The Cause of Death by Roger MacBride Allen Read Free Book Online

same body plan as humans: bipedal and upright, with their arms and hands all but completely evolved away from their previous locomotive functions and available for lifting, carrying, manipulation, etc. The Pavlat are generally taller and thinner than humans, and with a thicker, more leathery skin. They have six fingers on each hand, arranged more or less human-style, but with an additional opposable outer thumb. However, they have only four toes on each foot. It is unclear whether the "missing" toes are fused with other toes or simply fail to develop.
There is some variation in coloration, but the Pavlat are mainly bluish-grey in color, with the face, the ventral area of the torso, the palms of the hands, and the bottoms of their feet tan or light brown. Their faces are longer and more angular than humans', but the mouth and eyes are arranged as per the human model. There is no nose; instead, there are breathing holes just behind the large and fanlike ears. The ears themselves generally lie flat, but are even more maneuverable than a cat's. Ear position is an important signal of a Pavlat's mood.
As with their general bodily appearance, Pavlat biology is deceptively similar to human biology. The similarities mask vast and subtle differences that have shaped traditional Pavlat culture in many ways, some obvious, and some quite surprising. . . .

    Jamie scored that section at about 85 percent right, based on his own quite limited experiences with the denizens of Little Pavlavia in Los Angeles. At least the article warned that first impressions could be deceptive--but it would have been nice if it had gone a bit further and tried to explain exactly how the similarities were deceptive. Interestingly enough, nearly all of the information seemed to be from human sources, with no data provided by third races. Maybe the other Elder Races didn't know much about the Pavlat either.
    Communities on Earth like Little Pavlavia in Los Angeles merely provided the illusion that humans understood the Pavlat. The Pavlat on Earth had done a fairish job of assimilating themselves--and of keeping their reasons for leaving the Pavlat world very murky indeed.
    He remembered from his days in Bindulan's store how complex codes and oaths of secrecy seem to cover everything. The humans that lived in and around Little Pavlavia had a few standard jokes about them, told with more affection than otherwise.

"How can you tell if a Pavlat is keeping a secret?"
"It's breathing."
"How can you tell when a Pavlat has told a secret?"
"It's stopped breathing."

    If there was a hint of menace in that punch line, it wasn't out of place. The Pavlat did not deal gently with those who betrayed a trust, or a secret. It had taken a good long time for the Los Angeles cops to work out a way to deal with the Pavs, and the situation still wasn't altogether satisfactory.
    Jamie rubbed his eyes and got back to work, slogging through the endless data files.

As with any widely dispersed intelligent species, the Pavlat have developed any number of cultures, each more or less adapted to the local climate and other conditions. However, it is safe to say that nearly all Pavlat cultures are strongly hierarchical, and are based in large extent on a complex and dense web of family connections, and a tightly interlocking system of obligations and privileges . . .

    Jamie read on, until long after the words didn't make any sense anymore.
    * * *
    It was morning in Los Angeles. Bindulan Halztec got Jamie's message over breakfast--or what a human would call breakfast, merely because it was the first meal of the day. In most Pavlat cultures, Firstmeal was something much more--it was the main social and ceremonial meal of the day, when visitors came to call, and supplicants came asking boons, and family business was resolved.
    Except, of course, that Bindulan was eating alone, in his very human-style kitchen, dressed in his ill-fitting but quite comfortable human-style coveralls, and puttering