Rashalleila Nuaman switched off the spy-screen and smiled kittenishly to herself. Her niece"s generosity and concern was ... well, appalling. So she had finally dug up enough courage to actually plan the thing!

About time, yes. But to trust that "side of beet" van Cleef with such knowledge! Tsk. Poor judgement, poor. How anyone could actually fall in love with an automaton, an utter nonent.i.ty, like that! Oh sure, he was great between the sheets. But beyond that he was a nothing, a void, a null factor. Well-meaning and"

affectionate, to be sure. Like a large puppy-dog. Ah, well. Let them enjoy their private games. It would be good practice for Teleen. Buoy her self-confidence, and all that. Eventually, though, the poor thing would have to be jolted back to her senses. She giggled at the small witticism. Such folderol was fine, but not on company time. Which reminds. Must have the ground keeper get rid of all those nice froggies.

Temporarily, at least. No use wasting. Dinner tomorrow, perhaps.

She had turned off the spy-screen a-few moments too early. Downstairs, her niece"s stimulated mind had come up with another thought.

"We also ought to keep the old b.i.t.c.h off balance, Rory. While we"re trying to hammer this thing out.

She"s not a complete idiot, you know,"

"I suppose that"s a good idea," said van Cleef, flexing his quadriceps. "You"ll think of something," Her face was alight. "I have. Oh, have I!" She turned away and walked over to the china desk. A hidden switch revealed a comm-screen she knew wasn"t being tapped by any of her dear auntie"s automatic spy monitors. It was the one machine on the estate whose circuitry she"d checked over herself. She tapped out a rapid, high-speed series of numbers that sped her call over a very special and very secret relay system to a little-contacted section of s.p.a.ce.

Eventually the screen cleared and a face began to take shape.

"Well, good light to you, Amuven DE, and may your house always be filled with dust."

The face of the AAnn businessman crinkled in a toothy smile. "As always, as always. So good to hear from you again, Mistress Rude!"

Chapter Nine.

Flinx had been staring silently out through the main viewport of the salon for some time, well aware that there was someone behind him. But to have turned immediately would have engendered unnecessary awkwardness. Now lie turned to see the two scientists and became aware that be needn"t have been concerned. Neither was paying the slightest attention to him. They bad drawn over lounges and were staring out at the magnificent chaos of the drive distorted heavens. Taking no notice of their scrutiny, the prismatic panoply flowed on unchanged.

"Don"t mind us, Fhinx. We"re here for the same thing. To enjoy the view," The philosoph returned his attention to the great port and the doppler-distorted suns which glowed far more sharply than they ever could in their natural state.

But Flinx"s concentration and mood had been broken. He continued facing the two scientists.

"Sirs, doesn"t it strike you as odd that in a time when so many folk have so much trouble getting along with one another, you two, of two utterly different races, manage to get along so well?"

"Your questions, T fear, will never carry the burden of subtlety, lad." Tse-Mallory turned to the thranx.

"At times in the past my friend and I existed in a rather close one could say intimate - a.s.sociation. Or work necessitated it. And we are not so very different as you might think."

"I remember your calling each other ship-brother several times."

"Yes? I suppose we did. We"ve never gotten used to the idea that other people might find it unusual. It"s so very natural to us.

"You were a gunnery team?"

"No," said Truzenzuzex. "We flew a stingship. Small, fast, a single medium SCCAM projector."

"As to our relationship irrespective of ship life, Flinx, I"m not sure Tru and I could give you an objective answer. Our personalities just seem to compliment one another. Always have. The attraction between human and thranx is something, that psychologists of both races have sweated over for years, without ever coming up with a. satisfactory explanation. There are even some pairs and groupings that become physically ill if one is separated long from its alien counter-part. And it seems to work on both sides. A kind of mental symbiosis. Subjectively, we just feel supremely comfortable with each other.

"You know the events leading up to the Amalgamation, the Pitar-humanx war, and such"?"

"Only bits and pieces. I"m afraid. Regular schooling is something that eluded me early."

"Umm. Or vice versa, I suspect. Tru?"

"You tell the lad. I"m certain he"d find the human version of the story more palatable."

