Dirge - Alan Dean Foster [44]
The instant she caught sight of her soft-footed visitor, the flood of insults she was ready to deliver caught in her throat. From past experience ruefully familiar with their propensity for elaborate gags, she was expecting one or more of her colleagues from Rajput. What she got instead was an alien.
To be precise, a Pitar.
She was better prepared to deal with a marauding hoat.
He gazed down at her with interest, his expression noncommittal, his mouth set in a thin, inscrutable line. The heavy cold-weather attire he wore obscured most of the famed Olympian alien torso, but she could see enough to tell that from the neck downward his build did not differ significantly from the bronzed Greek-god proportions that were the Pitarian norm. She knew they often visited Treetrunk to offer their quiet assistance and to monitor, out of curiosity, the progress of the colony’s development. Since they laid claim to nothing, and in fact were effusive in offering their help to the small but steady stream of arriving settlers, the government saw no reason why they should not be granted unrestricted access to the burgeoning, energetic new communities.
Wixom knew of several occasions where the aliens’ assistance had been vital in helping small new municipalities overcome difficult local conditions. How the Pitar knew when an outlying hamlet was in trouble no one knew, but when it was they invariably appeared in their sleek shuttles, providing aid and support without having to be asked. No thranx vessel ever did anything like that, she reflected, shuddering a little at the thought of the giant, grotesque bugs running freely through the colony. Admittedly, the nearest thranx system lay a respectable distance from Treetrunk while the Twin Worlds of the Dominion were near neighbors in terms of space-plus travel. Nor was it that the thranx were indifferent or standoffish. They simply preferred to follow procedure in all things, including matters of aid and assistance. In this as in everything else they were methodical where humans were impulsive. Pitarian methodology appeared to fall somewhere in-between.
In any event, she relaxed as soon as she identified her visitor. He had steel-gray eyes and pale orange hair that put her in mind of ripening tangerines. Framed by a soft, protective hood, his features were predictably perfect. As he stood there on the windswept rock slope she grew aware that he was waiting for her to say something. The fact that she had never met a Pitar and knew nothing of their language was a poor excuse for her continued nonresponsiveness, but it was all that she had. Quick-witted, sharp-tongued, and completely at ease as she was among members of the opposite gender of her own kind, in the presence of this minor male mammalian divinity, she stood as if struck dumb, completely at a loss for movement as well as for words.
Apparently detecting that something was amiss, the visitor spoke again. “I seem to have startled you. Such was not my intent. Do you require medical attention?”
I am not going to swoon, she told herself firmly. Women of my experience and education do not swoon. Besides which, swooning is an atavistic reaction more properly applicable to the proper ladies of the nineteenth century. This facile forensic explication, however, did nothing to reconcile the physical and emotional insurrection that was raging within her.
The Pitarian male helped. He helped by moving: by bending and picking up a rock. He examined it before tossing it casually aside. It clattered against the scree, and the sound and motion served to jolt her out of her trance. Forging an effort of will, she turned away from him and back to her work. Her mind, however, was not intent on laying out accessways, waterlines, or communication lines-of-sight.
The alien was very close to her. She wanted to tell him—no, to order him—to move away, but for some reason her brain seemed to have lost contact with her vocal apparatus. All she