Dirge - Alan Dean Foster [15]
“What news for the hive from Bali?”
Reaching up, Adjami stroked his neatly trimmed black beard. His reply was peppered with clicks and whistles acquired from intense study of High Thranx. Many humans in the diplomatic service now utilized such thranx vocalizations, certain sounds providing efficacious shortcuts to specific phrases and intentions. Uncharted and largely unnoticed, a joint manner of speaking was evolving between the two species, or at least among those individuals whose work placed them in close contact with one another. A human diplomat whose hobby was linguistics had even proposed a name for it: Symbospeech. Begun as a game, a diversion, it was maturing into something much more significant. For the most part, the general population of both species remained unaware of its existence.
Especially since the advent of the Pitar.
“The proposed commerce treaty is still under discussion, with the usual adherents champing at the bit and the predictable opponents raining their suspicion on the slightest proposal.” He flicked an inch-long ant off his left boot. Gnashing its jaws furiously, it landed in the leaves with an audible plunk before righting itself and scrambling away. “Two more cultural exchanges have been agreed upon, and there is finally some progress on the question of allowing the colony here to expand.” That was the delicate matter that had brought him to the Reserva Amazonia in the first place.
“These individual humans who object to the details of the commerce treaty,” she asked, “why are they so angry at us? Such exchanges can only benefit both our respective economies.”
“As you know, the colonies are more enthusiastic.” His sarcastic bent, never very far below the surface of his personality, singed the remembrance. “Swap all the painters and sculptors, poets and musicians you want and no one will say much against it. But when money is involved, tempers emerge and blood pressure rises.”
“Our blood pressure does not fluctuate as wildly as yours,” Hathvupredek murmured. “It can’t, or we would blow up.”
“Some of us do.” Adjami sighed. “Politics can be such a disagreeable business. There are so many times when I wish I had followed my heart and studied archeology instead.”
“I can sympathize. Myself, I wanted to be a pin!!ster.”
He blinked uncertainly. “That is a term I am not familiar with.”
“Someone who grows edible plants in an aesthetic manner. It combines your functions of farmer and sculptor. Easier to nurture a covenant with vegetables than with people. Plants do not argue.”
Adjami grunted. “The ones in my homeland do. They grow reluctantly if at all. The ground there is obstinate.” Reaching down, he dug through the leaf litter to raise up a fistful of dirt. “Not like here, where a little spit will bring forth all kinds of surprising growth.”
“Perhaps we should expectorate more on behalf of mutual relations.” Hathvupredek was not one to miss the opportunity to prod.
Adjami did not miss the gentle nudge. “I am impatient as well. Formalities should be moving along much faster. So they would be, if not for this recent distraction.”
He did not need to elaborate. Ever since the discovery and subsequent arrival on Earth of the representatives of the species that called itself the Pitar, the expansion of human-thranx relations had been placed on a slow track. The government was devoting the majority of its attention in off-world matters to the new visitors, as its constituents demanded. Relations with the thranx were cast by the wayside, contact delegated to lower-ranking functionaries such as Adjami. Who wanted to meet with bugs when they could sit across the negotiating table from the shimmering, incredibly glamorous Slyl-Wett and her handsome corepresentative Coub-Baku?
Too polite to raise a ruckus, too stratified