“At last some of the animals drifted to the far eastern end of the Barcan continent. Twas afflicted, as ’tis yet, with a nasty kind of giant bug that not only sucks blood, but injects a microbe whose action keeps the wound open for days or weeks. The ancestral nogas were smaller and thinner-skinned than today’s. They suffered. Prob’ly rukas and krippos helped them, swattin’ and eatin’ the heaviest swarms. But then they must’ve started sippin’ the blood themselves, to supplement their meager diet.”
“I can take it from there,” Flandry said. “Including hormone exchange, mutually beneficial and cementing the alliance. It’s lucky that no single-organism species happened to develop intelligence. It’d have mopped the deck with those awkward early three-ways. But the symbiosis appears to be in business now. Fascinating possibilities for civilization.”
“We haven’t exposed them to a lot of ours,” Kathryn said. “Not just ’cause we want to study them as they are. We don’t know what might be good for them, and what catastrophic.”
“I’m afraid that’s learned by trial and error,” Flandry answered. “I’d be intrigued to see the result of raising some entities from birth” — the krippos were viviparous too — “in Technic society.”
“Why not raise some humans ’mong Didonians?” she flared.
“I’m sorry.” You make indignation beautiful. “I was only snakkering. Wouldn’t do it in practice, not for anything. I’ve seen too many pathetic cases. I did forget they’re your close friends.” Inspiration! “I’d like to become friends with them myself,” Flandry said. “We have a two or three months’ trip and buckets of idle time in camp ahead of us. Why don’t you teach me the language?”
She regarded him with surprise. “You’re serious, Dominic?’
“Indeed. I don’t promise to retain the knowledge all my life. My head’s overly cluttered with cobwebby information as is. But for the present, yes, I do want to converse with them directly. It’d be insurance for us. And who knows, I might come up with a new scientific hypothesis about them, too skewball to have occurred to any Aenean.”
She laid a hand on his shoulder. That was her way; she liked to touch people she cared about. “You’re no Imperial, Dominic,” she said. “You belong with us.”
“Be that as it may—” he said, confused.
“Why do you stand with Josip? You know what he is. You’ve seen his cronies, like Snelund, who could end by replacin’ him in all but name. Why don’t you join us, your kind?”
He knew why not, starting with the fact that he didn’t believe the revolution could succeed and going on to more fundamental issues. But he could not tell her that, on this suddenly magical day. “Maybe you’ll convert me,” he said. “Meanwhile, what about language lessons?”
“Why, ’course.”
Flandry could not forbid his men to sit in, and a number of them did. By straining his considerable talent, he soon disheartened them and they quit. After that, he had Kathryn’s whole notice for many hours per week. He ignored the jealous stares, and no longer felt jealous himself when she fell into cheerful conversation with one of the troop or joined a campfire circle for singing.
Nor did it perturb him when Chief Petty Officer Robbins returned from an excursion with her in search of man-edible plants, wearing a black eye and a sheepish look. Unruffled, she came in later and treated Robbins exactly as before. Word must have spread, for there were no further incidents.
Flandry’s progress in his lessons amazed her. Besides having suitable genes, he had been through the Intelligence Corps’ unmercifully rigorous courses in linguistics and metalinguistics, semantics and metasemantics, every known trick of concentration and memorization; he had learned how to learn. Few civilian scientists received that good a training; they didn’t need it as urgently as any field agent always did. Inside a week, he had apprehended the structures of Thunderstone’s language and man’s pidgin — no easy feat, when the Didonian mind was so absolutely alien.
Or was it? Given the basic grammar and vocabulary, Flandry supplemented Kathryn’s instruction by talking, mainly with Cave Discoverer. It went ridiculously at first, but after weeks he got to the point of holding real conversations. The Didonian was as interested in him and Kathryn as she was in heesh. She took to joining their colloquies, which didn’t bother him in the least.
Cave Discoverer was more adventurous than average. Heesh’s personality seemed more clearly defined than the rest, including any others in the party which incorporated heesh’s members. At home heesh hunted, logged, and went on rambling explorations when not too busy. Annually heesh traveled to the lake called Golden, where less advanced communions held a fair and Cave Discoverer traded metal implements for their furs and dried fruits. There heesh’s noga had the custom of joining with a particular ruka from one place and krippo from another to make the entity Raft Farer. In Thunderstone, besides Many Thoughts, Cave Discoverer’s noga and ruka belonged to Master Of Songs; heesh’s krippo (female) to Leader Of Dance; heesh’s ruka to Brewmaster; and all to various temporary groups.
Aside from educational duties, none of them linked indiscriminately. Why waste the time of a unit that could make part of an outstanding entity, in junction with units less gifted? The distinction was somewhat blurred but nonetheless real in Thunderstone, between “first families” and “proles.” No snobbery or envy appeared to be involved. The attitude was pragmatic. Altruism within the communion was so taken for granted that the concept did not exist.
Or thus went Flandry’s and Kathryn’s impressions. She admitted they might be wrong. How do you probe the psyche of a creature with three brains, each of which remembers its share in other creatures and, indirectly, remembers things that occurred generations before it was born?
Separately, the nogas were placid, though Kathryn said they became furious if aroused. The krippos were excitable and musical; they produced lovely clear notes in intricate patterns. The rukas were restless, curious, and playful. But these were generalizations. Individual variety was as great as for all animals with well-developed nervous systems.
Cave Discoverer was in love with heesh’s universe. Heesh looked forward with excitement to seeing Port Frederiksen and wondered about the chance of going somewhere in a spaceship. After heesh got straight the basic facts of astronomy, xenology, and galactic politics, heesh’s questions sharpened until Flandry wondered if Didonians might not be inherently more intelligent than men. Could their technological backwardness be due to accidental circumstances that would no longer count when they saw the possibility of making systematic progress?
The future could be theirs, not ours. Flandry thought. Kathryn would reply, “Why can’t it be everybody’s?”
Meanwhile the expedition continued — through rain, gale, fog, heat, strange though not hostile communions, finally highlands where the men rejoiced in coolness. There, however, the Didonians shivered, and went hungry in a land of sparse growth, and, despite their krippos making aerial surveys, often blundered upon impassable stretches that forced them to retrace their steps and try again. It was here, in High Maurusia, that battle smote them.
XII
The easiest way to reach one pass was through a canyon. During megayears, a river swollen by winter rains had carved it, then shrunken in summer. Its walls gave protection from winds and reflected some heat; this encouraged plant life to spring up every dry season along the streambed, where accumulated soil was kinder to feet than the naked rock elsewhere. Accordingly, however twisted and boulder-strewn, it appeared to offer the route of choice.