Foster, Alan Dean - Founding 1 - Phylogenesis

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***************************************************

Author: Alan Dean Foster

Title: Phylogenesis

Series: The Founding the Commonwealth

Series No: 01 0f 03

Original copyright year: 1999

Genre: Science Fiction

Date of e-text: 05/09/2001

Prepared by:

Last Revised: / /

Revised by:

Version: 1.0

Comments: Please correct any errors you find in this e-text,

update the txt file’s version number and redistribute.

***************************************************

By Alan Dean Foster : Published by Ballantine Books:

The Icenggger Trilogy

ICERIGGER

MISSION TO MOULOKIN

THE DELUGE DRIVERS

The Adventures of Flinx of the Commonwealth

FOR LOVE OF MOTHER-NOT

THE TAR-AIYM KRANG

ORPHAN STAR

THE END OF THE MATTER

FLINX IN FLUX

MID-FLINX

BLOODHYPE

THE HOWLING STONES

The Damned

Book One: A CALL TO ARMS

Book Two: THE FALSE MIRROR

Book Three: THE SPOILS OF WAR

THE BLACK HOLE CACHALOT

DARK STAR THE METROGNOME and Other Stories

MIDWORLD NOR CRYSTALTEARS

SENTENCED TO PRISM SPLINTER OF THE MIND'S EYE

STAR TREK@ LOGS ONE-TEN VOYAGE TO THE CITY OF THE DEAD

WITH FRIENDS LIKE THESE . . . ... WHO NEEDS ENEMIES?

MAD AMOS PARALLELITIES

PHYLOGENESIS DIRGE*

* forthcoming

Books published by The Ballantine Publishing Group are available at

quantity discounts on bulk purchases for premium, educational, fund-raising,

and special sales use. For details, please call 1-500-733-3000.

***************************************************

Sale of this book without a front cover may be unauthorized. If this

book is coverless, it may have been reported to the publisher as "un-sold or

destroyed" and neither the author nor the publisher may have received payment

for it.

1999 by Thranx, Inc.

Conventions. Published in the United States by The Ballantine Publishing

Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in

Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

Del Rey is a registered trademark and the Del Rey colophon is a

trademark of Random House, Inc.

http://www.randomhouse.com

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 00-190318

ISBN 0-345-41861-1

Manufactured in the United States of America

First Hardcover Edition: June 1999

First Mass Market Edition: July 2000

10 9 8 7 6 54

***************************************************

For Michael Goodwin and Robert Teague,

First citizens of the Commonwealth.

***************************************************

PROLOGUE

Chapter One Chapter Two

Chapter Three Chapter Four

Chapter Five Chapter Six

Chapter Seven Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenteone Chapter Twentytwo

Appendix

Classification Of Planets

Galographics

The AAnn Empire:

The Blight:

The Humanx Commonwealth:

Commonwealth Chronology

***************************************************

PROLOGUE

Things have a way of working out, if not always as planned. So it was

with the Amalgamation that marked the estab-lishment of the sociopolitical

organization that came to be known as the Humanx Commonwealth. Contact having

been established and maintained for some sixteen years, it was assumed by

those advising both of the hesitant, uncertain species that procession to

second-stage contact would take place within a predesignated time frame and

would involve the implementation of carefully considered procedures,

intri-cately designed programs, and closely scrutinized agendas.

That it did not happen this way was no fault of those charged with

implementing the voluminously compiled and mutually agreed-upon contact

strategy. All those involved, thranx and human alike, had done their work

conscientiously and well. It was simply that, as history shows, there are

times when events do not occur as planned. Physics included, the universe is

not a perfectly predictable place. Action super-cedes fabrication. Stars that

are not supposed to go nova for a billion years do. Flowers that are expected

to blossom die.

Anticipated ambassadors did not have the opportunity to exchange formal

greetings. Innumerable carefully drawn covenants withered for lack of

execution, made superflu-ous by unexpected realities. Formal protocols were

rendered extraneous. Thus are the ways of virtuous diplomacy foully ambushed.

Chance chose a poet as its champion, while coarse circumstance on its

behalf conscripted a murderer.

Chapter One

No one saw the attack coming. Probably someone, or sev-eral someones,

ought to have been blamed. Certainly there was a convulsion of recriminations

afterward. But since it is an unarguable fact that it is hard to apportion

blame-or even to assign it-for something that is without precedent, nascent

calls for castigation of those responsible withered for lack of suitable

subjects. Those who felt, rightly or wrongly, that they bore a share of the

responsibility for what happened punished themselves far more severely than

any traditional queen's court or council of peers would have.

