Dirge - Alan Dean Foster [46]
“Your demonstrations of affection have been remarked upon.” His tone was dry and formal, and she wasn’t sure whether she was grateful for that or not. “We find it peculiar that a great deal of it has to do with our appearance, which we ourselves find in no way remarkable and over which we have no control. Nevertheless, anything that facilitates better relations between us is to be welcomed.” From within his protective hood a smile emerged that warmed her to the tips of her boots. “Your mate must be proud to be conjoined to so competent a worker.”
“Thanks for the compliment, but I’m not marri…mated.”
“No children, then?” His tone was unchanged, academic.
“Not yet, but I’m hoping to have a couple someday.” She fiddled absently with the controls of the siter.
He looked past her, into the shallow valley that would soon be home to another two or three thousand humans. “As am I. Our reproductive and birth systems are extraordinarily similar.”
“So I’ve heard.” She looked away from the siter and back up at him. “Why haven’t you had any children?”
His smile faded, and he made a gesture she did not recognize. “For one thing, the time is not right for me. That is one area where our physiologies differ. Not only are our females fertile only for a limited time each year, but the same is true for the males. We do not enjoy the flexibility of year-round breeding that you do.”
“Oh, I don’t know.” She responded with a mixture of consideration and playfulness. “I know plenty of people who would prefer that kind of biological arrangement. It would make a lot of things easier.” Reaching out, she tentatively placed a hand on his arm. She could feel the power even through layers of winter clothing that exceeded her own. “So that means you can’t get anyone pregnant right now?”
He made the Pitarian gesture for agreement, a smooth dipping of the right shoulder. “That is correct.”
“Not that you could anyhow,” she murmured as she embarked on a fairly explicit explanation of the intricacies of how certain specific on-site structures ought to be erected.
From the preliminary settlement of Chagos Downs to the carefully laid-out capital city of Weald, the colony grew rapidly. The pure, unpolluted air energized new colonists the instant they stepped off their transport shuttles. Sometimes bitterly cold winters, when it seemed as if the entire planet were about to succumb to the glaciers that were advancing slowly from both north and south to squeeze the habitable belt around the planet’s midsection in an icy vise, gave way to an explosively vibrant spring and therapeutic summer. As predicted by its discoverers, Treetrunk was no New Riviera, but it was a highly amenable place to live. Those who arrived from other worlds to make their homes there generally had few regrets.
There were always malcontents who would never be happy anywhere, who really believed they could get all their squirrels up one tree. Grumbling and complaining, they packed up and left, always in search of the paradise world that existed only in their imaginations. Their number was a trickle compared to the steady stream of satisfied newcomers. Families began to put down roots, new enterprises were begun, education centers expanded rapidly.
Operating out of her own tiny prefabricated habitation, a crazy lady preached the gospel of a church that as yet had no recognized name but which aimed to include and encompass all forms of intelligent life. Bound by tradition and unable as yet to envision themselves praying alongside, for example, a brace of thranx, colonists new and old laughed at and teased the earnest evangelist. A few, a very few, occasionally stopped to listen, finding the ravings of what appeared to be a rational fanatic entertaining if not convincing.
Following in the gridded footsteps of the planners, the colony expanded. Outposts became waypoints; waypoints became