My heart was racing and a private pool of sweat was collecting in the small of my back. After two tense months in superspace I was finally down on Parson's Planet, inside Parson Station. But I still wasn't feeling overly safe. Five minutes ago I'd had the nastiest scare of my scare-filled career. And right now, something was very wrong.
George Friskel, the Station's "Commo" (communications chief), had promised to be waiting right here to welcome me. He'd lied.
This solitude wasn't soothing, especially since my nearest allies, on the ISS Centipede, were thousands of vertical kilometers away.
Ten minutes later--still no Friskel. I'd outlined my mission to him via ultrawave audio but hadn't described myself because I hadn't wanted to spoil the surprise.
So far, the surprise was on me.
Fortunately, I'd killed time during the interstellar flight by memorizing a Station diagram. Ave boredom! Perhaps I could find Friskel's office unaided...
I was facing south. The hydroponics garden should be in the closed-off dome behind me, administration more or less straight ahead.
I hurried forward, trying to cheer myself by imagining Friskel's reaction when he saw me.
Happiness proved elusive. The hallway century-lamps were barely glowing. They were hoarding electricity here and were even stingier with sounds; all I heard was a soft droning, occasional metallic clanks, and echoes of my own breathing. The air smelled weird. I began getting this bad feeling that Parson Station had been abandoned, I was about to find out why, and I wasn't going to enjoy the experience.
"Susie," I told myself, "what you don't need in your job is imagination."
Then I noticed the whine of a medical scanner, inaudible to human ears. If Friskel was receiving the data, my prank was spoiled. But an operating scanner implied company!
Encouraged, I continued through gloomy and increasingly smelly corridors.
Upon reaching what I hoped was Friskel's door, I was absurdly relieved to hear someone moving inside. I knocked gently.
"Professor Artab?" a muffled voice inquired. "Is that ye already?"
"Ce'tainly is," I admitted. For reasons that I will reveal in my own sweet time, I couldn't pronounce the letter "r" at this point and my "l"s were mushy.
"Come in then, 'tisn't bolted."
The door was a powered affair, operated remotely or controlled locally by a wide, dirty pressure-sensing plate. I pressed the plate, vaguely puzzled by my own hand. Seven fingers?
I wiped my palm against my faux slacks while the entrance widened. Then I stepped through swiftly, ducking to clear the lintel.
Friskel had a stack of folders in one arm; the other extended for a handshake. When he saw me, folders went flying...
Somehow, his reaction wasn't amusing. And the way he kept pointing his index finger at my chest was downright creepy.
He looked about thirty. Deep-set blue eyes crowded a cucumber nose, his depilated arms and head were tattooed with scars, and one eyebrow was AWOL. He was pungent with the Station aroma; close-up, it suggested burnt lemon rind.
As the papers settled down, so did Friskel. "You be Professor Artab?" he croaked, finally lowering his finger.
I bowed acknowledgement.
A vase on his desk, near an antique micro-telephone, held a crimson flower atop a shiny green stalk. The air was still, yet the flower kept waving around.
"Jeez! Ye might have said somethin'." Friskel's voice was steadier than his thick hands. "Christ, ye near give me a hard attack!" I'd talked to this man weekly, and his localized English still seemed charmingly quaint.
To an innocent, a thumbscrew might seem quaint....
"Sowwy," I muttered, bending to help harvest folders. "Hadn't I mentioned I was a hybwidim?" I felt too embarrassed to admit my little joke had been intentional. Yelling "boo" would've been more sophisticated.
Another humiliation: inability to pronounce "hybridim."
"Mentioned it?" the Commo rejoined. "Rambshit! Yet ... considering, who'd be better for this duty than a prince of the Assembled?"
"I may have been assembled, but I'm no pwince."
Friskel was criminally unobservant! Then it dawned on me, painfully, that my latest physical "improvements" had finally made my gender unrecognizable. Withheld tears burn the worst...
"Wheah is evewybody, Geowge? This place feels like a ghost Station."
"Here and aboot. Uh ... deep apologies I wasn't awaiting ye. Lost track o' time--getting old I fear." Momentarily, he looked troubled.
"That's all wight."
"Shall we set to business?"
"Suits me."
"Business" was paperwork. With actual paper! Friskel claimed "true" signatures were required.
As I filled out release forms, he asked, delicately, what I'd been assembled from. I mentioned lion, fox, bear, shark ... leaving out far more interesting donors.
"Jeez! I've been here so long, I near forgot about some of those Earth crits." He peered at me curiously.
"Your feet are--what was the dangly word? Ursine?"
"That's it."
"But ye started as human?"
The question seemed absurdly offensive. "What else? And I'm still mostly human--despite my good looks."
"Ah. Me, I like animals, with some exceptions, but I wouldn't care to become one. Especially in bits and pieces. Why would ye do such a thing to yourself?"
I was tempted to tell him.
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