Free Diuturnity's Dawn by Alan Dean Foster Page A

succession of guidelines into presentation format was going to take most of the time she had remaining until her meeting with the eint. The last thing she needed was a flood of well meaning but essentially superfluous advice.
    Only when word came back from Earth that she was to have essentially a free hand in making proposals—though she could not commit to anything more significant than, for example, the Intercultural Fair about to get under way on the colony world of Dawn—did she realize how truly important the encounter would be. Though usually an island of calm amid her often frazzled colleagues, she finally had to take some minor medication to still her nerves.
    I am going to go in there, she told herself, as the chosen representative of my entire species, knowing that I have gained that access on the back of a lie. But while the burden was making her increasingly uneasy, she would not have turned the meeting over to one of her colleagues for all the suor melt on Barabbas.
    As the time for her to return to Daret drew near, she found herself relying more than ever on Jeremy’s strong, self-assured presence. A microbiologist, he had no diplomatic ax to grind, nothing of a professional nature to gain from her success or failure. He was interested only in her and their future together; not in her mission. It was a gratifying change from the characteristic infighting and arguing that took place within the highly competitive diplomatic hierarchy.
    When the day scheduled for departure finally did arrive and she had little to take with her but her hopes and anxieties, he took time off from his lab work to join her for the brief journey in the transport capsule that would convey her to the settlement airport.
    Once more, the great green forest of the Mediterranea Plateau was rushing past outside the transport’s port. To the thranx, it was their deepest jungle, the most biologically mysterious region left on their homeworld. Visiting human researchers, strolling about comfortably in pants and shirts, were making valuable reports and passing on the results of their research to their thranx counterparts, who would have required special gear and attire simply to survive in the temperate-cool lower oxygen environment humans found perfectly amenable. Similar revelations were being made by thranx researchers stationed in the deep Amazon and Congo Basins on Earth. Of such serendipitous exchanges of data and knowledge were scientific alliances, if not diplomatic ones, strengthened.
    During the high-speed commute they held hands and talked. Jeremy’s research was going exceptionally well, and everyone at the outpost was talking about Fanielle’s breakthrough in securing a meeting with a thranx who ranked high enough to actually make decisions as well as recommendations.
    “I’m not going to be able to get near you when you get back,” he told her teasingly. “You’ll be blanketed by representatives of the media.”
    “If this visit is a success,” she reminded him.
    “There are no
ifs
where you’re concerned, lady-mine.”
    “Maybe not where I’m concerned, but diplomacy is something else again.” Why, she wondered, did someone who was perfectly comfortable trolling the corridors of interstellar power suddenly and so frequently in this man’s presence devolve to the maturity level of a sixteen-year-old? She had long ago become convinced it was due to a recessive gene on the Y chromosome.
    “Just like you’re something else again.” Leaning forward, he kissed her as passionately as the time remaining to the airport conveniently allowed, then rose. “I could use something to drink. Do you want anything before—?”
             
    She became aware of the pain as vision returned. It seemed to increase in proportion to the intensity of the light that splashed across her retinas. Memory loaded in increasingly large chunks: who she was, where she ought to be, what she was supposed to be doing. Too much of it failed