Diuturnity's Dawn Read Free Page B

call it.” As the thranx diplomat spoke, he absently employed a truhand to preen his left antenna.
    “My people believe strongly that personal contact is an important component of diplomacy.”
    Haflunormet indicated understanding. “You do realize that not all my kind take pleasure from being in your physical presence.” He hastened to qualify his comment. “I did not mean you personally, of course! I meant humans in general.”
    “I know what you meant.” Anjou was not naÏve. She was fully aware that most thranx, especially those who had experienced little or no contact with humans, found the presence of her kind physically unappealing. It was something she had worked hard to overcome, in everything from her attire to her manner of speaking. “But as a diplomat, I am entitled to certain accommodations.” This time her tone was firm. “Eint Carwenduved realizes this as well.”
    “I know that she does.” Haflunormet sighed, the air wheezing gently from the breathing spicules that lined his b-thorax. “Your patience gains you merit in her eyes as well as in mine, Fanielle.”
    What patience? she thought. I’m going crazy here, hanging around up at Azerick waiting for your mommy bug to deign to see me. She promptly shunted the undiplomatic and very unthranxlike thought aside.
    Instead of thinking antithranx thoughts, what might she make use of that the thranx themselves would react to? Perhaps she had been stalking the impasse from the wrong direction. Perhaps she had been thinking too many human thoughts.
    How would a thranx diplomat gain speedier access to a counterpart? It would have to be something informal, she knew. The delicate intricacies and involved traditions of thranx hive government were still largely a mystery to the human researchers charged with interpreting them. More was known about thranx culture and society in general. Mightn’t there be something there she could apply?
    She halted so suddenly that Haflunormet was momentarily alarmed. Both antennae fluttered in her direction. “Is something the matter, Fanielle? If you are feeling stressed by the local conditions, we can find you a climate-controlled chamber in which to revitalize—though I personally find the weather outside today a bit on the cool side.”
    “Yes,” she told him. “Yes, I am feeling a little—a little faint.” She put the back of one hand to her forehead in a melodramatic gesture any human would have found amusing, but which the anxious thranx could only view as potentially alarming. “It happens to us—at such times.”
    He indicated confusion. “Of what ‘times’ are you speaking?”
    “Oh, that’s right. You don’t know. I haven’t told you before now, have I? An oversight on my part. You see—I’m pregnant, Haflunormet. With, um—” She thought of the dancing qinks. “—quadruplets.” Unfamiliar with the nature or frequency of human birthing, the anxious diplomat ought to accept her admission at face value. He did.
    “
Srr!lk!
You should have told me!” Setting aside his instinctive distaste for such contact, he took her free hand in both his foothands. “Do you want to lie down? Can I get you fluid? Do you wish an internal lubrication?”
    “Uh, no thanks,” she replied hastily, dropping the hand from her forehead even as she wondered what an on-the-spot internal lubrication meant to a thranx female.
    In a determined gesture of interspecies concern, Haflunormet continued to hold her hand, doing his best to ignore the unnatural warmth that radiated from the pulpy flesh. He realized how much he had come to like this particular human. If something were to happen to her while she was in his company, not only would it reflect on his individual and family history, he would regret it personally.
    “How are your eggs? Excuse me,” he corrected himself, “your live feti. Fetuses?” Despite his disquiet, he could not bring himself to contemplate the wriggling, unshelled larvae that must even now