“Why so?”
“Because my parents are crazy.”
“What do you mean by that?”—with a look of alarm aimed at Wam.
“Their names are Whelwet and Yaygomitch. Do you need to know any more?”
On the point of reaching for another clump of funqi, Wam settled back on her branch and uttered a whistle of dismay.
“Even you must have heard of those two, Ugant! Of all the pernicious pith-rotted idiots…!”
“But she didn’t identify them in her message,” Ugant muttered. “Chybee—you are called Chybee, aren’t you?”
Excited, she tried to rise, but lacked pressure. “So you did get my note! I was afraid it had been lost! You never answered it, did you?”
Fraij said, “Girl, if you knew how many messages the professor gets every bright—!”
“That will do, Fraij,” Ugant interrupted. “Chybee, I promise that if I’d only realized who your family are, I’d … Well, I can scarcely say I’d have come running, but I would certainly have told Wam about you.”
“But—!” She sank back, at a loss. For the first time it was possible to see how pretty she was, her torso sleek and sturdy, her claws and mandibles as delicate as a flyet’s. Her maw still crowded, she went on, “But I always thought you and Professor Wam were enemies! When I heard you were giving a lecture and she had agreed to reply to you, I couldn’t really believe it, but I decided I had to be present, because you’re both on the other side from my parents. They are crazy, aren’t they? Please tell me they’re crazy! And then explain how you two can be acting like friends right here and now! I mean,” she concluded beseechingly, “you don’t smell like enemies to each other!”
There was a long pause. At last Wam sighed. “How wonderful it is to meet somebody who, for the most naive of reasons, has arrived at a proper conclusion. I thought the species was extinct. Shall we attempt the real debate we might have had but for your mistake in inviting Aglabec?”
For a moment Ugant seemed on the verge of explosion; then she relaxed and grinned. “I grant I didn’t bargain for the presence of his fanatical followers and their trick of trying to shake the audience off the branches. I’m not used to that kind of thing. With respect to your superior experience of it, I’ll concur. Who’s to speak first?”
All of a sudden the enormous bower became small and intimate. Far above, the roof continued to flutter, though less vigorously because—as Chybee’s own weather-sense indicated—rain was on the way, and shortly it might be called on to seal up completely. But, to her amazement and disbelief, here were two globally famous experts in the most crucial of all subjects preparing to rehearse for her alone the arguments she had staked everything to hear.
She wanted to break down, plead to be excused such a burden of knowledge. But was she to waste all the misery she had endured to get here? Pride forbade it. She took another fruit and hoped against hope that it would be enough to sustain her through her unsought ordeal.
Wam was saying, “We don’t disagree that it should shortly be possible to launch a vehicle into orbit.”
“It could be done in a couple of years,” Ugant confirmed, accepting more food from one of Fraij’s aides.
“We don’t disagree that, given time, we could launch not just a vehicle but enough of them to create a self-contained, maneuverable vessel capable of carrying a representative community of the folk with all that’s needed to support them for an indefinite period.”
“Ah! Now we come to the nub of the problem. Do we have the time you’re asking to be given? Already you’re talking about committing the entire effort of the planet for at least scores of years, maybe scores-of-scores!” Ugant made a dismissive gesture. “That’s why I claim that our optimal course is to use what’s within our grasp to launch not interplanetary landing-craft, but containers of specially modified organisms tailored to the conditions we expect to encounter on at least Swiftyouth and Sunbride, and maybe on Steadyman and Stolidchurl, or their satellites, which if all else failed could be carried to their destinations by light-pressure from the sun. If then, later on, we did succeed in launching larger vehicles, we could at least rely on the atmospheres and biospheres of those planets being changed towards our own norm, so—”