Authors: Alan Dean Foster
We still, she reflected as she strolled down the path alongside the thranx diplomat, have so very much to learn about one another.
A quartet of
qinks
bobbled past over their heads, gyrating from one tree to another. Both mating pairs capered around each other, performing an intricate mating dance in the air. As she understood it from the Biology Department, qinks only mated in fours, the twofold coupling bolstering the chances of producing viable offspring instead of unsettling it. Like little helicopters, the multiwinged qinks whirled overhead in tiny, tight circles. This meant that at any one time, one or two of the participants was actually flying backward. Ordinarily, it would put that individual at risk from lurking predators. But since qinks only flew the mating dance in tetrads, two of them were always keeping an eye on the sky ahead at all times.
She lengthened her stride, not wishing to be standing directly beneath the whirling aerialists when the time came for them to consummate their performance. Though his legs were markedly shorter than hers, Haflunormet had six of them at his disposal and had no trouble matching the pace. In a sprint, she knew, she could easily outrun him and most other thranx. With his three sets of legs and greater endurance, over a distance he would catch up to and surpass her.
Qinks and sprints, witticisms and woes, she reflected. All grist for the mill of diplomacy. Haflunormet felt similarly, though he was inherently more pessimistic than his human counterpart. Or maybe it was patience, she decided. Humans frequently mistook the immoderate patience of the intelligent arthropods for pessimism.
“How are you coming with arranging that meeting we spoke about?” she asked him. In presenting the question, she employed a combination of human words and thranx words, clicks, and whistles. This useful and informal shorthand manner of speaking was gaining increasing favor among not only the diplomatic but the scientific staff at Azerick. Combined with thranx gestures and the resident humans’ best attempts to imitate these utilizing only two hands instead of four, it formed a kind of casual symbolic speech. This allowed thranx to practice their Terranglo and humans the opportunity to train their throats in the elaborate vocalizations of the thranx.
“
Krrik,
it is proceeding slowly. Discouragingly so. I think the physicists are not the only ones who are absorbed in the study of inertia.” He glanced over and up at her to make sure she understood the last term correctly. As she did not immediately laugh in the human manner, he could not be certain she had understood his attempt at humor. Of all the humans he had met—admittedly this was not a large number—Anjou was the most consistently serious. Perhaps, he ruminated, this was why she got along so well with the thranx. To Haflunormet it appeared she sometimes acted in this manner to the detriment of her relationship with her fellow mammals.
Watching her step easily alongside him, he tried to admire the play of her muscles, obscenely visible beneath the semitransparent epidermis. Diplomat or no, he found he could not do it. There was simply too much movement, too much visible play within the anatomical structure. In this it resembled that of the AAnn, but the reptiloids’ internal composition was concealed by tough, reflective, leathery scales. If a person peered closely at a human, individual blood vessels could be seen not only beneath the skin but forming rills and ridges above it. Their entire corporeal structure was, inarguably, turned inside out.
He forced himself not to look away. It would be impolite. This female was his hive counterpart. Much as the sight unsettled his stomachs, he was determined to maintain visual contact. As to the sharp, distinctive, and wholly unpleasant smell that emanated from the biped, he steadfastly refused to dwell on it. No matter how their future relations evolved, he realized that there were some things that could not be changed through negotiation.
He worked to pay attention, realizing that the tottering upright stinking blob was speaking. No, he corrected himself resolutely: It was a graceful, fluid biped who was addressing him. Formal diplomacy aside, the thranx were exceedingly polite: a consequence of having evolved in surroundings so confined that humans could not even conceive of the social forces that had been at work. To the thranx, of course, they did not seem confined at all, but perfectly normal and natural. It was wide-open aboveground spaces that tended to occasionally make them nervous. Consequently, their conquest of space had been a more impressive feat than that of humans. Psychology was harder to engineer than spacecraft.
