Donald Moffitt - Genesis 01

Two of them were bearded, tousle-haired young men wearing aggressively utilitarian monos. The third was an extremely thin young woman showing her ribs and hipbones in a striped stretchshirt, tights, and legsacks. The strangers looked Bram over in bored fashion as he entered, but none of them made a move to get up from their puff seats.
    “Where have you been? ” Kerthin demanded, coming toward him. “We were just about to leave without you.”
    Bram looked at her with pleasure, as always, no matter what her mood. Kerthin was tall, firm-bodied, and gray-eyed, her thick bronze hair braided into a heavy rope. She had strong features and smooth golden skin. She was dressed to go out, in a lightweight overmantle with a ruff collar.
    “I’m sorry,” he said, stumbling over the words. “We’re trying to develop a new organism, and they were waiting for a chimeric section they needed from me. I guess I lost track of the time.” A returning flush of pride removed the apology from his tone. “It may turn out to be rather important. You see, it’s a—”
    She cut him off. “No time for that. You can tell me later.” She turned to the others. “Well, what are we waiting for?”
    The two men struggled up from their seating puffs without particular haste. The woman followed. None of them offered to speak. Bram looked questioningly at Kerthin.
    “Oh,” Kerthin said. She tossed her head impatiently. “This is Pite. And that’s Fraz. And she’s Eena.”
    Pite acknowledged the introduction with a lazy nod. He was the one with the short blonde beard. He was medium height with a thick chest and wide shoulders. He moved in a sort of controlled prowl.
    The one with the scraggly black beard and the red, wide-lipped face was Fraz. The sleeves of his mono were rolled up to show powerfully thewed forearms. He didn’t look overwhelmingly bright—an odd choice of friend for someone like Kerthin. “Hiya,” he said. He stole a glance at Pite, as if to see that it was all right.
    “Hello,” Bram replied, still puzzled.
    The thin young woman, Eena, gave Bram an actual smile. “Say,” she said, “do you really work for the yellowlegs?”
    Bram frowned at the pejorative. “Well … I’ve been taken into one of the touch groups. As an adoptee of the Folk.” He used the Inglexcised form of the term in the Small Language by which the Nar referred to themselves.
    “Yuh?” She gave him a blank stare. “What is it you do exactly?”
    “Well, I—”
    “Come on!” Kerthin said. “We can talk on the way.”
    “Where are we going?” Bram asked.
    “To a meeting. I mentioned it yesterday. Weren’t you listening? Look, if you don’t want to go, just say so. I’ll go by myself.”
    “No, no,” he said hastily. “I’ll go.” His eyes fell on the empty cups and dirty plates scattered on the floor near the seating puffs. It looked as if Kerthin had been entertaining her friends for the last hour or so with cornbrew and nibbles from the cold locker. Bram’s empty stomach reminded him that he had skipped lunch; he would have given anything for a quick brew and a plate of beanwraps. Kerthin, however, was all but tapping her foot with impatience.
    Bram tried to make small talk during the walk to the meeting place. “What kind of meeting is it?” he asked Pite.
    “Oh, just a meeting, you know,” Pite replied, his pale eyes shifting. “Politics and all that stuff.”
    “He’s all right, I told you, Pite,” Kerthin said. “Just a little politically undeveloped.”
    Pite shrugged. “Any friend of Kerthin’s …” he said. “Look, Brammo, we humans are a minority in a society run by the yellowlegs. We got to maintain our own identity, look out for our own interests, right?”
    “Are you a Resurgist?” Bram asked politely.
    Fraz, walking ahead with the thin girl, gave a rude hoot of laughter.
    “You were right, Kerth,” Eena said. “He is politically undeveloped.”
    Bram flushed. He was beginning to get tired of Kerthin’s friends. And he wasn’t too pleased, either, with the form Kerthin’s endorsement of him had taken.
    “The Resurgists live in their own dream world,” Pite said smoothly. “They think they can dress up in their play clothes that they get from descriptions in dead books and copy all the old plays and the old music and the old political institutions. And put up one-way walls around human society and live by the sufferance of the yellowlegs in a world where the yellowlegs control all