Authors: Alan Dean Foster
“Mom, Mom—Barehtezen and Jacque want to hike down to Indian Gardens. Can I go? Can I? Hey, did you know she smells like apple blossoms?”
She smiled down at him. “Of course you can go, Eric. Just make sure you and Jacque keep a close eye on Bar. There are plenty of fountains along the trail, and she’ll adore the fact that it gets hotter the deeper you descend, but you know how quickly thranx can parch in this climate.” She indicated the high, dry mountain country where they were standing.
“Aw, she’ll be all right. She’s wearing her humidifier, and she promised to use all six legs at all times, even on the easy parts.”
“Make sure she keeps hydrated. Have a good time, and be back up here before six.” She checked her chronometer. “We have to get up early tomorrow to catch the transit to the shuttleport.”
He nodded, his words lost in the crowd as he yelled back at her while racing off in the opposite direction. “I know. I can’t wait to get back to the burrow!”
Kids, she thought. Progeny. Offspring, with the emphasis on
spring
. Waking up to a new universe every day. Only tomorrow, it would be more than an aphorism. It would be for real. She wondered how it would all work out: the amalgamating of two radically different species, an unprecedented fusion of arthropod and anthropoid. Nothing like it had ever been attempted in the portion of the galaxy humankind had come to know. Just how close, how intimate could it become? Would the old adage “Don’t let the bedbugs bite” come to take on an entirely new meaning? Or would it lead to, if not a golden age for humankind, at least a more settled and confident one?
She was wandering, she knew, and when she let her mind wander, her thoughts inevitably degenerated into flippancy. She wished she could live another couple of hundred years or so, long enough for any lasting doubts to be resolved. That was not possible. She let out a regretful sigh. We’re too transitory, she mused. We don’t live long enough to really learn anything. I need another five centuries.
It was not to be. Flesh is not so accommodating, and we all of us die just when we’ve acquired the minimum necessary wisdom to graduate the first grade. The universe belonged to her son now. To him, and to his new friends, even if they did have two extra sets of limbs, bulging eyes, and feathery stalks growing out of their foreheads.
To the universe of the Commonwealth.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Alan Dean Foster has written in a variety of genres, including hard science fiction, fantasy, horror, detective, western, historical, and contemporary fiction. He is also the author of numerous nonfiction articles on film, science, and scuba diving, as well as novel versions of several films, including
Star Wars
, the first three
Alien
films, and
Alien Nation
. His novel
Cyber Way
won the Southwest Book Award for Fiction in 1990, the first science fiction work ever to do so.
Foster’s love of the far-away and exotic has led him to travel extensively. He’s lived in Tahiti and French Polynesia, traveled to Europe, Asia, and throughout the Pacific, and has explored the back roads of Tanzania and Kenya. He has rappelled into New Mexico’s fabled Lechugilla Cave, panfried piranha (lots of bones, tastes a lot like trout) in Peru, white-water rafted the length of the Zambezi’s Batoka Gorge, and driven solo the length and breadth of Namibia.
Foster and his wife, JoAnn Oxley, reside in Prescott, Arizona, in a house built of brick that was salvaged from a turn-of-the-century miners’ brothel. He is presently at work on several new novels and media projects.
For further information on the Commonwealth and other worlds of Alan Dean Foster, try this Web site:
www.alandeanfoster.com
.
BY ALAN DEAN FOSTER
Published by The Ballantine Publishing Group
The Black Hole
Cachalot
Dark Star
The Metrognome and Other Stories
Midworld
Nor Crystal Tears
Sentenced to Prism
Splinter of the Mind’s Eye
Star Trek
®
Logs One–Ten
Voyage to the City of the Dead
. . . Who Needs Enemies?
With Friends Like These . . .
Mad Amos
The Howling Stones
Parallelities
Star Wars
®
: The Approaching Storm
Impossible Places
The Icerigger Trilogy:
Icerigger
Mission to Moulokin
The Deluge Drivers
The Adventures of Flinx of the Commonwealth:
For Love of Mother-Not
The Tar-Aiym-Krang
Orphan Star
The End of the Matter
Bloodhype
Flinx in Flux
Mid-Flinx
Reunion
The Damned:
Book One: A Call to Arms
Book Two: The False Mirror
Book Three: The Spoils of War
The Founding of the Commonwealth:
Phylogenesis
Dirge
Diuturnity’s Dawn
A Del Rey
®
Book
Published by The Ballantine Publishing Group
Copyright © 2002 by Thranx, Inc.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by The Ballantine Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
Del Rey is a registered trademark and the Del Rey colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.
The Library of Congress Control Number can be obtained from the
publisher upon request.
eISBN: 978-0-345-45550-5
v3.0