"All right."

"Human and thranx have known each other for a comparatively short period of time. Hard to believe today, but true. A little over two t-centuries ago, scoutships of both races first encountered each other"s civilizations. By that time, mankind had been in s.p.a.ce for several previous t-centuries. In that time, while engaged in exploration and colonization, he had encountered many other alien life-forms. Intelligent and otherwise. This was also true of the thranx who had been in s.p.a.ce even longer than humanity.

"There was an indefinable attraction between the two races from the very outset. The favourable reactions on both sides far outweighed the expected prejudice and aversions."

"Such existed on the thranx planets as well," put in Truzenzuzex.

"I thought I was going to tell this?"

"Apologies, oh omnipotent one!"

Tse-Mallory grinned, and continued. "The thranx were as alien as any race man had yet encountered. A hundred-per cent insectoid, hard-sh.e.l.led, open circulatory system, compound eyes, rigid, inflexible joints ... and eight limbs. And they were egg-layers. As a news commentator of the time put it, "they were completely and delightfully weird." "

If I recall aright, your people laid a few eggs at that time too," piped the pililosoph. Tse-Mallory shut him up with an exasperated glance.

"From past experiences one would have expected the human reaction to the discovery of a race of giant sentient insects to be hostile or at least mildly paranoid. That had proved the pattern in too many previous contacts. And man had been lighting small and much more primitive cousins of the thranx for thousands of years on the home planet. In fact, if you can believe it, the term "bug" originally had a derogatory connotation.

"But by now mankind bad learned it was going to have to live in peace and harmony with beings whose appearance might be personally repulsive. It didn"t help things to know that many of those same beings considered man at least as repulsive-looking as he considered them." He glanced expectantly at Truzenzuzex, but that worthy was at least temporarily subdued. "So the actual reaction between human and thranx was doubly unexpected. The two races took to each other like a pair of long-separated twins.

The thranx traits of calmness, cool decision-making ability, politeness, and wry humour were admired tremendously by humans who"d sought such qualities in themselves. By the same token there was a recklessness combined with brains, an impossible self-confidence, and a sensitivity to surroundings that thranx found appealing in man.

"Once it had been voted on by both races and approved by considerable margins despite the expected opposition from moneyed chauvinists. Amalgamation proved to be even less trouble than the optimists had antic.i.p.ated. Thranx click-speech, with its attendant whistling, actually had a reasonable phonetic counterpart among the thousands of Terran languages and diaiects."

"African sub-divisions," mused Tnizenzuzex, Xhosa."

"Yes. For their part thranx could, with difficulty, manage the major human language system ol" Terrangio.

The eventual outgrowth of much work by phoneticists, semanticists and linguists on both sides was a language that hopefully combined the better aspects of both. The clicks and whistles and some of the rough rasps of Hive-speech major were kept in, intact, along with most of the smoother sounds and vowels of Terrangio. The result was probably the closest thing to a universal language, barring telepathy, we"ll ever have" symbospeech. Fortunately for business purposes, most other races with vocal apparatus can also manhandle at least enough of it to get by with. Even the AAnn, who turned out to be better at it than most.

"The mutual admiration society was off and winging. Pretty soon it had extended itself to other aspects of the new human life-system. Our politicians, judges, and law-makers couldn"t help but admire the beauty and simplicity with which thranx law and government had been put together. It was practically an art-form, built up as it had been from the old Hive structure itself. Not that it was that different from the oldest human munic.i.p.alities and nation-states. Just much more sensible. Thranx lawyers and magistrates soon cleared away a lot of the backlog that had been clogging human courts. Besides their superlative natural sense of jurisprudence, they could not possibly be accused by anyone of partiality.

Terran-derived sports, on the other hand, completely revolutionized the thranx"s biggest problem - that of leisure. They simply hadn"t realized that there were so many organized ways of having fun. When they discovered chess and judo, it was all over with flip-the-rock and that ilk."

"Third-degree black belt," noted Truzenzuzex proudly. "Although I"m getting a bit creaky for such activity."

"So I"ve noticed, I could go on and on, lad. Human planets were deluged with exquisite examples of thranx workmanship. Machinery, handicrafts, personal gadgetry, delicate electrical products, and so on.

