He looked up once at the overhead tracks, which were now unburdened by cargos. The ship, he assumed, would have left by now. They had come to Company Station, on Abydos. There would not be another ship for months. Through the glassed paneling of the hostel’s doors shone a welcome illumination. Too, as they approached the building, the sign was lit. Doubtless this was a coincidence, and constituted no more than a belated concession to the misery and darkness of the day, but it cheered Brenner.
Chapter 4
“Do not be disturbed,” said Rodriguez. “It is merely that you have not seen women of your species in this way before.”
Brenner did not dare to look down at her, to where she knelt beside him, as he stood at the bar. Her hands were on his left leg. Her head was down, her cheek pressed against his thigh.
“Get away,” he hissed to her.
The bartender, a zard from Damascus, a life form thought by many to be related to that of the captain of the freighter, though smaller and more upright in carriage, looked up from where, a few feet away, behind the bar, he was polishing glasses. The relationship of the zard to the species of the captain, incidentally, despite popular conjectures on the subject, is regarded as improbable by most zoologists, given the diversity of worlds and the timing of certain technological developments on these worlds, in particular, their attainments of interstellar flight capabilities. These zoologists tend to attribute the resemblance to the parameters of convergent evolution which, to be sure, has apparently produced numerous resembling species throughout the galaxy. The subject, however, remains open, even in learned circles, because of the unusual similarities of microscopic genetic structures between the two species. Too, it is obvious that a third species, which had, in the remote past, and perhaps even one now extinct and lapsed from notice in galactic records, which did possess interstellar capabilities, might have been involved, for example, in settling certain specimens of a primitive species on a different world, on which world, over periods of time, these specimens, wending their own ways, would develop into a new variety of the old species, or, if one likes, into a new species. Certain crossings between zards and others, for example, of the captain’s species, had proven fertile. The problems, of course, had to do with probabilities in such matters. In spite of the fact that life forms on diverse worlds often bore remarkable similarities to one another, presumably because of resembling adaptations to frequently similar ecological niches, the chances of crossfertility between diverse species tended to be calculated in the millions to one. It is possible, of course, that that million, or millions, to one chance might obtain. Too, of course, a sufficiently advanced life form, might be able, through chemical and physical alterations in genetic materials, deletions, additions, and such, to produce hybrid forms. Much progress had been made, for example, in developing new agricultural products along these lines. Needless to say, animal husbandry had also profited. In general, in speaking of adaptations, and adaptational advantages, intelligence, or rationality, tended to be extremely common in the galaxy. It is difficult not to acknowledge the obvious value of this adaptational device. It is interesting to note, incidentally, that normally only one such form, one such rational form, tended to be found on undisturbed worlds, that form which, it seems, in one way or another, overcame its rivals. Rationality, you see, is not always conjoined with kindliness and tolerance; it may be as often conjoined with fanaticism and ruthlessness; rational species which did not, at least in some point in their development, practice the principles of priority and tyranny, tended on the whole to disappear or, at least, to have their numbers controlled by the dominant species. Only in current times, with a plurality of worlds, and available room for expansion, at this point in history, and the balances of power between certain species, and the advantages to be obtained from commercial and technological exchanges, it seems, did clearly diverse rational species set about the business of tolerating one another’s existence. The zards, incidentally, were the dominant life form on Damascus, though other life forms, in diverse menial and servile capacities, were permitted amongst them. Their reputation in this portion of the galaxy was to the effect that they were shrewd businessmen, or creatures, that one must be wary of bargaining with them, and that their word was not to be overly