Donald Moffitt - Genesis 01

least a five of Tendays before the transfer was completed and the tree could be allowed to rise to a higher orbit, where it would be more comfortable.
    Bram tore his gaze from the outside view and gave his attention to the sunlit interior of the cupola. The terminal was bustling with activity today, its floors and ramps a moving forest of undulating tentacles. Bram was not the only human there by any means. There were hundreds of them scattered through the observation cap—people waiting for the touchdown of a landing craft that would bring them a friend or close gene kin they had not seen for decades, merchants waiting for orders they had placed by laser more than seven years before.
    Kerthin was nowhere in the throng. Bram tried to remember what her old sculpture teacher, Hok-kara, looked like.
    Finally he went to an information kiosk where two harried Nar were using all five abovedecks tentacles simultaneously to service all comers and stood in line to await his turn.
    The information clerk grasped Bram’s hand before he realized he was talking to a human. “What do you wish to know?” he boomed in the Small Language, focusing the apposite eye in the general direction of Bram’s armpit. He kept his tentacle pressed against Bram’s hand for the sake of politeness, though he might, with the split attention made possible by the Nar’s decentralized nervous systems, have used it to talk to a sixth customer.
    “Have passengers or cargo from the human bough landed yet?” Bram asked.
    “Lobe four,” the Nar replied. “A carrier is arriving now.”
    “Thank you,” Bram said.
    He hurried to the downbelt to beat the stampede that was going to develop as soon as the waiting crowd became aware of the arrival. The terminal had been grown in the shape of a single interior space, a half mile high and a thousand feet across at the base, with a continuous spiral concourse winding from top to bottom along the conical wall. The concourse averaged a hundred feet across, with plenty of area for offices, shops, passenger lounges, and other facilities, and though there was no such thing as level floor anywhere, that didn’t bother the Nar. Bram paused at the railing and looked straight down the spiral to the terminal floor a half mile below. He was too high to see the ground-level crowds as much more than patches of yellow dust motes, but he could discern the beginnings of movement toward the arrival lobes.
    Outside the observation cupola, a speck grew in the lavender sky and spectators crowded the view wall. Bram loitered, a hand poised on the rail, until the graceful deltoid form glided in over the channel waters and skimmed to a stop, its red-hot underbelly sending up a sizzle of steam. Before the ripples died down, Bram stepped onto the moving belt and let it carry him along its corkscrew path to ground level.
    By the time he got to lobe four, it was solid with humans and decapods converging on the reception area. Bram searched through the crush for Kerthin. He thought he caught a glimpse of her in the middle of the throng, but when he got to that spot, there was no sign of her.
    At that point the first wave of human travelers from Juxt One came through the gates with their hand luggage, and there was a surge to greet them. After some milling around, the place cleared out a bit, and Bram saw her standing with a small group of people.
    “Kerthin,” he cried, and started forward.
    Intent on the arrival gate, she didn’t hear him at first. She turned her head and spoke to the person next to her but broke off as she saw Bram heading toward her. The other person said something, then Kerthin nodded, and hurried to intercept Bram.
    “What are you doing here?” she said. She seemed nervous.
    “I didn’t feel like working. Where’s your teacher? Is he over there?”
    “No. He couldn’t come, after all. There was some mixup about the pieces of sculpture. They won’t be coming down for a few more days. Those are just some people who came to meet the shuttle. I got to talking with them while we were waiting. Let’s go.”
    She was edging him toward the lobe exit. Bram took a few steps, then stopped. “What’s the hurry? It isn’t every day a star tree arrives.”
    Another wave of star travelers was coming through the gates. The people in front were leading a pair of exotic pets that were attracting attention—artificial animals that obviously had been bred for conditions on Juxt One. Waist-high and covered with a