Dirge - Alan Dean Foster [16]
They had no choice—not if they wanted relations to continue to progress and improve. Meanwhile, influential thranx who felt humankind wasn’t worth the time and trouble were agitating the Grand Council on Hivehom to break off all attempts at multiplying and enhancing relations in favor of maintaining only the loosest and most formal of associations. Who needed the humans, anyway? Yes, they were a numerous and powerful expanding species, but space was vast and there were others, like the Quillp, who were not so easily distracted.
Against this background of measured indifference from the human government and active opposition from the malcontents of both species, concerned individuals like Hathvupredek and Adjami struggled to sustain and strengthen the tenuous bonds between the two intelligences.
“Tell me.” Adjami was rubbing a recently fallen leaf between his fingers, wondering what wondrous esoteric pharmaceuticals it might contain. “What do your people think about the Pitar? Officially they’ve been very reticent on the subject, but I’ve spent enough time in the company of your kind to recognize that more is being discussed in private than is being said openly.” He smiled, showing a number of ceramic teeth. “Though short the requisite number of limbs, I have managed to acquire a small vocabulary of gestures.”
She whistled softly, matching his amusement. “I have seen you watching. Many humans watch but do not see. Many see but do not learn. Many learn but easily forget.” Truhands flashed. “There is no general consensus on the Pitar. The Grand Council continues to receive and absorb information. As you well know, this new intelligence is reluctant to disclose much about themselves. This invariably makes some of us suspicious.”
Adjami looked away. Atop a dead tree, an oropendula was warbling. “It’s said they are shy.”
“Who says this?” Her tone was sharper than she intended; while more controlled than any human, neither were the thranx devoid of emotion. To calm herself, she recited one of the fifty-five mantras of Desvendapur. “Not the Pitar. To them their reticence to discuss and deal with many subjects is normal. It is the human media who have branded them bashful.” Antennae coiled. “Humans evidently find such racial coyness becoming. My people are of a different mind.”
“You said some of you find their ongoing restraint suspicious.” Adjami gazed curiously into unfathomable, golden, compound eyes. “In what way?”
As would any thranx caught out by a direct question, Hathvupredek first considered what was known and then what was suspected before replying.
“We realize that despite appearances, the Pitar are not you. We are hardly experts in the analysis of mammalian behavior, much of which we regard as impulsive and indicative of an intelligence that occasionally veers into the retrograde. It is not even that we suspect the Pitar of hiding something.”
“What could they hide?” Adjami added. “They immediately provided us with the coordinates for their twin homeworlds, which have subsequently been verified. I know of at least two KK-drive ships that have already made passing visits to both. They encountered nothing untoward at either stop, and were greeted in the same cordial, curious, restrained manner that the Pitar have demonstrated during their stay on Earth. There was no ambush, no indication of enormous