Anjou was deep in thought as they turned a bend in the trail. Eint Carwenduved was Haflunormet’s superior. Because of the rigid thranx chain of diplomatic command, only she could properly accept a formal proposal from the Terran government and pass it on to the Grand Council for discussion and consideration. It had taken a select group of forward-thinking statespeople from half a dozen human settled worlds almost two years to finally hammer out a preliminary proposal for establishing closer ties between their respective species. This had not even been voted on by the Congress on Terra, yet the signatories felt that opening negotiations with their thranx counterparts at the same time as the details were being debated on the human homeworld would, if nothing else, serve to accelerate mutual consideration of the delicate issues involved.
It was an acknowledged diplomatic ploy, a means of forcing reluctant individuals on both sides to consider politically highly sensitive issues they might otherwise prefer to ignore. Easy enough for the executive director of the colony world of Kansastan to ignore the question of closer human-thranx relations—but not if he felt that his thranx counterpart on Humus was ready to vote on the matter. Merely having the proposals presented for contemplation forced those to whom they were delivered to deliberate their possible ramifications. A good deal of the work of real diplomacy consisted of engaging such individual uncertainties.
Just agreeing on what was technically a compilation of informal suggestions was a triumph for those thranx and humans involved. Others, they knew, were actively working to discourage the implementation of even one of the proposals. One way to do this was to persuade those in positions to actually make decisions to simply ignore anything relevant that crossed their desks. Hence Anjou’s intense desire to have a face-to-face meeting with Eint Carwenduved. Haflunormet’s superincumbent could not only present proposals to the Grand Council; she could go so far as to make recommendations.
Through Haflunormet, Anjou had been trying to arrange such a meeting for more than six months. Patience or pessimism, whatever one chose to call it, the seemingly endless procrastination was driving her crazy. She could not give vent to her true feelings, however—not in front of Haflunormet. The xenologists had been firm on that from the beginning. She had yet to meet a thranx who would not recoil in distaste at what was to them an often explosive human outburst of emotion.
Anyway, she told herself, diplomats do not do that sort of thing. So the fact that she wanted to stop right there and then in the middle of the domesticated alien jungle and scream out her frustration to curious qinks and any other exotics within range of her voice had to remain nothing more than a passing fancy. But the desire did not wane quickly, she realized.
The delay was not Haflunormet’s fault. She knew that. Thranx diplomacy made the human equivalent appear to progress at lightning speed. There was nothing to be done about it but persist, stay polite, and keep her hopes up.
“Why the continuing reluctance?” She gazed over at glittering compound eyes that were more advanced than that of any terrestrial insect. “It’s just a meeting. It needn’t even last very long.”
Haflunormet stepped, one set of legs at a time, over an artfully positioned
zell
root. “Eint Carwenduved continues to study the proposals.”
“I know that—she’s been ‘studying’ them for the better part of a year.” At once, Anjou regretted her tone, even though it was unlikely that Haflunormet was aware of its significance. His knowledge of human gestures, facial expressions, and linguistic peculiarities was improving rapidly, however, so she was more concerned than she would have been a few months ago.
He did not react as if he detected any bitterness, however. “You must understand, Fanielle, that such things take more time to be resolved among my kind than they seem to among yours. Carwenduved must be certain of herself before she commits to any course of action because she will inevitably be held responsible for relevant consequences.”
Which was a fancy and not altogether alien way of saying that the eint was stalling, Anjou knew.
“The eint marvels at your earnestness,” Haflunormet continued. “She sees no need for a ‘face-to-face,’ as you call it.” As the thranx diplomat spoke, he absently employed a truhand to preen his left antenna.
“My people believe strongly that personal contact is an important component of diplomacy.”
Haflunormet indicated understanding. “You do realize that not all my kind take pleasure from being in your physical presence.” He hastened to qualify his comment. “I did not mean you personally, of course! I meant humans in general.”
“I know what you meant.” Anjou was not naÏve. She was fully aware that most thranx, especially those who had experienced little or no contact with humans, found the presence of her kind physically unappealing. It was something she had worked hard to overcome, in everything from her attire to her manner of speaking. “But as a diplomat, I am entitled to certain accommodations.” This time her tone was firm. “Eint Carwenduved realizes this as well.”
“I know that she does.” Haflunormet sighed, the air wheezing gently from the breathing spicules that lined his b-thorax. “Your patience gains you merit in her eyes as well as in mine, Fanielle.”
