Then, inevitably, it was Fiben"s turn. Megan Oneagle read a list of accomplishments that had obviously been gone over by some publicity department hack in order to hide how dirty and smelly and founded on simple dumb luck it all had been. Read aloud this way, it all sounded unfamiliar. Fiben hardly remembered doing half the stuff attributed to him.
It hadn"t occurred to him to wonder why he"d been selected to go last. Probably, he a.s.sumed, it had been out of pure spite. Following an act like Gailet will be pure murder, he realized.
Megan called him forward. The hated shoes almost made him trip as he made his way to the dais. He saluted the Planetary Coordinator and tried to stand straight as she pinned on some garish medal and an insignia making him a reserve colonel in -the Garth Defense Forces. The cheers t>f the crowd, especially the chims, made his ears feel hot, and it only got worse when, per Gailet"s instructions, he grinned and waved for the cameras.
Okay, so maybe I can stand this, in small doses.
When Megan offered him the podium Fiben stepped forward. He had a speech of sorts, scrawled out on sheets in his pocket. But after listening to Gailet he decided he had better merely tell them all thank you and then sit down again.
Struggling to adjust the podium downward, he began. "There"s just one thing I want to say, and that"s-YOWP!"
He jerked as sudden electricity coursed through his left foot. Fiben hopped, grabbing the offended member, but then another shock hit his right foot! He let out a shriek. Fiben glanced down just in time to see a small blue brightness emerge slightly from beneath the podium and reach out now for both ankles. He leaped, hooting loudly, two meters into the air-alighting atop the wooden lectern.
Panting, it took him a moment to separate the panicked roaring in his ears from the hysterical cheering of the crowd. He blinked, rubbed his eyes, and stared.
Chims were standing on their folding chairs and waving their arms. They were jumping up and down, howling. Confusion reigned in the ranks of the polished militia honor guard. Even the humans were laughing and clapping uproariously.
Fiben glanced, dumbfounded, back at Gailet and Sylvie, and the pride in their eyes explained what it all meant.
They thought that was my prepared speech! he realized.
In retrospect he saw how perfect it was, indeed. It broke the tension and seemed an ideal commentary on how it felt to be at peace again.
Only I didn"t write it, d.a.m.nit!
He saw a worried look on the face of his lordship the mayor of Port Helenia. No! Next they"ll have me running for office!
Who did this to me?
Fiben searched the crowd and noticed immediately that one person was reacting differently, completely unsurprised. He stood out from the rest of the crowd partly due to his widely separated eyes and waving tendrils, but also because of his all too human expression of barely contained mirth.
And there was something else, some nonthing that Fiben somehow sensed was there, floating above the laughing Tymbrimi"s wafting coronae.
Fiben sighed. And if looks alone could maim, Earth"s greatest friends and allies would have to send a replacement amba.s.sador to the posting on Garth right away.
When Athaclena winked at Fiben, it just confirmed his suspicions.
"Very funny," Fiben muttered caustically under his breath, even as he forced out another grin and waved again to the cheering crowds.
"T"rifically funny, Uthacalthing."
Postscript and Acknowledgments
First we feared the other creatures who shared the Earth with us. Then, as our power grew, we thought of them as our property, to dispose of however we wished. The most recent fallacy (a rather nice one, in comparison) has been to play up the idea that the animals are virtuous in their naturalness, and it is only humanity who is a foul, evil, murderous, rapacious canker on the lip of creation. This view says that the Earth and all her creatures would be much better off without us.
Only lately have we begun embarking upon a fourth way of looking at the world and our place in it. A new view of life.
If we evolved, one must ask, are we then not like other mammals in many ways? Ways we can learn from? And where we differ, should that not also teach us?
Murder, rape, the most tragic forms of mental illnesses -- all of these we are now finding among the animals as well as ourselves. Brainpower only exaggerates the horror of these dysfunctions in us. It is not the root cause. The cause is the darkness in which we have lived. It is ignorance.
We do not have to see ourselves as monsters in order to teach an ethic of environmentalism. It is now well known that our very survival depends upon maintaining complex ecological networks and genetic diversity. If we wipe out Nature, we ourselves will die.
But there is one more reason to protect other species. One seldom if ever mentioned. Perhaps we are the first to talk and think and build and aspire, but we may not be the last. Others may follow us in this adventure.
Some day we may be judged by just how well we served, when alone we were Earth"s caretakers.
The author gratefully acknowledges his debt to those who looked over this work in ma.n.u.script form, helping with everything from aspects of natural simian behavior to correcting bad grammar outside quotation marks.
I want to thank Anita Everson, Nancy Grace, Kristie McCue, Louise Root, Nora Brackenbury, and Mark Grygier* for their valued insights. Professor John Lewis and Ruth Lewis also offered observations, as did Frank Catalano, Richard Spahl, Gregory Benford, and Daniel Brin. Thanks also to Steve Hardesty, Sharon Sosna, Kim Bard, Rick Sturm, Don Coleman, Sarah Bartter, and Bob Goold.
To Lou Aronica, Alex Berman, and Richard Curtis, my grat.i.tude for their patience.
And to our hairy cousins, I offer my apologies. Here, have a banana and a beer.
David Brin November 198 .