“We have no objection to such exchanges,” she reminded him. As she shifted in the seat, her barely covered golden alien backside only centimeters above the hot sand, he struggled to keep his thoughts focused on the current business. “We have already concluded numerous agreements permitting such contact.”
“Yes, but all of them call for Pitarian cultural groups to visit Earth, or one of the colonies. No permission has yet been granted allowing the equivalent human organizations access to either of the Twin Worlds.”
“It is just a matter of time.” This time when she smiled, it struck him as just a smidgen more genuine and less academic. Or was he reading into her expression that which he wanted to be there? “Your people have to understand, Minister Saluafata, that the natural reticence and shyness of my kind far exceeds their own. Confined as we are to the two homeworlds of our origin, we are intimidated by races that have spread themselves to other worlds, other star systems. This feeling is not restricted to humankind. We have yet to allow the thranx or any other newly contacted species access to the Twin Worlds.” Still speaking, she turned away from him to face the lagoon.
“I am sure it will come with time. But your government has to understand that access to the ancestral home of the Dominion is for us a most sensitive matter. Your people must be patient and not try to force the issue, especially when relations between us are maturing at such a satisfactory pace.” Reaching over, she touched the side of his forearm with long, lissome fingers. Though manifestly casual and anything but overtly erotic, the contact sent a shock through his entire expansive frame.
“It’s just that we don’t see any reason for your hesitation.” Despite his pleasurable unease, he refused to be distracted. “If true friendship is to be extended across the parsecs…”
She touched him again, and this time her fingers ran down his exposed skin from elbow to wrist. “Please, Minister Saluafata. It is very much such a pleasant day, and so good to—how is it said?—take a break from the relentlessness of duty. Do not spoil it by pressing me or my colleagues for a response we are not authorized to give. I can only reiterate that your people must have some patience with us.” This time he chose to believe that the scintillating smile came from the heart. “After all, we have not even been aware of one another’s existence for but a short time. Allow us our privacy.”
He grinned back. “It’s not for me to take away. I’m just doing my job by conveying the petitions of my superiors. Myself, I don’t care if your people choose to keep your homeworlds cloistered forever, so long as you come and visit us once in a while and we maintain amicable relations.”
“You are a gracious and understanding representative of your kind, Minister Saluafata. I can see why your people appointed you to such a significant position.”
“I’ve seen how your kind favor formality in interspecies relations.” He gestured amiably in the direction of the sand, the sea, and the tropical sky. “But just here, just now, couldn’t you break with your tradition for a few hours? Long enough to call me ‘Api’? It would please me.” His grin widened irresistibly. “Think of it as a diplomatic concession to improved relations.”
“‘Api.’” She considered him thoughtfully. “A small name for so large an individual.”
“It’s a common trait among my particular, very small tribe.”
“You are a tribe all by yourself, Api.”
It was the first time he, or perhaps anyone else, had heard a representative of the Pitar make a joke. He was encouraged beyond reason.
“I’m not involved with the extensive studies that have been undertaken and are still ongoing in attempts to resolve our respective biologies, but I have read the reports—at least, the informal ones. I have neither the time nor the training to delve into the scientific literature. One thing I believe we’ve had some trouble resolving is the matter of aging. You seem to do it so much better than us.”
She executed a Pitarian gesture of understanding. “It is not something we work at. Biology is what it is. It does not play favorites. Believe me, there are aspects to it where your abilities far exceed ours.”
“There are millions of humans who, after seeing you, would disagree. Take yourself, for example. Unlike with most human females, it’s impossible to tell if you’ve had or have not had children.”
The look she turned on him was so sharp and sudden it shocked him. “What makes you ask that?”
He hastened to recover. “Nothing particular. I was just making conversation.” His smile seemed to settle her. “I did not mean to intrude, or to violate any social taboos. Remember, we are still learning about each other.”
“That is true. You should excuse me. I should not have reacted the way that I did.”