What patience? she thought. I’m going crazy here, hanging around up at Azerick waiting for your mommy bug to deign to see me. She promptly shunted the undiplomatic and very unthranxlike thought aside.
Instead of thinking antithranx thoughts, what might she make use of that the thranx themselves would react to? Perhaps she had been stalking the impasse from the wrong direction. Perhaps she had been thinking too many human thoughts.
How would a thranx diplomat gain speedier access to a counterpart? It would have to be something informal, she knew. The delicate intricacies and involved traditions of thranx hive government were still largely a mystery to the human researchers charged with interpreting them. More was known about thranx culture and society in general. Mightn’t there be something there she could apply?
She halted so suddenly that Haflunormet was momentarily alarmed. Both antennae fluttered in her direction. “Is something the matter, Fanielle? If you are feeling stressed by the local conditions, we can find you a climate-controlled chamber in which to revitalize—though I personally find the weather outside today a bit on the cool side.”
“Yes,” she told him. “Yes, I am feeling a little—a little faint.” She put the back of one hand to her forehead in a melodramatic gesture any human would have found amusing, but which the anxious thranx could only view as potentially alarming. “It happens to us—at such times.”
He indicated confusion. “Of what ‘times’ are you speaking?”
“Oh, that’s right. You don’t know. I haven’t told you before now, have I? An oversight on my part. You see—I’m pregnant, Haflunormet. With, um—” She thought of the dancing qinks. “—quadruplets.” Unfamiliar with the nature or frequency of human birthing, the anxious diplomat ought to accept her admission at face value. He did.
“
Srr!lk!
You should have told me!” Setting aside his instinctive distaste for such contact, he took her free hand in both his foothands. “Do you want to lie down? Can I get you fluid? Do you wish an internal lubrication?”
“Uh, no thanks,” she replied hastily, dropping the hand from her forehead even as she wondered what an on-the-spot internal lubrication meant to a thranx female.
In a determined gesture of interspecies concern, Haflunormet continued to hold her hand, doing his best to ignore the unnatural warmth that radiated from the pulpy flesh. He realized how much he had come to like this particular human. If something were to happen to her while she was in his company, not only would it reflect on his individual and family history, he would regret it personally.
“How are your eggs? Excuse me,” he corrected himself, “your live feti. Fetuses?” Despite his disquiet, he could not bring himself to contemplate the wriggling, unshelled larvae that must even now be jostling for room within her womb. He tried to lighten the moment. “As you possess no ovipositors that I could observe going into pre-laying spasm, I had no visual clue to your condition.”
“It’s all right. I’ll be fine.” Meeting his gaze, which she assumed reflected his concern even though his compound eyes could not convey anything like such a complex emotion, she announced firmly, “Tell Eint Carwenduved that the pregnant human Fanielle Anjou is making a formal
Bryn’ja
request.”
Haflunormet started, his antennae twitching. Then he simultaneously whistled his amusement and understanding. “The news will place the eint in a difficult position.”
That’s the idea, she thought, wincing perceptibly for effect. If she understood the pertinent aspect of thranx culture correctly, no adult could refuse a first Bryn’ja request from a female who was about to lay. Such a compunction applied equally to ordinary citizens, respected poets, noted teachers, and everyone within the hive irrespective of function. It even applied to diplomats.
Of course, it was a blatant lie. Surely, she told herself, the first time in history one had been employed in the service of diplomacy. She would have to make sure her colleagues at Azerick were informed of her “condition” lest the always thorough thranx decided to check on it with a second source. Once her rather abrupt pregnancy was verified, it would be interesting to see how the thranx would react. Time would at last become a factor. To refuse a first Bryn’ja request from a gravid female until after she laid her eggs would earn the refuser significant opprobrium. Her only real concern was whether or not the custom would apply across species lines. And if it did, would it be subject to the same onerous, lingering deliberation as every other communication she had asked Haflunormet to pass along to the chamber of the eint? Could any thranx authority move at more than a sluggard’s pace, no matter the incidental circumstances?