Dirge - Alan Dean Foster [13]
Despite their best efforts and their most enticing blandishments, nothing came of their desperate entreaties. The aliens remained isolated and in media quarantine until such time as ambassador-at-large al-Namqiz and his staff felt they would be ready to meet the general public. Having been placed under the strictest of injunctions, none of the other members of the Chagos’s crew would talk, and the diplomatic staff had little hard information to dispense. As they learned more about their visitors, and with their permission, tiny dribbles of information were passed on to the salivating media.
Not everyone was instantly welcoming. There existed among the population of Earth a sizable minority whose opinion of intelligent aliens could best be described as cautiously paranoid and a smaller segment that was openly and vociferously xenophobic. The revelation years earlier of the secret thranx colony-base in the Reserva Amazonia had not hurt their cause, and they railed continuously and loudly in the media and in the hallways of government against forming anything like a close relationship with any alien species.
But even they were hard-pressed to find much mud to sling at the Pitar. Superficial it might be, but physical appearance went a long way toward swaying public opinion. In that respect humankind had changed little since the dawn of civilization.
Rightly or not, it was much easier for people sitting before their tridee to envision welcoming a Pitar into their home than a thranx whose appearance might well put them in mind of a cockroach or a giant ant. Still, there was commendable caution and a desire to proceed slowly and carefully among members of all pertinent scientific and governmental agencies.
Then the two Pitar who had become the most fluent of their brethren in Terranglo appeared on the global tridee. As soon as the first one smiled in response to a question, and before he could even answer, systematic caution and scientific restraint was overwhelmed by an outpouring of popular interest that would brook no further interference from any mere official source.
The government tried to keep matters under control but was overwhelmed. Against such a tsunamic outpouring of emotion from its constituents, confronted by an unprecedented outpouring of goodwill and even love, the inherent caution of elected representatives could not stand. The public wanted access to these beauteous, wondrous Pitar, and they wanted it now.
Some of the more critical who had contact with the Pitarian representatives thought them standoffish, but the majority put this down to an inherent shyness made all the more charming by their irresistible attractiveness. While not forthcoming, neither were they especially insular. Restricted despite the clamor for their presence to the official contact sites on Bali/Lombok and Zurich, they were quite willing to meet and speak with any humans who desired to pursue personal contact.
Permission to do so was highly sought after, and not only by researchers and professional xenologists. Members of the lay public proffered all sorts of blandishments to those in charge, who were hard put to turn down bribes for access that were often as inventive as they were compelling. But the authorities in charge of interspecies relations