Even the body colouring of each was pleasing to the other, although thranx odour had a decided advantage over the human."

"No argument there," puffed the philosoph. That earned him another sharp glance.

"When the thranx got hold of Terran literature, paintings, sculpture, and such seemingly unrelated things as ice-cream and children"s toys ... in short, the two races just seemed to merge amazingly well, And the greatest of humans achievements, the modified doublekay drive, you must know about.

"But by far the greatest impetus towards amalgamation along with the Pitar-liumanx war was the formation of the United Church. Powerful) relatively new groups existed among both races with similar beliefs. When they learned of one another"s existence, an alien organization with practically identical theologies and desires, they soon had formed a combine which rapidly overwhelmed all but the most die-hard members of the older established churches. Not the least of its strengths was that it insisted on being called a nonreligious organization. For the first time, people could get top-level spiritual guidance without having to profess a belief in G.o.d. Back when, it was a real revolution."

"As near as we can tell," put in Truzenzuzex, "it is still unique in being the only multiracial spiritual inst.i.tution in the galaxy. And other races have members."

"I"m afraid I don"t belong," said Flinx.

"Doesn"t bother me. The Church really couldn"t care less. They don"t proselytize, you know. They"re much too busy with the important things. Sure, they"d be glad to have you or anyone else as a new member, but you have to go to them. The mountain will have to go to Mohammed, because Mohammed is busy enough in his neighbourhood!"

"What?" said Flinx.

"Forget it. Archaic reference. Even our materialistic captain is a member."

"I guessed that. Does he believe in G.o.d. too?"

"Difficult to tell," Said Tse-Mallory thouglitfully. That"s only inidental anyway. I"m more concerned about whether or not G.o.d believes in him, because I"ve a hunch we"re going to need any outside help we can get before this trip is over."

"How about the Pitar-humanx war?" Flinx prompted.

"Oh that. Tomorrow, hmm? I could use a drink right now. Haven"t done that much lecturing since ... a long time."

True to his word he picked up the narrative the following morning, over tea and sweetcakes. Besides, one gets bored quickly in s.p.a.ce. His audience had grown, however, since everyone was now in the salon except Wolf. It was his turn on duty watch.

"I too am familiar with the details," put in Malaika, an arm curled possessively around Sissiph"s waist.

"But I think I"d enjoy hearing you tell it,juu ya . I know my versions are wrongs" He laughed uproariously.

"So," said Tse-Mallory, unconsciously aping their host. "Some five t -decades after the initial Terran-thranx contact, relations between the two civilizations were growing at a geometric pace. Both sides, however, were still wary of each other. Contact between the two religious groups was still in a formative stage, and amalgamation was a dream in the minds of a few outstanding visionaries of both races. These were still greatly outnumbered by the "patriots" on both sides."

"Then came the first Terran contact with the Pitar. That race occupied two densely populated planets in the Orion sector. They were a totally unexpected factor, an alien race human to point nine six three places. Really a remarkable and as yet unequalled coincidence of form. Externally they were for all practical purposes identical with humankind. In looks, as a race, they came pretty close to the Terran ideal. The males were tail, muscular, handsome, and exceptionally structured. The women were one hundred per cent feminine and at least as attractive as the men. Humanity went through a brief, hysterical phase in which anything even remotely Pitarian was the subject of slavish imitation. The Pitar themselves seemed cordial enough, if a bit nervous and self-centred. Limitless professions of mutual aid and un-dying friendship were exchanged between the two races.

"The Pi tar were highly scientific, and in a few phases of research came surprisingly close to matching Terra. Weaponry, for example. The reasons for this obvious dichotomy in their seemingly peace loving civilization became apparent later. Too much later. It also appeared to have a disproportionate influence in their social setup.

