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he speaks to us, and yet he is very young?"
"He's known Chirwl since he was born," Shona explained. "Humans pick up
languages very quickly when they are small."
"Is there documentation of phenomenon this one?" asked another ottle. "It
could be yours individually is simply more intelligent and learnable than
others."
"I would hope Alex is as bright as he seems," Gershom said, a little half grin
quirking up the corner of his mouth. "But not only is there documentation,
there are classes in many skills taught to very small children."
"Ahhhh. Most interesting." The two ottles scampered farther up the tree to
discuss the matter.
"I think we might have started a new philosophical argu-ment," Shona
whispered, grinning.
Lani wandered here and there with wide eyes, caressing the trees and plants
with familiar fingers. She looked at home at once, happy to be back in a
deep-forest environment. Shona felt a twinge, thinking how much the girl must
have missed her native planet after the Taylors swept her away to the sterile
and
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had been no choice, but now that the girl was growing up, she could soon make
her own decision as to where she would live. Shona didn't want her to spread
her wings too soon, but vowed she would be opened-minded and encouraging when
the girl wanted to talk about her future.
Chirwl shouldered his way back to Shona through the milling throng of ottles.
Behind him clustered a trio of creatures, one slightly smaller than the other
two, all with visible rough, graying patches in the sable fur around their
shoulders and tails. He chittered in his own tongue, then changed smoothly
into
Standard. "Be this is my very beloved Shona and her one-mate, Gershom. Know my
generative ones,"
he said, twisting his flexible spine around almost his own length to introduce
each. "Chlari, father of the cell, Thio, mother of the cell, and Tsanan,
nurturer of myself and my siblings."
"Chlari, Tsanan." The name Thio sounded more like a descending whistle than a
word. Shona did her best to imitate it. "I'm so very pleased to meet you. I've
enjoyed traveling with your& offspring. All of us have. We'll miss him now
that he's come home to stay. He's been a good companion."
"He looks well and happy," Chlari said approvingly. "He must also enjoy
traveling with you."
Tsanan, hunkered next to Chirwl, rubbed cheeks with him, and whispered low in
his ear. He replied in a childlike, cooing purr that Shona found endearing. It
figured that Tsanan, as the one who cared for the young, would have been
Chirwl's confidant and comforter while he was growing up. They were still
close, and Tsanan seemed reluctant to be at any distance from her newly
returned charge. Shona sympathized. She couldn't imagine the wrench she might
feel if Alex went away for seven or eight years without ever being able to
communi-cate directly with her, and she hadn't a clue what a typical ottle
life span was. Had Chirwl been away half his natural life, or only a tenth?
Less or more? Chlari grunted impatiently and twitched his whiskers. Chirwl and
Tsanan reluctantly broke up their tete-a-tete.
"I have refutation for the theory of mine which you denied validity before
going," the old one said. "You must come up to the sleeping place and peruse
it."
"When I know where I shall be placing my bedpouch," Chirwl said, "we shall
exchange notional documents."
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"Eh, you can be taking it now." Chlari turned his back on his offspring and
co-mates, and walked deliberately up the tree, disappearing into the crevices
of the bark.
"That ottle is more than glad you are returned in safety," Tsanan said. "He
had said of late that you were no more, that your travels had ended out there
amidst in the stars."
"Didn't Alien Relations send back reports to you on how he was doing?" Shona
asked, shocked.
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"Oh, yes," Tsanan said, her black eyes gleaming mischie-vously. "Chlari is not
believing them, for there is no logical proof other than their words, which
are so limited in scope yet not narrow in meaning. Mere pictures. What are
they but inventions of human machines of what may not exist? Thio assures him,
but
Chlari does not believe hir."
Tsanan pronounced the final word 'heer.' Because the ottle's pronunciation of
Standard words was so flawless, Shona refused to believe it was a mistake of
diction. She assumed instead that the term 'hir' was the pronoun assigned by
the human colony's linguists to a concept with which they had been previously
unacquainted: naming the two different biodo-nors of tri-gender
extraterrestrials.
She was about to ask about possessive pronouns, when a shower of
fingertip-sized rounds of wood rained down on them from above. Startled, Shona
jumped out of the way and looked up. One pouch in a small cluster of three
situated close to a thick main branch was squirming vigorously. More disks,
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