The announcement of the impending unification was greeted, except by those who had opposed it for so long, with a mixture of excitement, anticipation, and uncertainty. Since nothing like it had ever been tried before, no one was quite sure how it was going to work, or what would happen from day to day. But both sides went at it with a will.
The Terran government proceeded to orchestrate a number of grandiose celebrations, with the largest taking place in or near the most impressive cities; more modest festivities were contrived for smaller conurbations, and local demonstrations occupied the time and attention of towns and country. Among the thranx, the occasion was marked by congratulations on a much more individual and personal level, following which everyone went back to work. Above it all hovered a feeling of general satisfaction: The thranx had gotten what they wanted, and the humans what they needed.
After weeks of speeches, parades, demonstrations, fireworks, feasts, gatherings in stellar locations both astonishing and ordinary by the starships of both civilizations, hours of reciprocal programming by the media of both species, endlessly repetitive programs of the Why This Is Good For You kind, debates both tumultuous and politic, and a good deal of soul-searching among ordinary citizens, the public at large of both species discovered something else they had in common: the ability to rapidly get fed up with self-appointed experts and so-called specialists and zealous politicians who were determined to tell them what they should be doing and why. So when the time arrived to actually formalize the unification instead of simply praise or weigh it, the actual event came as something of a blissful anticlimax that was ignored by most folk, who were busy getting on with their lives.
The site chosen for the signing of the Articles of Amalgamation was as grand as the canyon after which it was named. Not far from the small amphitheater chosen for the official ceremony, moving walkways suspended from spidery supports carried a steady stream of tourists from the rim and its spectacular perspective to the surging, ice-cold river at the bottom. Most were intent on the scenery and took no notice of the cluster of diplomats and media reporters milling about nearby. A few thranx, Fanielle noted with satisfaction, were among the continuous stream of gawkers descending into the ancient depths carved by the river. In the heat of midafternoon they needed no supplemental attire, though each wore a compact humidifier over their breathing spicules. Of such incremental developments as mutual enjoyment of time’s wonders were unbreakable bonds forged.
Stuck near the back of the gathering, but fortunate to have acquired an invitation at that, she listened with interest to the speeches whose brevity belied their significance. One by one, the various human and thranx dignitaries mounted the temporary dais, their physiques if not their words much reduced in perspective by the immense red rock panorama that filled the horizon behind them. The ritual could as well have taken place on Hivehom, she knew, or some neutral world, but the thranx had deferred to the wishes of their new human consociates. Though equally as fond of pomp and ritual as the bipeds, albeit on a much reduced scale, they were understanding when their mammalian counterparts asked if the first signing could be held on Earth. A second, equivalent ceremony would take place later in the high ceremonial burrows of Hivehom.
That kind of understanding, she reflected, was not only what was going to go a long way toward making the new union work, it was something the pysch techs insisted humankind had lacked, and had been looking for, ever since the species had first come down from the trees millennia ago.
Eventually the speech making, with its simultaneous translation, lurched to an end. Formal documents were signed, and initialed, and signed again, until there was no more room on paper or plastic for markings of the duly appointed representatives of either species. As each was completed, holos of the actual documents appeared in the air before the audience. These were broadcast to watchers whose distance from the site could sometimes be measured in kilometers and sometimes in parsecs. As each instrument was completed, it was simultaneously rendered in blocks of polished marble and sheets of anodized titanium that would more readily memorialize the gravity of the occasion.
When it was over, there was much gratified shaking of hands and touching of antennae. Fanielle was particularly struck by the moment when the current head of the United Church, the Fourth Last Resort David Malkezinski, grasped a truhand of the venerable Tri-eint Arlenduva while her antennae dipped forward to make contact with his forehead. Far from vanishing as she had once imagined it would, the still-evolving creed founded by a human minister and his thranx counterpart had continued to expand, swiftly gaining new adherents among human and thranx alike. If anything, its overall influence with the public at large had expanded even faster.
Counted among its followers was the diplomat Fanielle Anjou, recently promoted to assistant councilor for human affairs on Hivehom. It was about as significant a post as there was to be had in the rapidly reorganizing and consolidating governments.
As she stood chatting with friends and associates, doing her best to avoid the media, a small hand tugged at her arm. Eric Haf-Lyr Anjou looked up at her out of alert, anxious eyes that were largely indifferent to the import of the ceremony that had just concluded.
“Mom, Mom—Barehtezen and Jacque want to hike down to Indian Gardens. Can I go? Can I? Hey, did you know she smells like apple blossoms?”