"Human-Pitar friendship was progressing at a rate comparable to bliman-thranx. Several years after first contact, a tramp freighter happened to put in at a large but out-of-the-way human old colony. Treetrunk, or Argus V, as it"s better known now. Apparently the entire colony, some six hundred thousand souls, had been utterly and ruthlessly wiped out by an unknown lifeform. Not a man, woman, or child had been left alive on the entire planet. Corpses of women seemed to be especially lacking. The reason for this was discovered later also. Well, expressions of sympathy poured in from the other intelligent races, including the Pitar. They were at least as outraged as any of the others. Most races then sent out scouts to try to locate this new and virulent alien race before they themselves could become the victims of a similar atrocity.

"Two months later a man was found orbiting one of the devastated planet"s two moons in an antique, jury-rigged lifeboat. A cruiser of theUnop-Patha - you know that race? - was on courtesy patrol at the time and happened to drift within range of the boat"s feeble transmitter. They had never encountered an insane human before and were pretty much at a loss as to what to do with him until they could finally turn him over to the nearest human authorities. That happened to be the big research group which was sifting Treetrunk for clues. A month of intensive treatment succeeded m restoring the fellow to partial coherency.

It took them some time to make sense of his story. His mind had been badly unhinged by months of helpless drifting in s.p.a.ce, fears of meeting an enemy ship - and, after a while, of not meeting one - and by what he had seen on the planet itself. It was fortunate that he didn"t have the courage to commit suicide.

The ugly story he told has been doc.u.mented many times over and I find it personally distasteful, so I will skip over the gory parts.

"The enemy had struck without warning, raining death on the unprepared, populace. Being without a regular military force - or need of one - the planet was quite helpless. The police skiffs tried and, as might have been expected, proved useless. All appeals for mercy, negotiations, or surrender were met with the same response as ferocious resistance. When all opposition had been crushed and all interstellar communications completely destroyed, or blanketed out, the invaders came down in ships of vaguely familiar design to inspect what remained of the battered colony.

"Our single survivor had been as surprised as anyone when the sneak tridee screens had focused on the locks of the landing shuttles and armed Pitarian troops had come pouring out. They were remorseless in their destruction of the surviving human population, treating it as if they were the lowest, filthiest organisms in the universe. They helped themselves to a few valuables and such, but for the most part they seemed to enjoy killing for the love of it. Like weasels on Terra. At this point the man"s mind started to shrink away again. The psychiatrists who attended him felt that if he"d remained sane he never would have been able to cope with the other stresses that his escape put on his mind. Like not eating for four days, and such. The Pitar were thorough. They carried life detectors to search out survivors no matter how well they were hidden.

"Our informant had lived in a small town near the planet"s equator. He had once been a ship"s engineer and had bought a small, obsolete lifeboat which he enjoyed tinkering with in his spare time. Again, it took a madman to suppose that that wreck could ever make it to the nearest moon. Before the enemy troops had reached his area he had managed to provision the tiny ship and perform a successful liftoff.

Obviously the orbiting warships were no longer expecting a vessel from the planet"s surface. All s.p.a.ceports had been destroyed, and all the commercial doublekay drive ships in parking orbit had been vapourized while trying to escape or taken over by Pi tan an prize crews. No one thought of an attempt to escape simply to s.p.a.ce. The moons are uninhabitable" and there are no other planets in the system capable of supporting human life. Or possibly they weren"t geared to the detection of a propulsive system as tiny and outmoded as his. Anyway, he made it safely through their outward-turned screens and into a closed orbit around the first moon. He never really expected to be picked up. All his addled mind could think of was getting away from the abomination below. It was pure chance that he was rescued.

"That was the gist of Ins story. Among the nauseating details the probes pumped out of him was what the Pitar did with the bodies of all those missing women. That was so disgusting the authorities tried to keep it from the general public, but as usually happens in such cases, the word got out. The resultant uproar was violent and widespread. War was never even formally declared because most of the members of the Terran Congress held reserve commissions and rushed to get aboard their ships.

"The gigantic armada that was a.s.sembled buried itself into the Pitarian system. Much to everyone"s surprise, the Pitarians held their own from their planetary and satellite bases. In s.p.a.ce their ships were no match for the human fleet, in addition to being heavily outnumbered, but the possibility of such an eventuality had been considered by the Pitarians and their scientists had put up an offensive-defensive net-work which the starship weaponry was unable to batter through. It settled down to a war of attrition which the Pitarians hoped to win by making it too expensive to bear. As a result they were effectively blockaded from the rest of the universe, or, as the more polite were wont to put it, were placed in a state of "enforced quarantine".

