Invasion полностью

Paul ignored him. Naked, the aliens seemed somehow unhealthy, even though the doctors believed that they were in good – alien – health. They did have reddish-purple skin, their eyes dark pools of shadow…and, despite himself, his gaze slipped to the alien genitals. The alien penis – if penis it was – was a long thin sausage; it seemed to hang down further than…

“I can’t believe I’m thinking this,” he admitted. “How do they have sex?”

Jones gave him a reproving look. “As far as we can tell – and so far we haven’t seen them engaged in sexual congress – the male’s penis is inserted into the female’s vagina. I guess God wasn't feeling too imaginative when he created these aliens.”

He pulled up the results of an x-ray. “Internally, on the other hand, they’re very different from us,” he said, changing the subject firmly. “Their biology is nothing like ours, so there’s no chance of a War of the Worlds outcome, in either direction.”

Paul scowled. “Could we come up with a biological weapon that might attack them?”

“I would prefer not to speculate,” Jones said. “They have a brain set-up that is comparable to our own, but they also have four hearts, which suggests that a heart attack isn’t going to be anything like as dangerous to them. Two of the males, in fact, have only three working hearts…and it doesn’t seem to have slowed them down any. Their legs have very little in the way of bone structure – much of their strength is concentrated in their upper bodies – and they are, in fact, very much like a human penis.”

Paul stared at him. “Now this I have to hear,” he said. “How are they the same?”

“We think that the…rigidity of the legs depends largely on an act of will,” Jones said. “When tired, their legs get more…bendy and they tend to try to sleep. It could be a matter of endurance; the males here seem to keep their legs usable longer than the females, or…really, sir, this is pretty much a new field of science. It could be that half of what I have told you is completely wrong.”

Paul looked up at the alien female, sitting in a position that would have broken the legs of a Yoga master. “I see your point,” he said. “What have you been able to discover from talking to the females?”

“They generally agree with the documents that the ambassadors brought home,” Jones assured him. “Subject Female One is seemingly completely broken. She answers all of our questions and, otherwise, just sits there. I think she’s in shock, but without a baseline for what represents normal among them, it’s impossible to know for sure. The interesting part is what she thinks of Subject Female Two.”

Paul blinked. “What does she think of the other female?”

“That she’s worthless,” Jones said. A slight hint of disgust echoed through his words. “She is, apparently, sterile and therefore worthless. The female, according to her…friend, should have been thrown into space once it became clear that she wouldn’t be having any children. That’s…odd, because as far as we can tell, the sterile female is the brightest one of the pair.”

“Odd,” Paul agreed. “I suppose I’d better talk to them, right?”

“You should talk to her,” Jones agreed. He sounded tired, pushed beyond endurance. “If nothing else, you might realise just what sort of beings they are.”

“They’re tearing up Texas and killing thousands of humans,” Paul snapped. “I think I know exactly what kind of beings they are!”

Researcher Femala – who still clung to her title, despite having lost everything else – looked up as the door opened. She assumed that she was under constant observation – it was what she would have done to alien prisoners – but that didn’t bother her much; she’d been under more overt observation while on the Guiding Star. Her clan had watched her, as they had all of the younger children, until they’d realised how useless she was…and even when she’d won her freedom, she’d been watched by the Inquisitors. The humans, at least, weren't going to jump on her for the slightest hint of disbelief or blasphemy. They had asked her hundreds of questions, some of which she had refused to answer, but they didn’t seem to have any real plan for the interrogation. Very few of the questions linked together into one whole.

The human who entered the room was slightly shorter than her, with short dark fur on his head and hints of darker hairs on his chin, something that still looked a little strange to her. It was odd, but the more signs of similarity between her people and the humans she saw, the more her mind focused on the differences. Her people had no hair, anywhere, and the human eyes…! They seemed so mobile, so constantly in motion, compared to her own. The dark-skinned human she’d encountered first, who had cleared all hairs off his scalp, had been the most like her she’d met while held captive.