“As you wish,” he said with a slight bow. He had the sense not to try to help when he would obviously get in her way. Instead he admired their surroundings.
The grove stood on a rolling plain. It was chiefly tall red-topped swordleaf, though domebud added splashes of bright yellow. The turf shaded by the trees was that low-growing, tough lia which humans called dromia, The spring issued from beneath a boulder spotted orange with clingwort, ran down in a rivulet, and soon vanished into the soil. Nevertheless it nourished a wide area, for many kinds of shrubs grew around the coppice. Further out, sward gave place to waist-high fallowblade and head-high plume, waves of dull gold across kilometers. The wind blew warm and dry, bearing scorchy odors, awakening a thousand rustlings above the faint gurgle of the water.
“Do you know the names of all these plants?” Dejerine asked.
“The common breeds,” Jill said. “I’m no botanist. However”—she pointed around—“most of what you see are assorted kinds of lia. It’s as varied and important as grass is on Earth. Bushes— That little fellow yonder is bitterheart; the Ishtarians use it for seasoning and a tonic, and it seems to have medicinal properties for humans as well. But watch out for the scraggly thing, night thief. It’ll make an Ishtarian sick, and kill you or me if we eat it. There’s no firebloom around here—needs more moisture—but the thunderweed gets really spectacular in the rainy season, which we’re heading into; and then in spring, the pandarus.”
“The what?”
Jill giggled. “I forgot you wouldn’t know. That’n, It draws entomoids to pollinate it by duplicating their sex attractants, both sexes. Quite a spectacle.”
For an instant she regretted her remark. Dejerine might take it as an invitation. He simply inquired, “Do you use translations of the native names?”
“Seldom,” she answered, relieved. She could fend off a pass, but— Well, if there are going to be any, I prefer to initiate them. Wryly: Not that I’d win trophies, of whatever shape, in a contest for femme fatale of the year. “Most aren’t translatable—how would you say ‘rose’ in Sehalan? —and we aren’t geared to pronounce the originals properly. So we invent our own. Including ‘lia,’ by the way. The first scientific work on the family was done by Li Chang-Shi.”
“M-hm. I understand the photosynthesizing molecule here isn’t identical with chlorophyll, only similar. But why are both red and yellow this frequent?”
“The theory is, the yellow color is basic, but red pigment originated in Haelen as an energy absorber. A heath of sundrinker is a wild thing to see. The phylum proved sturdy enough to spread across the globe and differentiate every which way. Just a theory, you realize. Lord, a whole world! In a century we’ve barely begun to get the outlines of how little we know… Let’s eat, shall we?”
As they did, the sky was darkened by a flock of pilgrim, made thunderous by their wings and clangorous with their cries. Startled, several azar broke from a swale where they had been grazing and bounded off, their six legs undulatingly graceful. Through binoculars, the humans saw details which Jill explained.
“No true horns on Ishtarian theroids. These stubby things you see are more like what grows on a rhinoceros. A few kinds of azar—it’s a whole clutch of genera—a few big types in North Beronnen do develop an impressive spread, but mainly for display. Look… can you make out how the front legs have a special shape? And their hoots are sharp striking weapons. Seems to be a general tendency on Ishtar for the forward pair of limbs to do something besides help locomotion. The extreme case, of course, is the sophonts and their relatives; forelegs become arms and forefeet become hands.”
When the splendid parade had ended and quiet dwelt again beneath the wind, Dejerine looked gravely at her as he said, “I get a glimpse of how you who were born here must love this planet.”
“It’s ours,” Jill replied. “Though in a peculiar way. Our race will never take it over, will never be more than a few. It belongs to the Ishtarians.”
He dropped his gaze to the cup he held. “Please understand, I appreciate how dismayed you must be that your humanitarian plans are set aside. Always in war, many hopes are interrupted or destroyed. I pray for an early end of the fighting. Meanwhile, perhaps we can work something out for you.”
Maybe, Jill thought. Don’t push too hard, girl. She smiled and. very lightly and briefly, patted his hand. “Thanks, Captain. We’ll talk about that. But today we’re enjoying a peek-around. I’m supposed to be your decent, not your nag.”
“By all means,” he said. “Ah… you mentioned relatives of the natives. My sources describe equivalents of the apes—”
“Kind of,” Jill nodded. “Like the tartar, which really corresponds more to a baboon. The closest kin is the fellow we call a goblin.”
“The semi-intelligent species? Ah, yes, I was coming to those. How much do you know about them?”
“Very little. It’s rare and shy in Beronnen. Fairly numerous—is our impression—in the opposite hemisphere; but fully developed Ishtarians have hardly penetrated there yet. I can’t tell you a lot more than that goblins make crude tools and appear to have a language of sorts. As if Australopithecus survived on Earth.”
“Hm.” Dejerine stroked his mustache. “How strange that they have been allowed to.”
“No, not really. Remember what an enormous amount of ocean, stormier than any on Earth, lies between.”
“I meant that where ranges overlap, the higher species hasn’t exterminated the lower.”
“Ishtarians wouldn’t. Not even the most warlike barbarians have our casual human bloodthirstiness. For instance, nobody here has ever tortured prisoners for fun or massacred them for convenience. You probably think of the Gathering of Sehala as a sort of empire. It isn’t. Civilization has developed without any need for the state. After all, the Ishtarians are a more advanced form of life than us.”
His surprise took her aback, until she reflected that an idea with which she had always lived must be new to him. After a moment he said slowly, “My readings did mention post-mammalian evolution. They never made too clear to me what was meant. I assumed—Tiens, you are not claiming they are more intelligent man us? This was not in my books.” He drew breath. “True, they seem better at some things than we are, but less quick and original in others. That’s usual among contrasted sophont species. The totals always seem to even approximately out. I think the explanation is reasonable, that beyond a certain point there is no selection pressure to increase brain power further, and indeed this would grotesquely unbalance the organism.”
She studied him with rising respect. Had he, the military man, taken that much trouble, that much thought? Okay, I’ll pay him the compliment of answering in kind, not talking down any more than necessary.
“Can you stand a lecture?” she asked.
He smiled, leaned back against a bole, offered her a cigarette from a silver case, and, after she declined, helped himself. “When such a lecturer gives it?” he murmured. “Mademoiselle, I try to be a gentleman, but my glands are in good working order.”
Jill grinned. “We will have a twenty-minute quiz at the end,” she said. “Ay-hem.
“You know life here—ortho-life, that is, not T-life— developed quite similarly to Earth’s, the original environments being so similar. Mainly the same chemicals, two sexes, vertebrates descended from something like an annelid worm, and so forth. We can eat most of each other’s food, though we’d come down with deficiency diseases if we tried to exclusively, and certain things that one breed likes are poisonous to the other. The fact of hexapodality versus quadrupedality appears to be fairly trivial, a biological accident. Ishtar has its equivalents of fish, reptile, bird, mammal, et cetera. The differences are important enough that we lay on names ending in -oid. For instance, the theroids are warm-blooded, give live birth, and suckle their young; but they don’t grow either hair or placentas—they’ve got astonishing alternatives—and in general, the variations are endless.