But she had, Saluafata reflected, and he could not help wondering why. He proceeded gently. “Then if I’m not probing an area that’s restricted or off-limits, may I ask if you have had children?”
“No, I have not given birth to any offspring.” She smiled as she said it, but to the perceptive Saluafata she still seemed sensitive about the matter.
He was about to investigate further when she suddenly turned to him and once more placed a hand on his arm. The difference was that this time, she did not remove it.
“As long as you have brought forth the subject of mutually investigative biology,” she murmured in a voice that was as unchanged as it was inherently seductive, “you must know that it has been theorized that sexual relations between Pitar and human are regarded as physically possible. All preliminary studies of the relevant architecture would seem to favor it. There can of course be no issue as a consequence of such contact. All that is wanting for confirmed results to be promulgated is a sufficiency of experimental data.”
“I actually wasn’t aware that much of anything had been done to resolve the conjectures.” He swallowed with some difficulty. “Such matters are reserved for study by the scientific community and do not fall within the ken of the diplomatic ministry.” Glancing up the beach, he saw that the other three Pitar had wandered off by themselves. Frolicking in the shallow water, Ymir and the two administrative assistants had moved far away.
The alien was very close to him now, and the sun and sand were very warm. “We have more latitude in such matters.” As she whispered to him, her hand moved from his arm. “As a dedicated servant of the Dominion, I am always ready to add to the growing body of scientific and cultural knowledge my people are accumulating about your kind. Experiments in the field need not always be officially authorized.”
There were questions he wanted to ask her, elucidations he sought, but as her hand moved he forgot all about them.
7
Heather Wixom struggled triumphantly to the top of the ridge. She could have taken a lifter there and had herself dropped off, but that would have denied her the sense of accomplishment she felt from having made the time-consuming ascent on her own. Technically, it had been easy: dense but navigable native forest; pauses to examine the indigenous wildlife while it hesitated long enough to stare at the slim, alien, human intrusion; and at the top, tolerant slopes that were kind to her booted feet.
From one of the larger boles directly below her rose the dirge of a gnarter. The tree itself put her in mind of a spruce with a skin problem, many of the evergreens that gave Treetrunk its popular name tending to shed copious amounts of bark at the slightest shift in the weather. As for the gnarter, it was a lumpy, eight-legged mass of slow-moving brown and dark blue fur that lived in selected tree hollows while regarding the world out of large, mournful eyes dominated by hourglass-shaped blue pupils. It had been suggested that it looked like the product of a union between a cuttlefish, a koala, and a caterpillar. A prolific inhabitant of the boreal forests, it did not often stray this far south.
It was luxuriating in the “warm” weather, Wixom decided as she tugged the sealfast of her insulating coat tighter around her neck. Treetrunk had rapidly revealed to its new inhabitants how fecund the frigid northern and
far southern climes were. The temperate zone that tracked the equator was home to a correspondingly greater variety of life, of which the gnarter was by no means the most outlandish example.
Another was the hoat, a puma-sized predator that impaled its prey on spikelike teeth that grew horizontally from its expansive mouth and flattened jaws. Alone on the hilltop, she kept a careful eye out for it and its less imposing relations. Treetrunk was far from being tamed, its indigenous life-forms anything but domesticated. That was one of the great joys of settling a new world, she knew. It was one of the reasons that, restless and unmarried, she had traded a comfortable and predictable life as an up-and-coming urban planner on New Riviera for the incertitude of laying out new communities from scratch on Argus V.
The weight of the shocker in her left pocket made her grin to herself. No need for quite so potent a weapon of self-defense on placid, easygoing, semitropical New Riviera. There, unwelcome advances could usually be discouraged by the judicious application of a few sharp words.
