"Such things take time," she chided him as she used a foot hand to rub scented polish across her exoskeleton. Combined with the steam that permeated the chamber, it imparted to the purplish blue chitin a semimetallic sheen. "And education."

The male councilor barked his antipathy. "You cannot educate without contact. Admittedly, from what little is released to us the project here goes well enough. But it is modest in size and scope, and does nothing to deal with the revulsion most humans seem to experience in our presence."

"That is so." Nictitating membranes flushed condensation from individual lenses. "But there is another project, larger in scope and more pointed."

Her counterpart looked up, uncertain. "I have not heard of another."

"It is being kept quiet until it has matured sufficiently for mutual revelation. Only a few know of it. A very few. It is considered absolutely crucial to the development of relations between our two species. Above all, the AAnn must not learn of it. As it is, they consider the humans a threat to their expansionist intentions. The thought of a human-thranx axis might drive them to do something... ill considered."

"What human-thranx axis? We hardly have relations with the bipeds."

"There is work afoot to change that," she assured him.

The male chirped skeptically. "Proper, formal relations between our two species I can envision. But a permanent alliance?" He executed the strongest possible gesture of negativity. "It will never happen. Neither side wants it."

"There are visionaries, admittedly few in number for now, who believe otherwise. Hence this second, most secret project." Her declaration of seriousness was leavened with just the barest hint of amusement. "You will never believe where it is." Moving close so that the other eints in the relaxation chamber could not possibly overhear, she touched antennae with him while whispering into the hearing organs on his b-thorax.

She was right. He didn't.

Chapter Two

The thranx do not bury their dead: the deceased are lovingly recycled. Like so many components of thranx culture, this was a tradition that reached back to their primitive origins, when hives were ruled by pretech, egg-laying queens, and anything edible was deemed worthy of consumption, including the remains of a demised fellow citizen. Protein was protein, while nourishment and survival continued to take precedence over emerging notions of culture and civilization. The manner in which the traditional recycling was carried out was more decorous now, but the underlying canon remained the same.

Farewell giving was far more elaborate and formalized than it had been in the times before talking, however, though the one whose praises were presently being sung would doubtless have dubbed them overwrought. For a poet famous on not just Willow-Wane but all the thranx worlds, Wuuzelansem had been even more than conventionally modest.