as a shock. After all the warnings, the endlessly repeated stories about how dangerous Zang are … how illogical, touchy, and inscrutable they can be …”
I shrugged.
“Young boys call little girls names, and vice versa. Often, they can’t stand each others’ company. At least, till they grow up enough to need one another.”
It was a facile analogy. And yet, the comparison made sense!
I used to wonder about the oxy-hydro antagonism. How, if they are so fundamentally different, so explosively hostile and incompatible, did the Zang and their brethren manage to keep peace with the Civilization of Five Galaxies for so long? Why hasn’t one side wiped out the other, instead of grudgingly cooperating in complex feats of migration and ecomanagement, sharing spiral arms and space lanes with a relative minimum of violence?
How, indeed? It seemed improbable.
That is, unless the whole thing was already worked out at a higher level! A level where both life orders at last matured enough to find common ground.
A consummation, with each side providing what the other lacks.
So.
Here we are, at a place of fusion and consolidation.
A union forged amid strong gravity currents, deep within the Embrace of Tides.
We seem to be invited.
That leaves just one question.
Why?
Harry
HE EXPECTED TO BE WELCOMED HOME WITH congratulations, perhaps by Wer’Q’quinn himself, or at least the old squid’s senior aides, eager to receive Harry’s data and hear about his successful mission.
A damned difficult mission, if truth be told. An epic voyage to one of the worst parts of E Space, where he had prevailed against horrible odds, and even picked up a couple of human-sooner castaways for good measure!
Anticipating acclaim, what he found at Kazzkark Base was chaos.
All the north pole docking bays were full, except a few set aside for official use. Approaching one of those, Harry had to shout his priority code, adding threats until a surly Migration Institute monitor-drone finally vacated a slot reserved for NavInst craft.
Beyond the starlit scaffolding, he glimpsed myriad sleek refugee ships, tethered in layers from one end of the planetoid to the other, creating a dense, confusing snarl of shadowy forms and glinting strobe lights.
“Ain’t it excitin’, Dwer?” murmured the girl with the scarred face — Rety — whose eyes gleamed at the sight. “Didn’t I promise ya? Stick with me an’ I’ll get you to civilization! That’s what I said. Good-bye smelly ol’ Jijo, and hello galaxy! We’ll never be dirty, hungry, poor, or bored again.”
Harry exchanged a glance with the other human, the tall male. Both young savages were clearly out of their depth. But unlike Rety, Dwer seemed to know it. His eyes expressed worried awe at the view outside.
Kinda like the way I feel, Harry pondered. Starships were packed together like shattered murvva trunks after a bad windstorm on Horst. The disruptions must’ve got a lot worse since I left … especially if folks are choosing dumpy old Kazzkark as a place to run away to!
Magnetic grapples settled snugly around his battered survey station, which at last powered down with a relieved groan. Harry, too, exhaled the tension he had carried in his spine ever since departure, sighing deeply.
Home again … such as it is.
Downloading Wer’Q’quinn’s data to a portable wafer, he turned and ushered his guests toward the airlock. In normal times, returning from any other mission, this pair would have stirred a sensation at the sleepy base. Hints at a newly discovered sooner infestation would spread quickly, and make the arresting officer famous.
Residual loyalty tugged at Harry. Humans were patrons to his own race, after all. Ostensibly, he wasn’t supposed to care about that anymore. But habits were hard to break.
Besides, Dwer and Rety saved my life.
The conflict left him feeling more ambivalent than triumphant as they passed through a short tunnel into the planetoid.
With everything in an uproar, maybe my report about them will just be overlooked.
He decided he could live with that.
The Ingress Atrium was filled with noise and commotion as a melange of races pushed and jostled, ignoring the delicate rhythms and rituals of racial seniority and interclan protocol as they pressed for admission, hoping for sanctuary from an increasingly unreliable cosmos. Harry’s Institute credentials got him through several gates, moving to the front of the queue with his two humans in tow. Still, it took most of a midura to reach the final portal labeled IMMIGRATION AND QUARANTINE. Along the way, he overheard some of the worry and panic fluxing through the Civilization of Five Galaxies.
“—three out of four transfer points in Lalingush Sector show dislocations, or catastrophic domain recombinations,” hissed a tunictguppit trader in GalSeven, exchanging gossip with a rotund p’ort’l whose chest- mounted eye blinked furiously.
The p’ort’l snorted in reply — a rich sound, with multitoned harmonies. “I hear most of the remaining transfer points have been seized by local alliances, who are exacting illegal taxes on any ship attempting to enter or leave. One consequence is vast numbers of stranded merchants, students, pilgrims, and tourists with no way to get home!”
To Harry’s surprise, the two young humans didn’t seem at all panicky or intimidated by the crowd. Rety grinned happily, stroking the neck of her little urrish “husband,” while Dwer stared at the diversity of sapient life- forms, occasionally leaning over to whisper in the girl’s ear, pointing at some type of alien he recognized — perhaps from legends told around a campfire, back on his tribal homeworld — a more cosmopolitan attitude than Harry would have expected. Nevertheless, Dwer betrayed underlying nervousness in the way he clutched his bow and arrows tightly under one arm.
Harry had considered confiscating the crude archery equipment. In theory, prisoners weren’t supposed to go around armed. Still, he doubted even the most stickling Galactic bureaucrat would recognize the assortment of twigs, strings, and bits of chipped stone as a weapon.
Speaking of rule sticklers, he thought, on reaching the main desk. The same sour hoonish official was on duty as last time, and just as obnoxious as ever. Despite the declared state of emergency, Twaphu-anuph flapped his richly dyed throat sac at anyone who showed even the slightest irregularity of documentation, ignoring their protests, sending them back to the end of the line. The hoon seemed frazzled from overwork and strain when Harry stepped up to the desk.
Get ready for a surprise, you gloomy old bureaucrat, Harry thought, relishing how his new tail and fur color would shock Twaphu-anuph.
To his disappointment, the hoon barely regarded Harry with a quick scan before looking back down at his monitor screens. Apparently, the pale fur coloration did not alter the official’s gestalt of a Terran chimpanzee.
“Ah, hrr-rrm. So it is Observer Harms, once again inflicting his unwelcome simian visage on my tired sensoria,” Twaphu-anuph commented in snidely accented GalSix. “Only this time — equally noxious — he brings along two of his grubby Earthling masters. Have they come to take you home at last, like a truant child?”
Harry sensed Rety and Dwer stiffen. He hurried to respond with more firmness than he might have otherwise.
