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Jaydium Friday -- Chapter 16
Oct. 19th, 2012 08:40 amToday's chapter of Jaydium includes the scene I dreaded would end up on the cover: my heroine, Kithri, is (a) naked because she's come through a time portal; (b) being approached by a gigantic silver slug. (who then informs her of the impossibility of vertebrate sentience). Instead, Vincent Di Fate gave me a rainbow crystal city...and a frankly phallic space ship.
The gastropoid came closer in a gliding movement. This time, instead of recoiling in horror, Kithri watched it curiously. It did not ooze along on a carpet of slime like the slug it superficially resembled, but propelled itself on a rippling ridge of muscle. The movement of the flesh suggested some sort of internal pumping mechanism or hydraulic system. That would make sense, since there would be no bony skeleton to support so much mass. She couldn't be sure. Her training in xenozoology was sketchy at best, most of it centered around the two alien races that were known to the Fifth Fed. Her textbooks hadn't even considered the possibility of invertebrate sapience.
"I am a scientist studying vertebrate life forms, my particular interest being mammalians," the gastropoid said. "Your species is most unusual, if you will forgive any inadvertent discourtesy in my saying so. I have never had the opportunity to converse with an intelligent vertebrate before. All the mammalians we have studied have been nonsentient."
Deborah J. Ross: Jaydium, Chapter 16
The gastropoid came closer in a gliding movement. This time, instead of recoiling in horror, Kithri watched it curiously. It did not ooze along on a carpet of slime like the slug it superficially resembled, but propelled itself on a rippling ridge of muscle. The movement of the flesh suggested some sort of internal pumping mechanism or hydraulic system. That would make sense, since there would be no bony skeleton to support so much mass. She couldn't be sure. Her training in xenozoology was sketchy at best, most of it centered around the two alien races that were known to the Fifth Fed. Her textbooks hadn't even considered the possibility of invertebrate sapience.
"I am a scientist studying vertebrate life forms, my particular interest being mammalians," the gastropoid said. "Your species is most unusual, if you will forgive any inadvertent discourtesy in my saying so. I have never had the opportunity to converse with an intelligent vertebrate before. All the mammalians we have studied have been nonsentient."
Deborah J. Ross: Jaydium, Chapter 16
