The pendulum swing carried Robert upward again, toward a thick mass of leaves and branchlets halfway up the side of a forest giant. Robert’s warbling cry cut off suddenly as he crashed through the foliage with a splintering sound and disappeared.
The silence was punctuated only by a faint, steady rain of minor debris. Athaclena hesitated, then called out. “Robert?”
There was neither reply nor movement up there in that high thicket. “Robert! Are you all right? Answer me!” The Anglic words felt thick in her mouth.
She tried to locate him with her corona, the little strands above her ears strained forward. He was in there, all right… and in some degree of pain, she could tell.
She ran across the meadow, leaping over low obstacles as the gheer transforrriation set in — her nostrils automatically widening to accept more air as her heart rate tripled. By the time she reached the tree, her finger- and toenails had already begun to harden. She kicked off her soft shoes and began climbing at once, quickly finding holds in the rough bark as she shimmied up the giant bole to the first branch.
The ubiquitous vines clustered here, snaking at an angle toward the leafy morass that had swallowed Robert. She tested one of the ropy cables, then used it to shimmy up to the next level.
Athaclena knew she should pace herself. For all of her Tymbrimi speed and adaptability, her musculature wasn’t as strong as a human’s, and coronal-radiation didn’t dissipate heat as well as Terran sweat glands. Still, she could not taper off from full, emergency speed.
It felt dim and close within the leafy blind where Robert had crashed. Athaclena blinked and sniffed as she entered the darkness. The odors reminded her that this was a wild world, and she was no wolfling to be at home in a ferine jungle. Athaclena had to retract her tendrils so they wouldn’t get tangled in the thicket. That was why she was taken by surprise when something reached out from the shadows to grab her tightly.
Hormones rushed. She gasped and coiled around to strike out at her assailant. Just in time she recognized Robert’s aura, his human male odor very near, and his strong arms holding her close. Athaclena experienced a momentary wave of dizziness as the gheer reaction braked hard.
It was in that stunned state, while still immobilized by change-rigor, that her surprise was redoubled. For that was when Robert began touching her mouth with his. At first his actions seemed meaningless, insane. But then, as her corona unwound, she started picking up feelings again… and all at once she remembered scenes from human video dramas — scenes involving mating and sexual play.
The storm of emotions that swept over Athaclena was so powerfully contradictory that she remained frozen for a while longer. Also, part of it might have been the relaxed power in his arms. Only when Robert finally let go of her did Athaclena back away from him quickly, wedging herself against the bole of the giant tree, gasping.
“An… An-thwillathbielna! Naha… You… you blenchuql How dare you… Cleth-tnub…” She ran out of breath and had to stop her polyglot cursing, panting slowly. It didn’t seem to be penetrating Robert’s mild expression of good cheer anyway.
“Uh, I didn’t catch all that, Athaclena. My GalSeven is still pretty bad, though I’ve been working on it. Tell me, what’s a … a blenchuq?”
Athaclena made a gesture, a twist of the head that was the Tymbrimi equivalent to an irritated shrug. “Never mind that! Tell me at once. Are you badly hurt? And if not, why did you do what you just did?
“Third, tell me why I should not punish you for tricking and assaulting me like that!”
Robert’s eyes widened. “Oh, don’t take it all so seriously, Clennie. I appreciate the way you came charging to my rescue. I was still a bit dazed, I guess, and got carried away being happy to see you.”
Athaclena’s nostrils flared. Her tendrils waved, preparing she knew not what caustic glyph. Robert clearly sensed this. He held up a hand. “All right, all right. In order — I’m not badly hurt, only a bit scraped. Actually, it was fun.”
He erased his smile on seeing her expression. “’Uh, as for question number two — I greeted you that way because it’s a common human courtship ritual that I was strongly motivated to perform with you, even though I admit you might not have understood it.”
Now Athaclena frowned. Her tendrils curled in confusion.
“And finally,” Robert sighed. “I can’t think of a single reason why you shouldn’t punish me for my presumption. It’s your privilege, as it’d be the right of any human female to break my arm for handling her without permission. I don’t doubt you could do it, too.
“All I can say in my defense is that a broken arm is sometimes an occupational hazard to a young human mel. Half the time a courtship can hardly get started unless a fellow pulls something impulsive. If he’s read the signs right, the fem likes it and doesn’t give him a black eye. If he’s wrong, he pays.”
Athaclena watched Robert’s expression turn thoughtful. “You know,” he went on. “I’d never quite parsed it out that way before. It’s true, though. Maybe humans are crazy cleth th-tnubs, at that.”
Athaclena blinked. The tension had begun to leak away, dripping from the tips of her corona as her body returned to normal. The change nodes under her skin pulsed, reabsorb-ing the gheer flux.
Like little mice, she remembered, but she shuddered a little less this time.
In fact, she found herself smiling. Robert’s strange confession had put matters — almost laughably — on a logical plane. “Amazing,” she said. “As usual, there are parallels in Tymbrimi methodology. Our own males must take chances as well.”
She paused then, frowning. “But stylistically this technique of yours is so crude! The error rate must be tremendous, since you are without coronae to sense what the female is feeling. Beyond your crude empathy sense, you have only hints and coquetry and body cues to go on. I’m surprised you manage to reproduce at all without killing each other off well beforehand!”
Robert’s face darkened slightly, and she knew he was blushing. “Oh, I exaggerated a bit, I suppose.”
Athaclena couldn’t help but smile once more, not only a subtlety of the mouth, but an actual, full widening of the separation between her eyes.
“That much, Robert, I had already guessed.”
The human’s features reddened even more. He looked down at his hands and there was silence. Athaclena felt a stirring within her own deepself, and she kenned the simple sense-glyph kiniwullun . , . the parable-boy caught doing what boys inevitably do. Sitting there, his open aura of abashed sincerity seemed to cover over his fix-eyed, big-nosed alien-ness and make him more familiar to her than most of her peers had been back in school.
At last Athaclena slipped down from the dusty corner where she had wedged herself in self-defense.
“All right, Robert,” she sighed. “I will let you explain to me why you were ‘strongly motivated’ to attempt this classical human mating ritual with a member of another species — me. I suppose it is because we have signed an agreement to be consorts? Did you feel honor bound to consummate it, in order to satisfy human tradition?”
He shrugged, looking away. “No, I can’t use that as an excuse. I know interspecies marriages are for business. It’s just, well — I think it was just because you’re pretty and bright, and I’m lonely, and… and maybe I’m just a bit in love with you.”
Her heart beat faster. This time it was not the gheer chemicals responsible. Her tendrils lifted of their own accord, but no glyph emerged. Instead, she found they were reaching toward him along subtle, strong lines, like the fields of a dipole.