Dirge by Alan Dean Foster Read Free Book Online

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 in their conduct to insist that the humans pay more attention to the development of relations, the thranx ground their mandibles in silence and tried to content themselves with what progress continued to be made. And there was progress, albeit at a glacial pace. Alliances and affiliations that the thranx felt should have been formalized in months now looked set to take years, perhaps decades. There was nothing they could do about it. They were trapped by the admiration humankind felt for the Pitar. Cause trouble, make noise, demand the attention and respect they deserved, and they would only be giving ammunition to their xenophobic enemies within the human community. Naturally patient, their limits were being tested.
    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.”