“I should have known,” he said ruefully. “If I’d thought to investigate Ilaloa at all, I would have seen the truth.”
“You are not a Nomad, are you?”
“No. The Nomads didn’t stop to check the facts or reason the thing through, and I had too much else on my mind. But if I’d known that the Lorinyaiis were supposed to be mere savages … I
“Ilaloa spoke nearly perfect Basic, with an unusual vocabulary even for -t human. She knenv obsolete words like I sickle,” which she could only have found in literary references-and she didn’t read much, if at all, on the trip. And when we tried to argue each other’s philosophies out, she often bad very sophisticated remarks. I assumed that she came from a rather high culture which had had a good deal to do with the Nomads,”
“That Aas true enough,” said Espercro.
“Yes, but to the Nomads the Lorinyans were primitives. They-Never mind.” Trevelyan sighed. Every time you
thought you had reality expressed in a system you stumbled
against a new facet. The sane man must be always dis—
trustful of Ms own beliefs.
“You will not be harmed,” said Esperero.
The hills rolled away under their striding feet, woods and shadows and the slowly declining sun. Trevelyan saw animal life everywhere, climbing up the trees, crawling over the ground, rising heavenward on glorious wings. He heard a song which was all whistles and trills, happy lilt in a bower of blossoms. The Alori bent their beads to listen, and one of them whistled back, up and down the same scale. The bird replied differently. It was almost as if they spoke together.
They passed a large mammal, like a graceful blue-furred antelope, one bom spiraling from the poised head. It watched them out of calm eyes. Didn’t the Alori hunt at all?
Nicld spoke behind Trevelyan. “Micah, we Nomads should
have realized that the Lorinyans were@t native to Rendezvous. Every other back-boned animal there has six
limbs.”
Trevelyan turned back to Esperero. “Where did you come
from originally?”
“Alori. It is a planet not far from here, as astronomical distances go. But it is very unlike your Earth. That is why our civilization has developed such a different basis from
yours that-” Esperero paused.
“That one must destroy the other?” finished Trevelyan
softly.
“Yes, I believe so. But that need not mean physical destruction of the beings who have the culture.”
“You’re not going to meddle with my mind!” Nicki snapped.
Esperero smiled. “No one will try to force you to anything. We ask only that you see for yourselves.”
“In what ways are you so different?” asked Trevelyan.
“That will take a long time to explain,” said Esperero. “Let us say that your civilization has a mechanical basis and ours a biological. Or that you seek to master things, where we wish only to live as part of them.”
“Let the differences go for now,” Trevelyan said. “If you don’t go in for inventiveness-the mechanical kind, anyway-how did you get off your home planet?”
“There was a ship that landed, long ago, an exploring vessel from Tiunra, with strange, furry little beings in it-”
“Yes, I know.”
“The Alori are a unified culture. They evolved as one, whereas your kind did not. That is again a reflection of the gulf between us, Our people bad already climbed the mountain peaks that reached ibove Alori’s shielding clouds. They had seen the stars and, by methods different frorn yours, bad learned something about them. They made the Tiunrans prisoner and decided that they must defend themselves.”
“The Tiunrans hadn’t hurt you, bad they?” asked Sean. “No. But-you must wait, must see more of our life be-
fore you can understand… . The Alori took the ship and went out among the stars. Many of them lost their minds to that strangeness and had to be taken back for healing. But the rest went on. They encountered other Tiunran ships-they captured three.
“No more Tiuiiran ships came here, but it was realized that many races would be starfaring and some inevitably come to us. And the very fact of their building spacecraft meant they would be of the same alien stamp. We began colonizing habitable planets throughout this region. There were not many like Alori, which is an unusual type, but we found beauty in worlds like this, too. We spread the life we knew between the stars, so that the universe was no longer quite so cold.”