She smiled down at him. “Of course you can go, Eric. Just make sure you and Jacque keep a close eye on Bar. There are plenty of fountains along the trail, and she’ll adore the fact that it gets hotter the deeper you descend, but you know how quickly thranx can parch in this climate.” She indicated the high, dry mountain country where they were standing.
“Aw, she’ll be all right. She’s wearing her humidifier, and she promised to use all six legs at all times, even on the easy parts.”
“Make sure she keeps hydrated. Have a good time, and be back up here before six.” She checked her chronometer. “We have to get up early tomorrow to catch the transit to the shuttleport.”
He nodded, his words lost in the crowd as he yelled back at her while racing off in the opposite direction. “I know. I can’t wait to get back to the burrow!”
Kids, she thought. Progeny. Offspring, with the emphasis on spring. Waking up to a new universe every day. Only tomorrow, it would be more than an aphorism. It would be for real. She wondered how it would all work out: the amalgamating of two radically different species, an unprecedented fusion of arthropod and anthropoid. Nothing like it had ever been attempted in the portion of the galaxy humankind had come to know. Just how close, how intimate could it become? Would the old adage “Don’t let the bedbugs bite” come to take on an entirely new meaning? Or would it lead to, if not a golden age for humankind, at least a more settled and confident one?
She was wandering, she knew, and when she let her mind wander, her thoughts inevitably degenerated into flippancy. She wished she could live another couple of hundred years or so, long enough for any lasting doubts to be resolved. That was not possible. She let out a regretful sigh. We’re too transitory, she mused. We don’t live long enough to really learn anything. I need another five centuries.
It was not to be. Flesh is not so accommodating, and we all of us die just when we’ve acquired the minimum necessary wisdom to graduate the first grade. The universe belonged to her son now. To him, and to his new friends, even if they did have two extra sets of limbs, bulging eyes, and feathery stalks growing out of their foreheads.
To the universe of the Commonwealth.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Alan Dean Foster has written in a variety of genres, including hard science fiction, fantasy, horror, detective, western, historical, and contemporary fiction. He is also the author of numerous nonfiction articles on film, science, and scuba diving, as well as novel versions of several films, including Star Wars, the first three Alien films, and Alien Nation. His novel Cyber Way won the Southwest Book Award for Fiction in 1990, the first science fiction work ever to do so.
Foster’s love of the far-away and exotic has led him to travel extensively. He’s lived in Tahiti and French Polynesia, traveled to Europe, Asia, and throughout the Pacific, and has explored the back roads of Tanzania and Kenya. He has rappelled into New Mexico’s fabled Lechugilla Cave, panfried piranha (lots of bones, tastes a lot like trout) in Peru, white-water rafted the length of the Zambezi’s Batoka Gorge, and driven solo the length and breadth of Namibia.
Foster and his wife, JoAnn Oxley, reside in Prescott, Arizona, in a house built of brick that was salvaged from a turn-of-the-century miners’ brothel. He is presently at work on several new novels and media projects.
For further information on the Commonwealth and other worlds of Alan Dean Foster, try this Web site: www.alandeanfoster.com.
BY ALAN DEAN FOSTER
Published by The Ballantine Publishing Group
The Black Hole
Cachalot
Dark Star
The Metrognome and Other Stories
Midworld
Nor Crystal Tears
Sentenced to Prism
Splinter of the Mind’s Eye
Star Trek® Logs One–Ten
Voyage to the City of the Dead
. . . Who Needs Enemies?
With Friends Like These . . .
Mad Amos
The Howling Stones
Parallelities
Star Wars®: The Approaching Storm
Impossible Places
The Icerigger Trilogy:
Icerigger
Mission to Moulokin
The Deluge Drivers
The Adventures of Flinx of the Commonwealth:
For Love of Mother-Not
The Tar-Aiym-Krang
Orphan Star
The End of the Matter
Bloodhype
Flinx in Flux
Mid-Flinx
Reunion
The Damned:
Book One: A Call to Arms
Book Two: The False Mirror
Book Three: The Spoils of War
The Founding of the Commonwealth:
Phylogenesis
Dirge
Diuturnity’s Dawn
A Del Rey® Book
Published by The Ballantine Publishing Group
Copyright © 2002 by Thranx, Inc.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by The Ballantine Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
Del Rey is a registered trademark and the Del Rey colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.
www.delreydigital.com
The Library of Congress Control Number can be obtained from the
publisher upon request.
eISBN: 978-0-345-45550-5
v3.0
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