"It appeared as though the situation might stay that way indefinitely. That is, until the t bran x stepped in.

Like most of the rest of the intelligent races the thranx had heard the details of the Argus V ma.s.sacre.

Unlike most of them however, they were determined to do something more effective than blockading. As far as the thranx were concerned the final straw was the use to which the Pitar bad put human females.

The female is considered even more an object of veneration and helplessness on thranx worlds than on the most gallant of humaiioid ones. This is a legacy from their early ancestors, when there was one egg-laying queen to protect and nurture. When this hereditary att.i.tude was translated into manners, it was one reason why Terran and other humanoid females who had had contact with the thranx were among the first vociferous boosters of the idea of almalgamation.

"So the thranx added their fleets to the human. At first this had no effect other than to intensify an already near-perfect blockade. Then the human-thranx teams made their first big breakthroughs on the doublekay drive systems, the SCCAM weapons complex, and more. A device had finally been found which could successfully penetrate the Pitarian battle network. It was used. There was at this time some desire among humanx scientists to make an attempt to preserve at least a portion of Pitarian civilization intact, for study. They Sloped to find an explanation for their extreme racial paranoia. Sentiment being what it was on the human planets, however, this proved impossible. There is also some reason to believe that the Pitarians themselves would not have permitted this. Their affliction was that strong. Any-way, they fought to the last city.

"The three planets remain, blasted and empty. One human, two Pitarian. They are not often visited, except by the curious and the morbid.

The scientific teams that worked on the ruins of the Pitarian civilization came to the conclusion that the race was totally unable to accept or understand terms like mercy, compa.s.sion, openness, and equality, and similar abstract concepts. They believed themselves to be the only race worthy of existence in the universe. Once they had managed to steal all the knowledge they would stoop to borrow from the barbaric humans, they set out to destroy them. The other intelligent races of the galaxy would have been next on their programme of extermination, including the thranx. Compaired to them our erstwhile modern compet.i.tors, the AAnn, are positively pacific.

"Fortunately, in most respects the Pitarins were no-where near as sharp as the AAnn. Their weapons development far exceeded their racial maturity, and their conceit their cleverness. I"ve often wondered whether the Pitar-humanx war was a single boost to amalgamation or a multiple one. There was mutual hatred of the Pitarians, the grat.i.tude mankind felt for the thranx aid, and the fear that somewhere out among the stars there might exist another bunch of psychopathic fillers like the Pitar."

It was very quiet in the elegant room when Tse-Mallory bad finished.

"Well," said Atha finally, breaking the thought-heavy silence, "it"s my turn up front, I"d better go an relieve Wolf." She uncurled herself from the lounge and departed forward.

"Ndiye, ndiye,?The merchant, leaned over and leered at Sissiph. "Come, mypakadoge , little p.u.s.s.y. We are only half-way through that delightful book of yours, and I can"t wait to see how it turns out. Even if it is mostly pictures. You"ll excuse us, gentlesirs?"

Giggling, the girl led him out of the salon.

Tse-Mallory began setting up the levels for the personallty-chess board, while Truzenzuzex began shuffling the cards and lining up the blue and red and black pieces.

Flinx looked up at the sociologist. "Sir, you didn"t partic.i.p.ate in the Pitar-humanx war, did you?"

"Pure Flux, youth, no! I"ll admit to being aged, and rarely even to old, but archaic - never! I did have a grandfather who partic.i.p.ated, though. As I suppose alt of our ancestors of that time did, one way or another. Didn"t yours?"

Flinx rose and idly brushed off his pants. The fur from the carpet had a tendency to cling. "Excuse me, please, sirs. I recall that I haven"t fed Pip his evening meal, and I wouldn"t want him to get irritated and start nibbling on my arm."

He turned and headed for the pa.s.sageway. Tse-Mallory looked after him curiously, then shrugged and tinned back to the game. It was his move.

Chapter Ten.

Thus far there had been no trouble. The first sign of it came three ship-days safer.