Drowning World by Alan Dean Foster Read Free Book Online

looked like the Deyzara were on Fluva to stay. Unless certain of the Hatas and Yuiquerus had their way.
    Her tongue rambled aimlessly between cheek pouches. It was a bad business, this. Though the Sakuntala were accustomed to warfare, war always brought suffering. As for her personal feelings toward the Deyzara, she was ambivalent. She neither liked nor hated them, as so many of her fellows did.
    If only the Deyzara had made a greater effort to blend in with the Sakuntala! To gain knowledge of the ways of
mula,
to participate in the various complex but learnable katola ceremonies. To mute their own gaudy tastes and incessant activity. True, it had made them successful in ways only a few Sakuntala were now starting to match. From the beginning, the Deyzara had grasped the intricacies of Commonwealth commerce, passed on to the first immigrants to Fluva by their Tharcian progenitors. These the Sakuntala were forced to learn from scratch. Many of her kind were making great progress in mastering such matters. The estimable Jemunu-jah, for example. But it took time—and the Deyzara had arrived already familiar with many of the intricacies.
    It had to be admitted that a few of the Deyzara had made the transition. Without entirely abandoning their own ways, they had learned well those of the Sakuntala and willingly deferred to them as the original inhabitants of Fluva. But all too many Deyzara still remained isolated from their neighbors, keeping strictly to their own customs and dealing with those of the Sakuntala only when necessary. These Deyzara had no
mula,
none. One way or another, she knew, this would have to change.
    When consulted about the situation, humans invariably reiterated that such adaptations took time, citing from their own history of mutual convergence with the very different beings called the thranx. Naneci-tok had only seen thranx one time. There had been several of them, leaving the Visitor Greeting Center in Lokoriki Town. They had kept close together and avoided all but the main walkways. This was because, she later learned, while they loved the rain and the humidity, they were terrified of open water. Not only could they not swim, but they also had a distinct tendency to sink like stones. Since, like every other community in the Viisiiviisii, Lokoriki was built above the water, this rendered their visits to Fluva infrequent and unpalatable except in the brief time of the Dry, when the land lay exposed and naked to the air. Strange creatures, the thranx, though the humans seemed very fond of them. But then, though humans were closer in shape and appearance to the Sakuntala than the Deyzara, it had to be admitted that they also had some very peculiar tastes.
    Chanorii was an ancient place. Compared to many other towns and villages that had adapted modern ways, designs, and materials, a large proportion of the buildings were still of traditional wood-and-vine construction. Not the High House she was walking toward, however. Of far more recent vintage, it had been built with advanced Commonwealth technology. The spun strilk that supported it (instead of the traditional woven lianas) was linked not only to surrounding trees but also to pylons of tough composites that had been sunk deep into the earth itself, far below the waterline. The best of such material did not rot in the perpetually rainy climate of Fluva and was impervious to the numerous fungi and small crawling things that would have eaten their way through comparable wooden posts in a matter of weeks. But even composites had to be checked from time to time and were subject to regular maintenance. For one thing, the active yananuca vines loved the support these strange new “trees” provided and would pull smaller or incompetently footed pylons down.
    The structure itself was similar to those the humans erected for their own use, but entirely in keeping with ancient Sakuntala customs. Constructed of spun and sheet composite in the traditional form of a