Matthias could not conceal her surprise. “I had no intention of ordering a reprisal.” Even as she replied, it struck her that Naneci-tok was speaking, albeit in terranglo, as if to a fellow Sakuntala. Among her people, given what had just taken place inside the port building, instant reprisal would have been the order of the day.
“That’s not how the Commonwealth works,” she explained. “We have advanced beyond such things.” At least, government policy had, she knew. The actions of individuals were something else again.
“That good to know. I will see to it that all Hatas are so enlightened. It will help.”
Matthias’s skimmer was parked on the other side of a single covered walkway beneath the open overhang that fronted the nearest maintenance-and-storage hangar. As they approached, a quartet of thick-beaked kolari spread perforated leathery wings and glided down toward the water. The holes in their wings allowed them to sieve away rain that would otherwise have weighed them down and rendered flight a more arduous proposition.
Every creature on Fluva, Matthias reflected, had evolved its own method of dealing with the constant rain, some of them unique and found nowhere else. She was particularly taken with the blind jilp, to whom Jack had introduced her soon after their arrival. Standing motionless out in the heaviest downpours, the jilp thrived in and relied on steady rain for its survival. Clusters of the harmless, attractive, knee-high russet- and pink-colored browsers could be seen standing with the flowerlike orifices that crowned their bodies spread open to the rain. They fed by straining a constant flow of rainwater through their bodies, in the top, out the bottom, filtering out and living upon whatever tiny creatures were washed down out of the trees and macromycetes by the rain. A boring life, that of a jilp. But it seemed to suit them.