Donald Moffitt - Genesis 01

toward one of the parapets overlooking the ocean.
    Mim and Smeth were still looking at Bram. He cleared his throat. “As a matter of fact,” he said, “I’m seeing my foster tutor tomorrow. Voth-shr-voth. I’m sure you know who he is! We’re going to talk about my being taken into his bioengineering touch group, with him as my sponsor.”
    As soon as he got the words out, he felt as if he had been emptied of a flood, a warm tide that had rocked him since babyhood. He squared his shoulders and lifted his chin and looked Smeth straight in the eye.
    “That’s wonderful, Bram,” Mim said. “What a plum! Why didn’t you say something before?”
    Smeth swallowed manfully and stuck out his hand. “My turn to congratulate you, sprout. I knew you had it in you. Of course, it’s applied science, not pure research. But a lot of privilege goes with a billet like that. You’ll be walking on all points, boy. You’re a solid citizen now. They’ll be lining up to compare gene maps with you.”
    Bram blushed and avoided looking at Mim. His gaze wandered to the sky and its handful of stars. He found his little patch of nothingness by the prow of the Boat and weighed it against the real world he was going to play his part in.
    Why, he thought, wasn’t he happier about his decision when every voice of reason said he ought to be envied?
     
    *
     
    Voth rose to greet him, laying aside the micromanipulator and feedback glove he had been working with. The attendant who had shown Bram in blossomed respectfully at the top and backed out of the chamber. At least, a human being might have described it as backing out: The Nar never needed to make a fuss about distinguishing front and back, having five choices in the matter at any given time.
    “I am pleased that you have come, Bram,” the venerable decapod vocalized in a deep baritone that seemed to have become more mellow, almost like the wooden cello contraption that Olan Byr had played the night before.
    “I am pleased to be here, Voth-shr-voth,” Bram said in the Small Language, like any deferential fingerling approaching from a distance.
    Without thinking about it, he lifted his arms in a dancerlike movement and rotated them palms outward in the childhood gesture he had acquired in imitation of the touch brothers he had spent so much time with.
    Bram studied his old teacher, noticing with a pang the physiological changes that were overtaking Voth as he hastened toward the final, reproductive stage of his life. The yellow petal-limbs had darkened noticeably at the edges and along the center creases, and the secondary lensless eyes in a row between the walking limbs were turning cloudy. Though he was still male, he would be ready for the mating pools within Bram’s lifetime. That was a hard thought to accept.
    “Come closer, little one,” Voth said. “Though you are not so little anymore.”
    Bram tore at his shirt. With a glad cry, he sprang forward. Voth peeled his tentacles down almost to the waist so that he was not much taller than Bram was. Bram spread his arms wide and felt the frondlike nest close about him. The waves of the Great Language enclosed him, and he could dimly comprehend the broad outline of their meaning, assisted by the muffled voice at his ear.
    “We’ll work together, eh, my boy? You and me and my touch brothers and their prot é ges, and you they shall treat as my son.”
     
    CHAPTER 3
     
    The little five-legged transport beast skidded to a stop at the biocenter entrance ramp and lowered its central cup to dismounting height, its stiltlike legs bent into a picket of stiff arches. Bram emerged from the one-man howdah and slid to the ground. The pentangular creature waited for its payment, quivering with expectation. Bram dug into his shoulder pouch and tossed it the three polysugar bars that the distance had called for. It gobbled them up and hung around for more. Bram relented and gave it another one, then slapped its cool flank and sent it trotting back to the central stable.
    He stopped for a moment at the foot of the ramp to gaze upward at the tip of the gleaming white orthocone that housed the main body of the institution. It was over a thousand feet high, a slender unbroken tusk that dominated the district for miles around, and it was still growing at the base. It was awe-inspiring to think of how old it must be.
    Then, conscious of the rising sun, he joined the crowd— mostly Nar—that was hurrying to work across the bridge that