The Totems of Abydos Read Online Free PDF Page A

and polite, for the captain was a shy, reticent sort, was accomplished by means of a nearby cabinet, of a not very sophisticated design, for it was an old freighter, which translated certain hissing sounds into visual displays, and responsive auditory vibrations, of a sort naturally produced by Rodriguez and Brenner, into variant displays, unintelligible to them but apparently meaningful to the captain. As all were visually oriented organisms all went smoothly, and they felt a certain bond, to some extent, unworthy though it might be, between them, predicated as it was on so arbitrary a basis. With the tiny Zevets the captain had never managed to feel at ease, with their detestation of light and the swift, snapping movements of their tiny wings, so sudden that they had more than once provoked the darting forth of the captain’s tongue, to the embarrassment of all.
    “I have a heard a noise,” said Rodriguez, addressing the captain, though speaking toward the cabinet.
    The captain’s head lifted politely, peering at the cabinet. Such things, thought Brenner, have long necks.
    “It comes from somewhere in one of the holds,” said Rodriguez.
    The captain’s head turned toward Rodriguez.
    Brenner had heard the noise, too, usually in the sleeping period, late at night, so to speak. He had heard it several times. He, too, was curious about it. On the other hand, in his occasional meetings with the captain, or one of the small crew, for the ship was largely automated, there had been no cabinet at hand.
    Brenner noted that the captain was looking at Rodriguez, almost as though he could understand him without the cabinet. Its neck is long, thought Brenner.
    The captain then turned to the machine. A soft stream of sound, carefully modulated, almost thoughtfully, as though steam escaping from a valve might become a medium of communication, impinged on the receptors of the cabinet. “It is an animal,” flashed on the display panel.
    “It must be a very large animal,” said Rodriguez.
    “Yes,” said the captain.
    Brenner, whose cabin was closer to the sound than was that of Rodriguez, though the cabins of neither directly abutted its presumed holding area, presumably as a tactful gesture on the part of the captain, or of the officialdom of the company whose vessel this was, had often heard it.
    “What sort of animal is it?” asked Rodriguez.
    “I do not know its code, or its classification,” said the captain.
    “Do you know its common name?” asked Rodriguez.
    “No,” said the captain.
    “It is probably enroute to the games at Megara,” said Rodriguez to Brenner.
    Brenner shivered. He did not doubt that Rodriguez, who had seen so much, had looked upon the games of Megara, or games similar to them. Onlookers, tourists, thrill-seekers, gamblers, the jaded of a thousand worlds, the gourmets of the spirit, tasters of exquisite refinements, came from the remote corners of the galaxy to witness such games.
    “Perhaps to the preserves on Habitat,” said Brenner, “or to the field laboratories of Freeworld.” These, in effect, were planetwide zoological gardens, with restricted areas for scientists and naturalists.
    “It is mammalian, or mammalianlike, and carnivorous,” said Rodriguez.
    “Yes,” said the captain.
    Brenner, too, had surmised that, from the sounds of the animal. He had often heard it, and was much more aware of it, really, than Rodriguez, as his cabin was much closer to its holding area. Indeed, he sometimes fancied, during the quiet watches, when he was lying buckled in his webbing, trying to sleep, the ship and its barges drifting with their momentum in the loneliness and stillness of space, their path occasionally altered by as little as a finger’s breadth by the brief whisper of a vernier in the night, attended by its vigilant guidance system, that he could detect its pacing, a restless, energetic, relentless, seemingly unceasing pacing. Too, sometimes he heard, with no mistake about it, the