[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

Landing Command pored over maps and statistics as they agonized over site selection. The place
chosen for First Burrow had to be located in a region where the colony would have access to specific
resources without drawing the attention of the Shirazians, and where they would be safely distant from
the world-spanning native conflict.
The hastily assembled philology team distinguished itself by rapidly trans-lating the most important of
Shiraz s bewildering multiplicity of languages. Their reports proved that while the natives might
biologically be related to the Quozl, mentally and spiritually they were vastly different.
Soon it was obvious to anyone with a smattering of elementary mass psy-chology that they fought among
themselves because they had not yet come to terms with something as basic as their individual sex drives.
They had no idea how to control them, channel the related energies, make use of the related cerebral
aspects, or sublimate their violent tendencies in art, music, and other aspects of civilized behavior. Instead
they regularly engaged in physical combat both on an individual level and as organized tribal groupings.
Even the most imaginative psychologists aboard theSequencer were aston-ished. Controlling the sex
drive was basic to the establishment of a mature civilization. That the Shirazians had achieved a high level
of civilization could not be denied. That it was socially immature was equally unarguable.
 What is remarkable, declared a senior philosopher one day,  is not that they continue to war with each
other, but that they have somehow managed under these biological circumstances to avoid exterminating
themselves.
 War is a natural and understandable by-product of their lack of control and understanding of their own
hormonal systemology, said a colleague.  It is the only means left to control the expansion of the
population.
 It goes deeper than that, argued his senior.  Is is more basic to their civilization and affects much more
than mere population growth. It affects everything about them. It would affect the way they would react
to us.
The analysts could tell nothing about Shirazian art from the native s purely aural broadcasts, but they did
record many samples of native music. It was clashing and discordant, full of the confusion that lay
beneath the rest of their civilization. Such discoveries were discouraging, but there was no talk of giving
up. They could not give up. Despite its incessantly warring, wild tribes, Shiraz was to be their home.
Pressed for a determination, Senses-go-Fade and the xenologists allowed as how if they landed and
presented themselves to the natives there was a fifty-fifty chance they would be attacked and
exterminated on the spot. The corollary was that there was a fifty-fifty chance they would be accepted
and tolerated, if not welcomed with flattened ears. As these odds were not to the
Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
Captain s liking, it was decided to continue as planned. They would select a burrowsite, touch down,
secure the colony as best they could, and deal with native contact only if and when it became
unavoidable.
If the colony successfully established itself and throve, staff estimated that preliminary steps to make
contact might commence in reasonable safety in one to two hundred of the local years.
V.
LIvrs-wn H-SHOuT S LANDING STAFF S FIRST CHOICE OF A BURROWSITE WAS
an island. Any island. But the larger ones were all occupied and the smaller provided insufficent
resources and space for expansion. Nor for psychological reasons did any Quozl wish to live on a small
body of land completely sur-rounded by water. The ship-born colonists knew of drowning only from
texts. That did not mean any wished to experience the sensation in person.
The few extensive unpopulated regions were equally unpromising. Great tracts of empty tropical forest
were not suitable for burrowing and based on the information gleaned from the settlement of Mazna,
were the most likely to harbor dangerous diseases and lifeforms. The frozen polar regions were less [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]