David Weber - Hell's Gate

Sometimes no permission was forthcoming, but those cases tended to be the exception, not the rule. Usually, some sort of quid pro quo could the arrived at. Sometimes the agreements hammered out provided for moving the whole clan into an unoccupied region capable of sustaining them. Sometimes all it took was a gift of technology to help the clan improve its standard of living. More than one large cat had been unpleasantly surprised by sword-wielding chimps protecting their young and infirm, and most of the clans loved steel axheads and saws. Other clans had acquired access to medicines and Healers, paid for by the private developer or government negotiating the treaty.

Word of that sort of agreement generally spread to other clans in the region. Thaminar and Shalassar had smiled over one news story, in particular. The Nishani chimps had allowed mines to be developed in their clan's territory in exchange for medical care. Not to be outdone, the neighboring Minarti chimpanzee clan had plied their telepathic ambassador with questions about what humans might need or want from them. Once they'd discovered that several varieties of rare medicinal herbs which grew in profusion in their territory could be found virtually nowhere else, they'd offered to exchange them for the same medical care.

Horticulturists had been imported to coach the Minarti clan on propagation techniques designed to promote a cultivated supply of the herbs, rather than deplete the wild sources. The delighted chimpanzees had settled down to enjoy their improved health care, tending the plants upon which it depended, and everyone had been quite satisfied by the arrangement.

It was all very human-like … which was one of the reasons it had amused Shalassar and Thaminar so much, since Shalassar's own experiences had been rather different.

For one thing, even chimpanzees had a far better developed sense of time?by human standards, at least?than the cetaceans did. There was, quite literally, no way to predict what hour of the day or night a whale or dolphin might suddenly come seeking the human ambassador. The denizens of the sea lived at an entirely different pace, and in a totally different environment, from humanity or its close cousins, and their perceptions and interests were shaped accordingly. If the cetaceans had even been aware of the Minarti clan's activities at all, they would have thought the entire business was unutterably boring.

Most of the land-dwelling sentients of Sharona (including the majority of humans) felt sorry for and smugly superior to the cetaceans, which had no hands and couldn't use human technology for much of anything. Most cetaceans, on the other hand, didn't think about the apes at all, except to feel sorry for and smugly superior to the hapless primates (including the majority of humans) who were stuck on dry land and unable to exploit a full three-quarters of their home planet's surface. They were totally disinterested in the goings-on of chimpanzees and mountain gorillas, although they'd been forced to modify that attitude where the humans who routinely crossed their home waters were involved.

Human beings might be unable to do much more than barely scratch the shallows of the cetaceans' endless oceans, but they did exploit at least some of the same territory. And since the emergence of Talents among them, it had been the humans who had initiated contact. No one?Shalassar included?quite understood how cetaceans maintained their historical record, but the fact that they did was beyond dispute. And because they did, they remembered the days in which even the greatest and most intelligent of them had been no more than one more food source for humanity … and how that had changed.

There were those, among the cetaceans, who remained wary of, even hostile towards, humanity because of things which had happened thousands upon thousands of years ago. More of them, though, remembered that humanity had altered its actions once it realized that it was dealing with other intelligent species. And even those who remained wary, recognized that at least some contact with human beings was inescapable.

That was where ambassadors like Shalassar stepped into the picture. She'd spent her life establishing contacts with the cetaceans, and even more than the ambassadors to the apes, she'd discovered that the nonhumans with whom she dealt had become the very center of her life and career. She wasn't simply their official conduit to land-dwelling humanity; she and her family had made friendships among the great whales, the dolphins and the porpoises, building intensely personal bridges across the inter-species gap.

Still, she was an ambassador, which meant she had more than a merely personal interest in the outcome of today's vote. She had a professional interest, as well, because if Zindel chan Calirath did, indeed, become the Emperor of a united Sharona, he would also become Shalassar's ultimate superior. In essence, she'd find herself working for him, as his representative to the cetaceans, rather than for the Kingdom of Shurkhal. Which meant that somehow she'd have to find a way to explain to those aquatic intelligences just what sort of bizarre political convolutions those peculiar bipeds were up to now.

That thought brought her back to the vote once again, and she glanced at the clock on the mantle. It was nearly time for the SUNN Voicecast from Tajvana, and she suddenly felt Thaminar's arms wrap themselves around her from behind. She closed her eyes and leaned back against him, clinging to the love pouring through their marriage bond like another, even stronger set of arms, and he kissed the side of her neck.

"Let's go out to the beach," he said gruffly. "I don't want to stay inside."

Shalassar nodded, and they walked outside. They moved well down the beach from the house, past the official Embassy with its dock and bell, to a favorite spot well shaded by palms. Then they sat down on a blanket between the endless sweep of sea and sky. Shalassar sat in front of her husband, leaning back against the solidness of him, and treasured the cherishing strength of the arms about her.

Out here, there was enough sunlight and wind and sky to make the ache of loss feel smaller than it did enclosed by walls and a ceiling. They'd been spending a lot of time out here, in recent weeks, and Shalassar sighed as she leaned her head back against his chest. Memories slipped into their shared awareness. They saw Shaylar skipping down the beach, playing with her older brothers, building castles in the sand and hunting for shells. They saw her laughing in the surf, riding on the back of one of the dolphins who'd come as an emissary to the Embassy.

They sat there for a long time, watching the birds wheeling overhead, listening to their inexpressibly lonely cries as they drifted against the vast infinity of sea and sky. Shalassar's people believed that the human soul rose like a seabird after death, singing its way into the sky in search of its final resting place in the heavens, out in the endless vastness of the ether where the gods dwelt. . . .

Shurkhali believed the soul was like a grain of the endless sands that swept across their arid homeland. When a Shurkhali died, his soul would be blown, like those grains of sand, back into the great drifts of souls that marched across the face of heaven, like the dunes of sand blowing across the face of Shurkhal. The soul of a person found worthy would be swept up and placed like a jewel in the diadem of heaven, to shine as a beacon to guide others on their way home.

Whether her journey had ended as a bird singing its way to heaven, or as a star shining in the diadem of the gods, Shaylar's parents had to believe their daughter had found the peace and happiness reserved for those who had lived life in joy and service to others. Surely her final action, safeguarding every living soul in Sharona by destroying the maps that might have led her killers here, had earned their child a place in the arms of the gods.