“Is there any food left?” Moki asked. “I’m hungry. We’ve had nothing but fruit and greens for the last three days.”
Juna saw Seiior O’Brian and Ministro Gomez visibly relax at Mold’s words. It was another cleverly planned deception. It was easier than proving to the ministers that the Tendu would kill sparingly and only at need.
“Perhaps we should continue this discussion in the mess lent,” Juna suggested. “That way Moki and Ukatonen can get something to eat while we discuss rearranging our schedules.”
Seflor O’Brian agreed.
After Moki and Ukatonen had filled their plates full of meat and beans and rice, and before they began to eat, Ukatonen made Moki apologize to their delegation and to the governmental ministers. It was another face-saving gesture that Juna and the two Tendu had cooked up. Moki, as a “child” and an alien one at that, could not be expected to understand the importance of their schedule. Ukatonen claimed to have been looking for him until late the[[ ziy ]]before, and that it had taken them all day to find their way back.
Moki looked up forlornly at the officials and ministers. “It’s just been such a long time since I’ve been in a real rain forest. I was just so homesick,” he said, his ears drooping so miserably that Juna had to fight to keep from laughing.
Moki was a very good actor. Juna heard a murmur of apathy from members of their entourage. Good. Perhaps the diplomats would not push them so hard after this.
“Moki, it was very bad of you to run away like that,” she said. “You realize that I’m going to have to punish you. You’re not allowed to eat any sweets for a solid [[th.]] I expect you to help wash all the dishes here until leave. And you’re to pour tea and serve the ministers [[_. -il]] our next meetings. Is that clear?”
“Yes, siti,” Moki said, looking mournfully down at the ground.
“Don’t you think you’re being a bit hard on the boy?” Sefior O’ Brian said.
Juna fought back a smile. Dishwashing was the only real punishment, and it was a mild one. Moki only craved sweets when he was healing people, and he would be glad to be able to actually do something useful during those long, boring meetings.
After dinner, Juna met with the diplomats to repair their battered schedule. Actually, they had only missed a couple of meetings with the heads of state of Guyana and Suri-name, and a “day off” that included a military review, which she was frankly relieved to have avoided. She didn’t know how to explain war to the Tendu. The concept wasn’t part of their universe.
“Look,” she said, after the diplomats had debated the issue for several minutes. “These meetings and briefings are very hard on the Tendu. The whole situation is completely foreign to them, and very stressful. They need time off in wild places like this park. Otherwise we’re going to have more embarrassments like this last one. You’ve been expecting the Tendu to accommodate to human ways, and it’s strained them to their limits. It’s time we humans accommodated ourselves to the Tendu. After all, they’ve come a long way to see us.”
“Dr. Saari, we don’t have a lot of control over what the various governments choose to show to the Tendu,” one of the diplomats replied.
“But the Tendu can refuse to see the things that don’t interest them, can’t they?”
’To a certain extent, yes,” the diplomat replied. “But some things are unavoidable.”
“I see. But perhaps we can negotiate a few more visits to national parks and reclamation sites, and a few less displays of military might. And a couple more days off that really are days off. It isn’t just the Tendu I’m concerned about. There’s the baby as well. I’m exhausted, and I’m afraid that it might harm the baby if I continue to overwork myself like this.”
“We’ll do what we can, Dr. Saari.”
And to Juna’s surprise, they accomplished quite a lot. Part of their success was due to Moki’s running away, which had gotten into the papers. Analin’s spin on the incident underlined the extent of Moki’s (and by implication, Ukatonen’s) homesickness.
Suddenly their meetings took place outside, in gardens. Instead of parades and teeming crowds of people, Moki and Ukatonen were led through vast reclamation projects, forests of replanted saplings growing over the scars of old strip mines and industrial sites. In Brazil they were taken through the restoration of the great coastal forests. The members of the Central African Federation of Countries showed them the Green Sahel project, where they were slowly, painfully, pushing back the desert. The Chinese took them through the Huang He project, where they saw the vast factories devoted to rebuilding the long-vanished topsoil, and acres where that topsoil had been painstakingly laid down and held in place by plantations of clover and grasses, from which forests of bamboo, poplar, pine, and ginkgo were rising. Ukatonen and Moki conferred with the environmental engineers, and often were able to make useful suggestions. More importantly, the Tendu’s interest in these projects focused human interest on them as well. The last three weeks of their trip were much more fun. Ukatonen seemed reinvigorated; he listened to the people he met with a new intensity and focus.
Ukatonen sat in the hot, dusty bus, looking out the window at the ravaged land around him. This was their tenth tour of an environmental reclamation site in the last eight days. Every country seemed to have several. Some countries seemed to be nothing but reclamation zones.
The tours were always the same. First they would be shown the ravaged land, barren, eroded, sick with chemicals. Then they would be shown the repair efforts under way— decontamination, replacement of topsoil, and replanting. Then finally they would be shown the most advanced stage of regrowth— forest, prairie, desert, whatever. It always felt empty and incomplete. There weren’t enough birds or small animals rustling in the undergrowth. The plants weren’t quite right, too far apart, or growing in neat rows. It all felt subtly wrong, and there was never enough time to figure out what was the matter. And he never got to compare the reclamation site with a real forest or prairie or whatever. It left him feeling as incomplete and unharmonious as the sites he visited.
What made humans do this to their world? How could they foul their nest this way?
He began listening to the leaders more closely, asking probing, difficult questions that made the diplomats and even Eerin squirm uncomfortably. He knew he was being difficult, but he was an enkar, and understanding this conundrum was what he needed to do. With Eerin’s encouragement and help, he began watching videos and laboriously reading through history texts. It was hard work, as dry and dusty and dead as the reclaimed lands he had visited.
Gradually, a picture began to emerge. It was an ugly picture of greed and devastation on a scale so vast that he still had trouble believing it had really happened.
Within the space of two centuries these otherwise intelligent, thoughtful people had cut down their forests, mined their hills and poisoned their land, water, and air. Ukatonen found it painful to try to come to grips with this fact. Eerin had tried to explain the complicated tangle of greed, prejudice, narrow-mindedness, and shortsightedness that led to this, but he found it hard to wrap his mind around the necessary concepts.
The humans had paid a heavy price before they realized their mistake. Billions of humans had lived short, harsh, and painful lives, dying of the diseases inherent in starvation and overcrowding. Now, millions still lived hard lives, but at least they were getting enough to eat. The population on Earth had been shrinking for the last century. It was falling more slowly than Ukatonen would have [[_*ed]], but it was declining. They would reach a [[sustain-Kr4e]] level in another century or two. But it would take rven longer before every human’s life would be a com-ortable one.