Ruins (Pathfinder 2)

“He was having so much fun developing his own,” said Larex.

“You’re a renegade,” said Rigg.

“Not at all,” said Larex. “We all lie to Vadesh.”

For the first time, it occurred to Rigg that this statement might itself be a lie. The one certain thing was that the expendables all lied to humans. It was far more doubtful that they actually lied to each other. Much more likely they lied to humans about lying to Vadesh.

But that was too complicated to sort out now. “Do you have any objection to our talking to these women?” asked Rigg.

“Would it matter if I did?” asked Larex.

Rigg made no reply. It was obvious that Larex stood between the women and the Ramfolders, and that neither group was going to come any nearer to each other than they were, until the expendable made some gesture.

Larex smiled, then strolled off to the side, so he was no longer between them. Then he nodded his head, and waved the two groups together.

The Larfold women moved hesitantly toward them. They were staring as curiously at the Ramfolders as Rigg and his party were at them.

“Hi,” said Umbo.

“Oh, what a diplomat,” murmured Param.

“They’ve never been through the Wall,” said Olivenko. “They don’t understand this language.”

“Until they speak,” said Rigg, “we can’t tell what their language is.” He held out his hand in an open gesture, somewhere between begging for food and offering a handshake.

They took it the first way—or maybe offering food was how they shook hands. One of the women reached into a pocket in her living mantle and drew out—something. Something raw and shiny and moving. Rigg let her put it in his hand, but she did not let go.

She said something.

Rigg didn’t understand at first. And then he did. She wanted him to close his hand. Because the thing was alive, and if he didn’t, it would get away.

So he enclosed it in his fist, and only then did she slip her fingers out of his grip.

Then she gestured toward her own mouth, pantomiming dropping the creature into her mouth and swallowing.

“It’s a hospitality ritual,” murmured Param.

Or else a clever way to introduce their symbiotes’ larval form into his body. But Rigg did not speak the thought aloud. Instead he smiled, lifted his fist over his open mouth, and dropped the creature in.

It skittered up his tongue as if trying to escape. For a tiny fraction of a second, Rigg thought of biting down hard on the thing in his mouth to keep it in place, to kill it. But then he thought of a cockroach or small frog exploding in his mouth, filling it with the flavor of guts and death and animal poo, and so instead Rigg simply swallowed the thing whole.

It wiggled all the way down.

At least it had no claws to catch at him, or jaws to bite the inside of his gullet.

The woman who had given him the bug nodded. “Can you talk?” she asked.

“A little,” said Rigg. They’d have to say a lot more than this before the language of the Wall made him fluent.

“You are naked,” she said, indicating his body.

By this Rigg understood her to mean that he had no symbiote. He looked at Loaf.

“He is half naked,” said the woman. “He has an ugly on his face.”

“That he does,” said Rigg. “But it wasn’t all that pretty before.”

The woman seemed mildly perplexed. Clearly Rigg did not understand the context well enough yet to make a joke.