Phylogenesis Read Online Free PDF

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.”
    “I take it they don’t have anything to do with biochemical research.” Des desperately wanted to leave, to flee surroundings that had become suddenly oppressive.
    Broud implied concord, but left it to his companion to continue with the explanation. “Maybe a little, but if so and if the stories are true, then such research is peripheral to the central purpose of the Geswixt facility.”
    “Which is to do what?” Des inquired impatiently.
    She glanced briefly at Broudwelunced before replying. “To watch over the aliens and nurture a growing relationship with them.”
    “Aliens?” Des was taken aback. This was not what he had expected. “What sort of aliens? The Quillp?” Refusing to ally themselves with either thranx or AAnn, that race of tall, elegant, but enigmatic creatures had long been known to the thranx. And there were others. But they were well and widely familiar to the general populace. Why should any of them be part of some mysterious, secretive ‘project’?
    But then what did he, bard to fruits and vegetables, know of covert government undertakings?
    “Not the Quillp,” Nio was telling him. “Something even stranger.” She edged closer, so that their antennae threatened to touch. “The intelligent mammals.”
    This time, Des had to pause before replying.
    “You mean the humans? That’s an absurd notion. That project was shifted in its entirety to Hivehom years ago, where the government could monitor it more closely. There are no humans left on Willow-Wane. No wonder it’s the basis for rumor and speculation only.”
    Nio was clearly pleased at having taken the notoriously unflappable Desvendapur aback. “Bipedal, bisexual, tailless, alien mammals,” she added for good measure. “Humans. The rumor has it that not only are they still around, they’re being allowed to set up a colony right here on Willow-Wane. That’s why the Council is keeping it quiet. That’s why they were moved from the original project site to the isolated country around Geswixt.”
    He responded with a low whistle of incredulity. Mammals were small, furry creatures that flourished in deep rain forest. They were soft, fleshy, sometimes slimy things that wore their skeletons on the inside of their bodies. The idea that some might have developed intelligence was hardly to be credited. And bipedal? A biped without a tail to balance itself would be inherently unstable, a biomechanical impossibility. One might as well expect the delicate
hizhoz
to fly in space. But the humans were real enough. Reports on them appeared periodically. Formal contact was proceeding at a measured, studied pace, allowing each species ample time to get used to the existence of the fundamentally different other.
    All such contact was still ceremonial and restricted, officially limited to one project facility on Hivehom and a humanoid counterpart on Centaurus Five. The idea that a race as bizarre as the humans might be granted permission to establish permanent habitation on a thranx world was outlandish. There were at least three different