Donald Moffitt - Genesis 01

was wearing a skirt now for decency’s sake, a loose wrapper that concealed the dark inflamed tissue rimming his lower petals. Above the waistband, the lower set of eyes—the lensless ones that sent biorhythm signals to the structures that corresponded to the pineal gland in the human midbrain—had gone milky, signifying a new stage of endocrine changes.
    “Yes,” Bram said. “They invited me for a visit when the colonists first began to settle in.”
    “They will be leaving soon. The tree’s ecology has been certified for extended travel. I am to be a member of the commission making the final inspection. Bram, you should take the opportunity soon to say a last farewell.”
    Marg and Orris were, in fact, due to make planetfall in a day or two for a last fling and for Marg’s implantation. The tree-to-surface traffic was picking up considerably as sailing time grew near. Bram had hoped to ask them over with a few friends, but Kerthin was being embarrassingly ungracious about the whole thing, and Bram had just about resigned himself to catching the two of them at the round of goodspeed parties the Quarter would be throwing for embarkees.
    “Thank you, Voth, I shall,” he said.
    Voth held out the sheaf of holos. “You may find these of some use. They are early records of some of the beginning investigations of my touch group into the precursor heterochronic mechanisms—from before those lines of research were abandoned. I had almost forgotten they existed.” He hesitated, his tentacles delicately weaving. “I have been cleaning out my files and … getting things in order.”
    Bram took the documents. They were stiff with age and moldy around the edges, but that wouldn’t affect the readouts. “You are kind, Voth,” he said.
    “There are many false starts, many failed lines of inquiry. But perhaps you might notice something which we did not.” A tentacle, feeling feverish, descended on Bram’s shoulder. “There is no one I would rather let have them than you, Bram of my center.”
    The Small Language sobriquet could not really be translated, but Bram felt the warm lapping contractions on his shoulder. He was profoundly moved by the gift. Voth must have some inkling of what he was up to by now, and the holos were a reticent form of encouragement.
    Bram, ashamed of himself, resolved to bring what he had found to Voth, get it all into the open, as soon as he had more to go on.
    Voth gave his shoulder a final squeeze and left. Bram had no taste at the moment for working with the holos. He shoved them into a desk iris and brooded, staring out the window, for a while.
    Finally he stood up and took his overgarment from the hook. He would explode if he stayed here any longer. He decided to go to the spaceport and see the excitement. Kerthin had said something about being there this afternoon for the arrival of the first crated batch of humanmade sculpture from Juxt One. Perhaps he would see her there and have it out with her about Pite.
     
    Five or six shuttles from various parts of the tree had landed already that afternoon. From his vantage point in the observation pinnacle atop the port terminal, Bram could see them floating lazily in the artificial lagoons adjoining the landing channel—flat, sleek, finned shapes that resembled some huge mythical sea creatures come to wallow in the shallows.
    Passengers were still flowing in a bright yellow tide down the gangway of the nearest shuttle. A half mile farther on, an earlier arrival was being hauled by a gigantic crawler up a service ramp to an unloading area where a number of bowl-shaped cargo vehicles waited for it.
    Beyond the lagoons, made tiny by distance, still another orbiter was being prepared for takeoff, standing upright on its flippers next to a service tower. The two matching curvilinear wedges that were the ascent stages stood a little apart, waiting for the orbiter to be fitted between them.
    A lively traffic in transfer vehicles, both living and mechanical, poured in two contrary streams along the wide causeway that led from the terminal. Outside the terminal, as Bram had discovered when he arrived, was a traffic jam of beasts and machines ranging from one-passenger pentadactyls to multibuses hired by extended touch groups.
    Bram savored the colorful spectacle. In spaceports all over the Father World, similar scenes were being enacted as the tree overhead poured out its worldlet’s hoard of wealth and living inhabitants. It would be at