what he saw. Besides a chance to start making friends in a community whose co-operation he needed and which he knew was hostile to his purposes, he welcomed the sheer recreation, after a wearying space journey. When the person whom Goddard Hanshaw mentioned turned out to be Jill Conway, his pleasure boosted to delight.
She called for him before Belrise, in the eerie red light of Anu low in the north. He and a few associates were temporarily lodged at the inn; most of the men must remain in orbit till their prefab shelters could be erected. He had been supplied a flywheeler. (“Might as well do you the courtesy before you requisition it,” Hanshaw had growled half amiably.) Jill’s was a great deal larger and livelier. He was appalled at the prospect of matching her driving style, but clenched his jaws and presently found himself enjoying the speed. By then they had crossed the river—on a small automatic ferry, since his machine lacked a skimmer—and were well into untouched Ishtarian countryside.
Bel arrived in heaven, shadows doubled and the ember illumination became rosy. Jilt halted at a grove where a spring flowed. “How ’bout breakfast?” she proposed. “Afterward we’ll go more leisurely.”
“Magnifique.” Dejerine opened the carrier box on his vehicle. “I regret being unable to make a real contribution, but here is an Italian salami, if you will accept—”
“Will I!” She clapped her hands in glee. “I’ve had that exactly once before in my life. Believe me, a first love is nothing compared to a first Italian dry salami.” Liar, she thought, remembering Senzo. And yet… the hurt of that was well healed over. In you also, darling, I trust.
Dejerine helped her spread a cloth on the ground and unpack the food she had brought, bread, butter, cheese, jam. He is pleasant, she thought. Damn good-looking, too. As she was plugging the coffee maker into her wheeler’s capacitor, he startled her: “I have not had a minute to say this before, Miss Conway, given your whirlwind procedure. But I know your brother Donald. He asked me to send his best greetings.”
“Huh?” She sprang from her hunkering position. “You do? How is he? Where’s he bound for? Why hasn’t he written?”
“He was in excellent shape the last time I saw him,” Dejerine replied. “We had spent quite a few hours talking, in the course of days. You see, when I was assigned here, I—you say?—I looked up whoever I could get from Ishtar, in hopes of a briefing. That happened to be Don.” His smile was quite captivating, easy, warming the whole face, accompanied by a regard which was not a stare but an appreciation. “He told me considerable about you.” He turned serious as quickly as she herself might. “Where is he posted? I know only that it is to the front. Please don’t worry too much about him. In every way, equipment, training, organization, we are far superior to the enemy. And as for the rest, he was busy and preoccupied; he admitted he hates to write letters, and so he entrusted me with his word. I did make him promise he would write soon.”
Jill sighed. “Thanks a billion. That’s Don, for sure.” She returned to the coffeepot. “Let’s save the details for later. Like this evening, if you don’t mind, we can land on my parents. My sister and her husband would want to hear, too.”
“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
