackers ignored it, because the Nidian's small, furry limbs
had neither the muscle power nor the reach to make a useful contribution to
the struggle. A few seconds later he caught a glimpse of the Nidian's head
enclosed by a transparent envelope, heard the expected soft explosion of a
bursting sleep-gas bulb, and felt the bodies of his attackers go suddenly limp
and collapse on top of him before rolling slowly onto the floor.
For the few moments that the bodies, covered as they were by livid patches of
discoloration and the oozing sores characteristic of preterminal plague
victims, made heavy and almost intimate contact with him, it was a great
relief to remember that one world's pathogens were ineffective against the
members of off-
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planet species.
Designed as it was for maximum effect on the Cromsaggar metabolism, the
anesthetic gas produced similar if less immediate results on other
warm-blooded oxygen-breathers. Lioren was unable to move, but he was aware of
the Nidian growling and barking urgently into its headset while it applied
dressings to the worst of his wounds. Presumably it was telling the pilot of
their flier to send for medical assistance, but his own translator pack had
been damaged in the struggle and he could not understand a word. This did not
worry him unduly, because the intense discomfort of his many injuries had
faded to the mildest of irritations and the hard floor beneath him felt like
the softest of sleeping pits. But his mind was clear and seemed unwilling to
follow his body into sleep.
Interrupting the two Cromsaggar in the sex act had been a serious mistake, but
an understandable one because none of his people had witnessed the occurrence
of anything like a sexual coupling since arriving on Cromsag, and everyone,
himself included, had assumed that the species had become too physically
debilitated by the plague to make much of such activity possible. And their
reaction, the sheer strength and ferocity of their attack, had surprised and
shocked him.
During the very short breeding season on Tarla such activity, especially among
the aging who had been lifemates for many years, was a cause for celebration
and public display rather than a matter for concealment although he knew that
many species within the Federation, races who were otherwise highly
intelligent and philosophically advanced, considered the mating process to be
a private matter between the beings concerned.
Naturally, Lioren had no personal experience in this area, since his
dedication to the healing arts precluded him indulging in any pleasure which
would allow emotional factors to affect the clinical objectivity of his mind.
If he had been an ordinary Tarlan male, an artisan or a member of one of the
noncelibate professions interrupted in similar circumstances, there would have
been a verbal impoliteness, but certainly not violence.
Distressing and distasteful as the incident had been, Lioren's mind would not
rest in its search to find a reason for such an unreasonable reaction, however
alien or uncivilized that reason might be. Could it be that, gravely ill and
seriously injured as they had been in the fighting outside, they had crawled
into the house to seek a moment of mutual pleasure together before dying? He
knew that the coupling must have been by mutual agreement, because the
Cromsaggar mechanics of reproduction were physiologically too complicated for
the attentions of one partner to be forced on another.
That did not rule out the possibility that the coupling was the end result of
the fighting, the bestowal of a female's favor on a warrior victorious in
battle. There were many historical precedents for such behavior, although not,
thankfully, in the history of Tarla. But that reason was unsatisfactory
because both male and female Cromsaggar fought, although not each other.
Lioren made a mental note to prepare a detailed report of the incident for the
cultural contact specialists who would ultimately have to produce a solution
to the Cromsaggar problem, if any of the species survived and it was invited
to join the Federation.
The four separate images of the room, including the one of Dracht-Yur working
on the other casualties, that his immobilized eyes were still bringing him
dimmed suddenly into blackness, and he remembered a feeling of mild irritation
before he fell asleep in midthought.
Dracht-Yur confined him to the sick bay on Vespasian until the worst of his
injuries healed, reminding him, as only a hairy, small-minded, and sarcastic
dwarf of a Nidian could, that until then the relationship between them was one
of doctor and patient and that in the present situation it was the Surgeon-
Lieutenant who had the rank. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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