Issue In Doubt by David Sherman Read Free Book Online Page B

although we’re fairly certain it’s native to the aliens’ homeworld.”
    “What about the weapons?” Commandant Talbot interrupted.
    Leave it to a Marine to want to know about small arms right off, Madison silently groused.
    “Ah yes,” Raub said with a sigh. “Weapons aren’t organic, so they aren’t a strong suit of mine.” He looked Talbot in the eye, then at Army CoS Robinson. “But the engineering people I gave them to tell me they’re not anything like what we have. Their caliber is smaller than 5.56mm and bigger than flechette, partly powered by something resembling a low-power railgun.” He shook his head. “Whatever that means.”
    “Back to the gear,” Hobson said. “We can return to the weapons later.”
    Raub shook his head again. “The harness is stitched together with a vegetable fiber of unknown origin. The same for the pouches attached to it. The vegetable fiber is also presumably from the aliens’ homeworld. The stitching is of a type that could have been done in a human factory.” He looked at Hobson and shrugged. “Without more artifacts, or knowledge of the place of origin of the harness, there really isn’t anything more I can say.”
    Ignatz Gresser asked, “What can you surmise about the biology of the animal the leather comes from?”
    “There I’m on slightly firmer ground.” Raub straightened in his chair and leaned his angular body forward. “We were able to secure tissue and fluid samples of the prisoner—non-destructively, let me assure you,” he rapidly added when Walker looked like she was about to protest. “We went to lengths to avoid injuring him.”
    “Are you sure the alien is a ‘he’?” Walker asked. “I’ve seen the pictures. The creature is naked, and it has what looks like a vaginal slit between its legs.”
    “Yes, ma’am,” Raub said, “but body waste comes from that slit, and there is no evident anus. We believe it is more analogous to a cloaca.”
    Walker nodded. “So the sex organs are interior. Have you seen anything like a penis come out of the cloaca?”
    “No we haven’t,” Raub admitted.
    “Then it just as well could be female?”
    Raub spread his hands. “It could, yes. But in most life forms that we’ve encountered, both on Earth and on the explored planets, the males, or male analogs, of most species are the more aggressive, more combative, of their species. Granted, there are a large number of insectoids and piscine species in which the female is the more aggressive, but the larger animals—reptilians, avians, mammalians and their analogs, it’s the male that’s combative. For all we know, these aliens have more than two sexes or genders. But it’s a convenient convention to call the alien a ‘he’ rather than an ‘it’.”
    Walker turned over a hand, indicating that she was willing to accept Raub’s explanation for now.
    Raub nodded at the Secretary of State, and continued. “The alien’s DNA is, of course, totally different from that of humans. But analysis of the leather of his harness showed that the animal its leather came from is closely related to the alien itself, strongly indicating that it evolved on the same world. The same goes for the threads of the stitching. Naturally, we don’t know what the alien eats. However, his amino acids are comprised of the same elements ours are: carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen. Not, of course, in exactly the same ratios. And there are only twenty, instead of the twenty-two that we have. We don’t yet know which are the aliens’ essential acids, so we don’t know what to feed him.”
    “What are you feeding him then?” Caruana asked.
    Raub nodded at the question. “We’re offering him a variety of foods, both animal and vegetable, cooked and raw. He wouldn’t take any at first, but we ate samples to show him that they weren’t poison. It’s too early in the process to determine which he can hold down, and whether any of them provide him actual nutrition.