"They do now," Jupiter agreed loftily, "because we've been teaching them for ages. But they didn't when we first arrived, you know. Didn't speak English at all. They spoke that crazy squeaky stuff they talk to each other, but of course they did want to take our names right away."
Miranda stamped her foot. "Why!" she demanded. "What kind of crazy people are they, that they want to name themselves after strangers like that?"
Jupiter sat back and looked at her thoughtfully. The question was in perfectly clear words and grammar, all right, but what a strange question! Didn't this sister know anything? Patiently he began at the beginning. "Because that is what they do," he explained.
"What is? Why do they?"
"They help the causes of righteousness and justice wherever there is a need, of course. And they do it because the Living Gods made them that way." Idly he gestured toward the figure of the Living God, gleaming in three-D color beyond the entrance to the nest they were visiting.
Miranda frowned uncomprehendingly at the figure. "I don't know what you're talking about," she said at last; and at last illumination came to Jupiter.
"Ah!" he cried, and then stood up and called to the other groups of erks and humans scattered around the nest grounds. "Listen, all of you! They don't understand! They don't know about the Living Gods!"
When two parties are arguing at cross-purposes and suddenly, revelatorily, the basic incomprehension becomes clear to one side, the other side usually reacts with irritation. "Don't be so damn smug!" Miranda raged. "Tell us! Then we'll understand!"
"I will, I will," smiled Jupiter, gesturing to the others to join them. "But let's do it in an orderly way, shall we? It'll save time in the long run." He patted her unresponsive hip, which did nothing to soften her mood. "Come on, all of you," he added, to Delilah and the President and the others. "Sit down. Here. Anywhere. We'll clear this up right away—oh, what's the matter?" he asked in annoyance, as the Mother Sister of the nest began shaking her head.
"We don't have time for this, Jupiter," she said severely. "You've given our nest only thirty-one hours, and now you're scheduled to inspect our district medical center, so the Real-Americans can see how the implants are stored and nurtured and transplanted and—"
"This is more important," Jupiter said boldly, looking to the Governor for support. She thought it over first, but then she gave in with a nod. So they all sprawled out on the mossy banks under the hot red sun. Erks came running up with wine and java and things to munch on, and Jupiter set himself happily to resolve the difficulty. "The erks," he said, enjoying himself, "were not the bosses of World. The Living Gods were."
The Real-American sister Delilah gave him a look of disdain. "Start at the beginning, Jupiter," she ordered. "What are the 'Living Gods'?"
But the Governor was having none of Delilah's disdain. She said authoritatively, "Jupiter will tell this his way or not at all." And then reversed herself by telling it herself: The erks had not been the dominant species on the planet. They were a sort of pet, which the dominant species— the "Living Gods"—kept around as livestock or for companionship.
Because the Living Gods were a technologically gifted race, in all the kinds of technology open to them, they did not leave their pets unchanged. For that matter, neither did humans. Human beings bred dogs into Chihuahuas and Malamutes. The Living Gods moved more swiftly and surely. They reached into the DNA itself and made the erks smart. Dumb erks were about as bright as chimpanzees and as childish. Smart erks were about as smart as humans—
But also still childish, in ways that appealed to the Living Gods, for they liked their pets to be amusing.
The Living Gqfls—the ostrichlike beings in the shrines—were rather like humans in another way, because they had not learned how to avoid war. Weaponry outraced wisdom.
And, in the long run, they killed themselves off. There was a Living God colony on another planet of the system that rebelled against their masters on World; the Living Gods on World annihilated that planet and all that were on it; but not in time to save themselves. Biological weaponry was another of the things the Living Gods were good at, and the viruses the rebels poured into the air and waters of World killed every Living God there was.
The erks survived.
"We don't breed true all the time," explained Jutch, climbing up in Castor's lap to peer into his eyes. "It's been a really long time, you know, and the gene alterations aren't as stable as that. So there are dumb erks as well as smart erks like me."
"All erks are dumb," grinned Jupiter. "Otherwise you wouldn't be trying to get into every war you can find, would you?"
The second day came and went, and the third, and the fourth.
They had covered nearly a quarter of the land area of World's one big continent and even a couple of nearby islands. They had shown the President's party the marvelous old Living God machines and cities that healed themselves when they wore and rebuilt themselves when they aged; they showed how the machines could be redirected to build new things and even new cities. Or nests.
Or weapons.
They were nearly at the end of the tour, and Jupiter saw with astonishment that the Real-Americans did not really seem all that clarified. They had learned a lot, but what they learned did not seem to make them wiser. It certainly did not make them easier to get along with. More and more they chose to wander off together, a closed group of three, to whisper and hiss and snarl at each other. They weren't getting along with each other any better than with their hosts, but what was the matter? Clearly they were troubled—
And then everyone was troubled; and the most troublesome thing yet happened at Ancient Nest.
They came to Ancient Nest on the sixth day of their tour, hot and tired and snappish with each other. The food at Rosy Nest had been poor, because the kitchen sisters had tried to please their visitors with a special Earthside treat of tamales and pizza, and the result had been horrid for everyone. The long flight had been through bumpy air, and half of the party were airsick. When Jupiter tried to cheer Miranda up by explaining the historic uniqueness of Ancient Nest she only said sulkily, "It's one more damn nest, and the hell with it."
Jupiter exchanged resigned looks with the erk Jutch. What a way to talk about Ancient Nest! It was the first colony the Yankees had ever had on World. It was nearly a shrine, and so was the erk city it was built beside—in fact, the city was even more of a shrine to the erks than Ancient Nest to the Yankees, because it was hardly an erk city at all. It had never been rebuilt for erk use. It remained exactly as the Living Gods had left it, millennia before; the erks visited it, for it was their Mecca and Lourdes and Independence Hall all in one, but no erk lived there. "Uh-huh," said Miranda as they stepped out of the hoverplane. She wasn't really listening to him. She was watching Delilah whisper angrily into Castor's ear as the two of them stood by the other plane, and her expression showed that she wasn't any happier than they.
"You haven't heard the most interesting part," said Jupiter.
"That's good, because honestly, Jupe, I haven't been all that thrilled with what you've told me so far." Miranda grinned sardonically as she observed Delilah carefully wiping Castor's sweaty brow with a fuzzy leaf as she scolded him—Castor had been more airsick than most on the flight—and turned her attention to Jupiter. "Well? So what's so interesting?"