For more than a hundred years, ever since there had been contact between

AAnn and thranx, animosity had festered between the two species. Given such a

fertile ground and suf-ficiency of time, mutual enmity had evolved to take

many forms. Manifesting themselves on a regular basis that var-ied greatly in

degree, these were usually propagated by the AAnn. While a constant source of

vexation to the ever-reasonable thranx, these provocations rarely exceeded the

bounds of irritation. The AAnn would probe and threaten, ad-vance and connive,

until the thranx had had enough and were compelled to react. When forcefully

confronted, the AAnn would invariably pull back, give ground, retreat. The

spiral arm that was shared by both heat-loving, oxygen-breathing species was

big enough and rich enough in stars so that direct conflict, unless actively

sought, could be avoided.

Habitable worlds, however, were scarcer. Where one of these was involved

positions hardened, accusations flew more sharply, meticulously worded phrases

tended to bite rather than soothe. Even so, the swift exchange of space-minus

communications was always sufficient to dampen a potentially explosive

confrontation. Until Willow-Wane. Until Paszex.

Worvendapur bent his head and reached up with a truhand to clean his

left eye. Out on the edge of the forest the wind tended to kick up dust.

Lowering the transparent, protective shield over his face, he reflexively

extended his antennae through the slots provided for that purpose and moved

on, striding forward on all six legs. Occasionally he would arch his back and

advance only on his four trulegs, not because he needed the additional

manipulative capacity his versatile foothands could provide, but because it

raised his body to its maximum standing height of slightly over a meter and a

half and enabled him to see over the meter-high, lavender-tinted grass that

comprised much of the surrounding vegetation.

Something quick and chittering scuttled through the sedge close to his

right. Using the truhand and foothand on that side of his thorax, he drew the

rifle that was slung across his back and aimed it at the source of the noise,

tensing in readi-ness. The muzzle of the weapon came up sharply as half a

dozen !ccoerk burst from the meadow. Letting out a whistle of fourth-degree

relief, he let a digit slip from the trigger and reholstered the gun.

Their plump brown bodies shot through with purple streaks, the flock of

feathered !ccoerk fluttered toward the satin-surfaced lake, cooing like

plastic batons that had been charged with static electricity. Beneath a

feathered, concave belly one trailed an egg sac nearly as big as herself.

Idly, Wor-vendapur found himself wondering if the eggs were edible. While

Willow-Wane had been settled for more than two hundred years, development had

been slow and gradual, in the conservative, measured manner of the thranx.

Coloniza-tion had also been largely confined to the continents of the northern

hemisphere. The south was still a vast, mostly un-known wilderness, a raw if

accommodating frontier where new discoveries were constantly being made and

one never knew what small marvel might be encountered beneath the next hill.

Hence his rifle. While Willow-Wane was no Trix, a world that swarmed

with dynamic, carnivorous life-forms, it was still home to an intimidating

assortment of energetic native predators. A settler had to watch his steps,

especially in the wild, uncivilized south.

Tall, flexible blue sylux fringed the shore of the lake, an impressive

body of fresh water that dominated the landscape for a considerable distance

to the north. Its tepid, prolific expanse separated the rain forest, beneath

which the settle-ment had been established, from inhospitable desert that

dropped southward from the equator. Founded forty years ago, the burgeoning,

thriving colony hive of Paszex was al-ready sponsoring outlying satellite

communities. Worvendapur's family, the Ven, was prominent in one of these, the

agri town of Pasjenji.

While rain forest drip was adequate to supply the settle-ment's present

water needs, plans for future growth and ex-pansion demanded a larger and more

reliable supply. Rather than going to the trouble and expense of building a

reservoir, the obvious suggestion had been made that the settlement tap the

ample natural resource of the lake. As the possessor of a subspecialty in

hydrology, Wor had been sent out to scout suitable treatment and pipeline

sites. Ideally, he would find one as close to the lake as possible that was

also geologically stable and capable of supporting the necessary engineering

infrastructure, from pumping station to filtration plant to feeder lines.

He had been out in the field for more than a week now, taking and

analyzing soundings, confirming aerial surveys, evaluating potential locations

for the treatment plant and transmission routes for the water it would

eventually supply. Like any thranx, he missed the conviviality of the hive,

the press and sound and smell of his kind. Regrettably, another week of

solitary stretched out before him. The local fauna helped to divert his

thoughts from his isolation. He relished these always educational, sometimes

engaging diversions, so long as one of them did not rise up and bite off his

leg.

