"K. D. Wentworth - Embians" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wentworth K D)

K.D. WENTWORTH

THE EMBIANS

AFTER SETTING THE AUDIO recorder for the night, Shayna wraps her fingers through
the wires of the treetop blind and stares into the heavy darkness, straining to
catch the next mating display the instant it flares. Just beyond the ragged edge
of the rain forest, the unseen ocean hisses against the shore and salt hangs in
the sultry air. Somewhere out in the sweltering sea of black, a small animal
squalls and dies in the jaws of some nameless predator.

Flash of electric-green with orange diagonals. Melds into the yellow of fresh
lemons. Softens...fades....

Darkness.

Cerulean blue. Swirls of carmine that suffuse with purple, brightening as though
they will explode.

Darkness...darkness.

Shayna sighs. "They're so incredibly complex, so varied. If I could just sort
the nuances into a key, I know I could make my thesis work."

Her expedition partner, Mae, dutifully records the mating displays on the
night-cam in every wave-length from ultra-violet to infra-red for later
analysis. She is eight years older than Shayna, working on her doctoral
dissertation, rather than a mere master's thesis. Her movements are careful and
methodical, everything always labeled, thought out, planned. Shayna understands
herself to be more intuitive, knowing when an answer is ready, it will surface
from the depths of her mind like an offering. Until then, she must wait, absorb
data, allow her subconscious to analyze and correlate.

Mae shifts on the camp stool, so close in the narrow blind, Shayna can feel the
heat of her skin, while out in the hot, tangled night of a world that has never
known a moon, or tide, or the chill embrace of snow, the serpentlike embians
slip through soft-fleshed trees and serenade each other with light. In the
daylight, they appear vaguely humanoid, with similar number and placement of
limbs, but their flesh is so dense, their bones are only cartilage, and they are
as sinuous as eels. Their skin is a mottled gray-green and they rarely attain
five feet in height. They produce no intelligible sounds.

"You might as well pick a different thesis and be done with it. Those displays
are no more a language than wolves back on Earth howling at the moon. They're
just mating lures." Mae jerks. "Over there!"

Acid-red. Sharpens to actinic violet that hurts the eyes. Flash...flash. White
afterimage.
Darkness.