Whether or not he felt cheated, he doesn’t spend a lot of time with me. He’s always kind when he sees me, but he has never stayed overnight or anything like that. Sometimes I suspect that the reason Fifka is nice to me is that his mother has told him to be. She’s part of the Kwarkissian diplomatic team that works with Dad.

The only real friend I have here is my double miniature panda, Ralph J. Bear, whom I brought with me from Earth. In case you’ve been living on another planet (ha-ha) the new double miniature breeds are only about six inches long. Ralph can easily fit right in my hand.

I like to watch him strolling around my desk while I do my homework. (Yes, I still have homework; I guess some things are the same no matter where you go!) And he’s so neat and clean that Dad doesn’t object to my letting him eat off my plate at the table. I love him so much I can hardly stand it.

The Chinese ambassador gave me Ralph at the big going-away party the United Nations threw for Dad and me. The gift was a surprise to everyone, since the Chinese are still pretty much holding on to the miniatures.

(Of course, between the fact that there are so few of them available, and the fact that they are so devastatingly cute, there is an enormous demand for them. People were wildly jealous of me for having Ralph, but I figure I ought to get some benefit from being a diplomat’s son. I mean, none of those people who were so jealous about Ralph was being dragged off to live on another planet!)

As it turns out, Ralph is one reason that the Kwarkissians made contact with Earth in the first place. Well, not Ralph J. Bear himself. But the breeding program he came from was part of a major last-ditch effort to save the pandas. According to Dad, the Kwarkissians had been monitoring us for a long time. His contacts say that one thing that made them decide we were worth meeting was that we had started taking our biosphere seriously enough to really work at saving endangered species, such as pandas.

Anyway, Ralph is the only real friend I have here. So you can imagine how horrified I was when I was asked to give him away.

“What am I going to do, Ralph?” I said, trying not to cry.

The genetic engineers who created the miniatures have enhanced their intelligence, too. Ralph J. Bear is very bright, and he always knows when something is bothering me. Waddling across my desk, he stood on his hind legs and lifted his arms for me to pick him up.