Seismic soundings could have been made from the air, or by a mechanical

remote, but for something as critical to the community's future as a water

facility it was felt that on-site inspection and evaluation by a specialist

was required. Wor could hardly disagree. If it proved feasible, this same lake

water would be used to slake the thirst of his own offspring. When the spouts

opened inside the hive, he wanted their flow to come from a station that would

not be subject to incessant breakdowns or microbial contamination.

Unlimbering his pack, he used all four hands to remove and set up the

sounder. At the touch of a switch, its six slim, mechanical legs snapped into

place. Setting the instrument down on the ground, he adjusted the controls

until he was confident it was stationed in a precise and sturdy manner on the

slightly boggy surface. Compared to many of the water-logged sites he had

already visited and evaluated, the pres-ent location looked promising. It

would not do to situate a water treatment plant on sodden, potentially

temperamental ground.

Activating the sounder, he stepped back and let his com-pound gaze

wander to a formation of gentre!!m gliding past overhead. A widespread native

species familiar from numer-ous encounters in the long-settled north, they

were migrating to the southern rain forests to escape the onset of the

north-ern wet season and its accompanying monsoon rains. Their translucent,

membranous wings shimmered in the haze-heavy sunshine of midday. Long,

flexible snouts inflated and col-lapsed as individuals called tumescently to

one another.

The sounder beeped softly, signifying the completion of the survey.

While he had watched the wildlife soar past to vanish beyond the far horizon

of the lake, the sounder had taken a sonic scan of the immediate vicinity to a

depth of more than a hundred meters. From a study of such scans as well as a

mass of other accumulating data, Worvendapur and his colleagues would choose a

site for the filtration and pumping station.

While there was no need for him to perform an in-depth analysis of the

actual readings in the field, he was always cu-rious to see the unit's

findings. Even more so than the average thranx, he was intensely interested in

what the earth beneath his feet was like because he might have to live in it

someday. The initial readouts that flashed on the screen were promising and

devoid of surprise. As it had proven to be in every pre-vious reading, the

ground on which he stood was composed primarily of sedimentary rock, with the

occasional ancient igneous intrusion from a time when local tectonics were

more active. Though the area, and for that matter the ground in which Paszex

itself was located, was riddled with faults, they appeared to be long

quiescent and of no especial concern.

He dipped his head lower. Having only a transparent, nicti-tating

membrane in place of opaque eyelids, he could not squint, but his antennae

dipped forward until the tips were al-most brushing the screen. The sounder

was reporting an anomaly, virtually beneath his feet. A very peculiar anomaly.

It was so peculiar that he considered returning to the air-car and

reporting what he had found. But while reliable, sounders were not perfect. No

instrument was. And neither were those individuals charged with their

operation. If he called in his concern and it turned out to be baseless, he

would come off looking more than a little foolish in the eyes of his peers.

Thranx humor could be as sharp as a young dancer's ovipositors. Uncertain how

best to proceed, he car-ried the sounder toward the lake, repositioned it, and

ran a second scan. This time, instead of studying the wildlife, he waited

impatiently for the compact device to complete its work.

The second scan, run from a different site, confirmed the readings of

its predecessor. Worvendapur pondered long and hard. The unusual results he

was getting could be due to a me-chanical fault in the instrumentation, a

consistent error in the analysis program, a simple imperfection in the readout

system or screen itself, or any one of half a hundred other possible reasons-

any one of which would make more sense than what he believed the instrument

was telling him.

Breathing evenly through his spicules, he ran a detailed in-ternal check

on the sounder's systems. As near as he could tell without taking it apart,

something he was not qualified to do, the device was working perfectly. He

then examined himself, and decided that he was working perfectly as well. Very

well then. He would leave it to a committee to debate and settle on an

interpretation of his inexplicable findings. But he would not rely on one

reading, or even two. Moving the sounder again, he set about making the third

of several dozen sound-ings of the immediate area, unaware that he was not

doing so in isolation.

His actions were being observed and subjected to the same kind of

rigorous analysis that he was applying to the ground beneath his feet. The

eyes that watched him were not com-pound, nor did they belong to

representatives of the indigenous wildlife.

"What is he doing?" Clad in color-shifting, pattern-changing camouflage

garb, the AAnn advance scout was virtually invisible where she stood crouching

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***************************************************Author:AlanDeanFosterTitle:PhylogenesisSeries:TheFoundingtheCommonwealthSeriesNo:010f03Originalcopyrightyear:1999Genre:ScienceFictionDateofe-text:05/09/2001Preparedby:LastRevised://Revisedby:Version:1.0Comments:Pleasecorrectanyerrorsyoufindinthise-t...

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