Only Human by Tom Holt Page B

Maybe they had the place done out by one of those design firms.)
    - considering that he’d been plotting and planning and begging and wheedling for practically all of his adult life to get the research funding to come here and establish contact, actually get out and meet the indigenous life-forms, rather than stewing in a library evaluating other scholars’ blind guesses. It would, after all, be a historic moment, calling for a memorable, quotable, trademarkable first sentence.
    Homo sapiens, I presume?
    Snappy, but not quite right. For a start, it assumed that the first bunch of critters he met were Homo sapiens , which need not necessarily be the case. The classic study of Yefyhj and H’rgfesd, for example, way back in ’06, had adduced evidence that there were at least seventeen entirely different species of life-form on the planet besides the two-legged, single-headed, apparently suicidal and psychotic master race who’d built the Great Wall and who’d lately taken to cluttering up their star system with little bits of fried aluminium. There were even grounds for believing that some of the other species could communicate verbally; interceptions of satellite transmissions seemed to suggest a whole genus of talking animals living in a place called Disneyland, which had tentatively been identified as the big two-piece island joined by a narrow strip of land that lay between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. He’d have to watch his step.
    Now there were big white fluffy things in the blue sky; but he knew what they were. The humans called them - what was the word? Ah, the hell with their crazy, crack-jaw language . . .
    Sheep. That was it. So these are sheep, huh? Bigger than we’d expected. Less solid, too. Still, that’s what field research is all about.
    This is going to be fun.
    He still hadn’t decided on his opening gambit. Excuse me. I’m a stranger in these parts, can you tell me about yourselves? Not really; back home, a remark like that’d have you classified as a tax-collector and chucked down a well before you could say ugvnfecojg f’oiuyewq.
    How about I come in peace?
    Use your loaf, Zxprxp lad; the whole point of coming here is that they’re intelligent life-forms, so the chances of them taking that at face value are pretty fair average marginal.
    Indeed.
    Plan B, then.
    Ack. Still, never mind. You’ve come this far, it’d be a shame to waste all that effort. Plan B, and let’s not think about the discomfort, the pain, the degradation.
    Right now, I could be perching in a nice cosy library surrounded by nice safe slides, instead of tumbling through a blue sky towards something flat and blue and decidedly unfriendly-looking, with nothing but Plan B to look forward to. I must be out of my tiny—
    Splash.
    Â 
    â€˜Sorry to bother you, but have you had a chance to look at those July - oh.’
    Mr Elkins stopped in the doorway as if he’d just walked into a plate-glass window. He opened his mouth and closed it again.
    â€˜In the tray on the desk.’
    â€˜Sorry?’
    â€˜Just a tick, I’ll turn the music down.’ Without moving from the sun-bed, Maria reached out a slim brown arm, fumbled for the CD player and adjusted the volume control. ‘Right, the July figures. They’re in the tray on the desk. Let me know if you need any more detail.’
    â€˜Um,’ said Mr Elkins.
    There’s no definition in the dictionary for the word um , probably because it can mean so many different things depending on context. What Mr Elkins meant by um at this precise moment was, ‘Good God, Ms Esterling, why are you lying on a sun-bed under an infra-red lamp wearing what’s presumably meant to be a bikini except it looks more like two little bits of designer string, in the middle of the day right here in the office?’
    Maria smiled at him and rolled over on to her stomach. ‘While I think of it,’ she