Unlimbering her backpack, she unfolded the extensible stabilizing pod and attached the siter to the clip on top. Activated, the unit provided a heads-up display that allowed her to place buildings and infrastructure wherever she wished, creating a virtual community anywhere the unit’s viewfinder was aimed. Warehouses, shuttleport, access roads, communications, water and sewerage, power transmission pylons—everything could be constructed with the touch of a few controls, could be sized to fit and arranged as she preferred without a single spadeful of dirt having to be overturned.
As she began to lay out the access routes from the growing town of Rajput to the proposed suburban extension, she made adjustments for the terrain, utilizing the unit to banish rock and earth that was in the wrong place and move it to where it was needed. As many trees as possible would be spared, but it was not really a major concern. Between the tundra lines, Treetrunk was a solid belt of native forest, and provisions had already been made to preserve the bulk of it in reserves. A renewable resource if properly looked after, its woods would provide income to the colonists in the form of everything from exotic furniture to tourism.
As she contrived the new town the unit recorded those decisions that she wished to convey to the planning board. In so doing she allowed herself room to maneuver, occasionally indulging in personal fancies that she knew the board would disavow. It was a game: She did as she pleased, the board remonstrated with her, and they compromised. In the end she got what she wanted while permitting the board members to believe that they had prevailed in every matter. The ego involved in the repetitive confrontations meant nothing to her: It was the results that mattered. Her psychological skills had contributed as much to her success on New Riviera as had her talent for organizing and planning.
The board would want the power distribution center to go there, she suspected. She moved it six blocks east. After due debate, she would concede the point, thereby allowing herself room to place the observation and restaurant complex exactly where she wanted it. That mattered. She didn’t give two gnarter moans about the location of the power center.
“You are very intense.”
The comment did not cause her to jump out of her skin, but her heart certainly thumped momentarily harder. Whirling, she prepared to unload a choice selection of suitably modified expletives on the head of whoever had snuck up behind her. Thinking she was alone and concentrating on the work at hand, she had been doubly oblivious to her immediate surroundings. The surprise had been total, and someone was going to pay.
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 could say was “Yes, I’m an intense person, both in my work and in the rest of my life.”
“Intensity is good.” Leaning close, the Pitar tried to resolve her heads-up display. This put his head very near to her own. She could smell the flat but not unpleasant alien scent, could feel the gossamer caress of inhuman breath. Her fingers on the controls of the siter started to tremble, and she angrily thrust them down at her side.
“What are you doing here?” I sound inane, she thought angrily. An inane twelve-year-old; that’s what I’ve become. Conscious of the fact that she was bringing no credit either to herself or to her species, she fought to reestablish the kind of control that the alien’s unexpected appearance had shattered.
“Only having a quiet look around, as y
ou humans say.”
Just as she was starting to recover some equilibrium, he smiled at her, and she found that she had to begin all over again.
“As you know, we are fascinated by the entire concept of leaving the comforting confines of a homeworld to settle upon another. It is a concept entirely foreign to us. But we want to see you succeed here, on Treetrunk. So in order to learn how to be of better assistance, we travel and we observe.” His expression flattened once again. “You do not mind if I observe you?”
“Suit yourself,” she replied indifferently. Within, she was yearning for him to observe her for a good, long time. Oh, how she wanted him to observe her! She had heard stories, they had all heard stories, about the…relationships that under just the right circumstances could develop between individual humans and Pitar. There were those who insisted these were nothing more than that—just stories. Rumors fed and fueled by the perversely imaginative. Though looking at this Pitar, tall and straight and so obviously muscular beneath his cold-weather gear, she could well believe that…
Stop it, she told herself! Male he may be, but he’s also an alien. Don’t ignore him, but don’t trade your dignity and self-respect for some unsupportable foolish flight of fancy. Respond to his questions, and to nothing else.
“You are doing what?” he inquired politely, and the slight grammatical deviation helped to remind her of who and what he was. She returned her attention to her instrumentation.
“I work for the planetary planning agency. It’s my job to search out and recommend the best locations for the individual components of a new development, as well as to design and suggest overall schematics. It’s a task that does require some intensity of purpose, as you observed.”
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