The Silence of Alium [On Hiatus]

Chapter 10 - An Inauspicious Start (Part 2)

At nearly a meter in length, the dead ranae dwarfed any existing captive specimen, at least to the best of Jiya's knowledge. Its tumorous body lay against the cold metal, each of its four limbs splayed out forming an X with the central mass of its head-body at the junction. Even after years of exposure, the alien form of the tripodas septum ranae, ranae for short, or, more commonly, leaper, sent Jiya into shivers.

Like many of the alien lifeforms inhabiting Alium, the ranae had no differentiated head. Rather it had one central body mass, with a mouth located on its underbelly. This head-body resembled most closely, at least for Jiya, a cancerous mass, with four distinguishable limbs jutting out at equidistant intervals. No limbs could particularly be called arms or legs either, though each begun with a junction most similar to a human shoulder, shifting towards an upward-facing elbow-like joint. Yet from there the human similarities ended. The limb bifurcated half-way down what one might consider a forearm, only for each branch to then divide again, this time into fours, and so on, exponentially, until forming thread-like tendrils that operated as a mix of digits, tentacles, and roots.  By twining the masses together ranaes could form graspable digits, but they could also thread them out individually, digging deep into the soil for nourishment, or swing them in unison, propelling the ranae forward as if a large mass carried on by millions of capillaries in a millipede-like fashion.

Yet it was the follicles that did Jiya in. Ranaes had no eyes, yet coarse, hair-like follicles covered them in a sporadic pattern across every surface of their body. These follicles, much-like those on the more universal pseudo-flora, acted to convert energy from light, but they also seemed to operate in a sensory fashion, probing and feeling the environment, sound-waves, and some speculation even proposed that they acted in an olfactory capacity. Whatever their purpose, they did the ranae no favors aesthetically, only reinforcing the cancerous image that dominated Jiya's perception of them.

Jiya felt her stomach churn as Alayna slid an operating table beside the cold-locker drawer, preparing to transfer the ranae and ready it for dissection. Revolting as it was, Jiya could not help but to notice that something was amiss with this particular ranae. Its form was off somehow. That's when it hit her.

"Where are the under-tentacles?"

Alayna shook her head in disgust. "Under it."

Jiya choked back her reply. Be nice, she thought. This is Alayna's lab. She's the one that did you a favor. She repeated the thought over and over like a mantra, but it did little good. "Yes," she said at last, hoping she hadn't waited so long as to make her reply awkward, "but aren't they usually large enough to be seen, you know, protruding out from under?"

Alayna leveraged a large shovel-like implement beneath the ranae's body. "Usually, but females have smaller under-tentacles, that retreat inward during pregnancy."

"Oh," Jiya replied, keeping her frustration to herself. Alayna's charming personality apparently didn't shift much when she took you into her good graces. Or equally probable, her good graces didn't extend far or long. Either way, Jiya couldn't comprehend how she was expected to know about pregnant ranae biology, especially when this was the first such specimen the research colony had ever managed.

"Oh, indeed. You'd think you'd be more concerned about the fetal pods."

"The what?"

"Hell, Jiya, open your eyes." Alayna yanked down on the shovel handle, propelling the ranae's body up and sliding it off onto the neighboring dissection table with a sickening thunk. She carefully placed the implement on a tray beside her, slammed the cold locker shut, and walked around to her dead specimen.

"Here," she said, pointing at a translucent, pimple-like protrusion jutting up from the back of the ranae's head-body. "And here," she said again, pointing to another. "And here, and here, and here..." She waved out her hand across the entirety of the ranae's back and for the first time, Jiya realized what had actually been off about the specimen. At the peak of the head-body, random protrusions jutted up forming translucent domes of flesh, and within each curled a similar mass as the mother, but in miniature.

"Obviously," Alayna continued, "they give birth in litters, but the exact manner of which is the real curiosity. Do they grow within these pods and erupt out? Does the mother survive this procedure?  If they don't erupt from the fetal pods, how do they leave the mother? As best we can tell, ranae's only have the one mouth orifice on the underside, so it would have to be through there, one would imagine, but the research hasn't been done."

"Of course not." Jiya held back a surging wave of burp-vomit as Alayna probed at one of the so-called fetal pods with a curved teasing needle. The thin flesh-film caved inward, as if pressing in on the bell of a jellyfish. Jiya much preferred working with pseudo-flora.

"Are you okay?" Alayna asked. "You look pale."

"Fine," Jiya said. "I need to be getting back to the aerosols is all." With that, Jiya turned her back on Alayna just as her colleague flipped on a recorder and reached for a pair of scissors.

"This is Dr. Alayna Ko of the Lacroix Research Station in Biology Lab D," she began. Jiya tuned out the rest, shifting her focus as best as she could to the remaining musk aerosols. Eleven done, but she was hoping for three canisters per member of the search party, along with a few spare. As such she was only halfway there.

I'm never going to get that shower, she thought, then grabbed the twelfth can and began assembling the valve and actuator.

As if on cue, her work was interrupted by a familiar voice.

"Dr. Kapoor, I hate to interrupt, but might you have a moment?"

Jiya set the barely  begun assemblage back on the workstation and turned to find Vice  Administrator Situ Tao standing in the entryway to the lab.

Not really, she  thought, dreams of a shower and a short rest before departing with the  other volunteers teasing at the surface of her mind. This was the vice  administrator of the entire station, however, and, moreover, he had  stuck up for her in Meng's office, and without his vote there would be  no search party.

"Of course," she said. "What can I do for you?"