Ucomo was what his friends called him. Among the Smart People, one's full name was essentially a capsule biography, and as Ucomo was unusually Smart his full name was getting pretty long.
He was working on an interesting intercept when Dabak, his longtime facilitator and good friend, let himself in and took a deep breath. "Ucomo, the air in here is overburdened with carbon dioxide, and moist enough for a Stupid. This cannot be good for your health, nor by extension your rest, your work, or your consequential prosperity. I am opening the blackout screen." Dabak went to the office window, exposed the outside view, gasped, and said, "I am closing the blackout screen." Once he had done so, he took a moment to recover, then turned and said, "You should get an office that doesn't have a view of the moon, so you can get some fresh air in." After a pause, Dabak added, "I hate that thing."
"Not really," Ucomo remarked. "Oras, our ancestral homeworld, is in almost the same orbit as a similar body, Agad, and every few hundred orbits whichever one is closer to their sun catches up with the other. They interact gravitationally, the closer speeds up and moves into a wider orbit, the other slows and moves in, and they separate for a few hundred more orbits. During each period of interaction, conditions on Oras are beyond belief, and that's just the precursor of a massive climatic shift.
"Unfortunately, this means that you and I are descended from ancestors whose response to the sight of a nearby body in half-phase was never to remain calm and await developments. Since every colony world has a moon, we have blackout screens at every window."
"Are you recording?" Dabak said anxiously.
"Constantly, but that conclusion was already known."
"Too bad, it sounded lucrative."
"It was. What did your Mother think of my strategic plan?"
"She sent me with an invitation to donate."
Startled, Ucomo picked up a currycomb and said, "How much?" as he began instinctively to brush himself out.
"I would suppose however much you normally produce," Dabak said.
Ucomo gestured as if to throw and exclaimed, "I mean what's the bid, you fish!"
Wriggling with satisfaction—he was almost never able to get a joke in on Ucomo—Dabak said, "No bid. You're invited to donate." At Ucomo's gasp, he added, "I also overheard her discussing how much her latest brood of sons could be lent for bids when you turn female. She's very impressed with you."
"I don't know if I want to be a Mother myself," Ucomo reflected. "It takes up so much time."
"Everyone says that, but we keep settling more planets, don't we? You'll just do what the Founding Mother did and look for the Smartest mates.—What's wrong?"
"All her mates must have been Stupids. I don't know how a Mother can stand talking to anyone but another Mother. We must all seem like Stupids to them."
"I doubt that's their primary interest in us anyway," Dabak observed.
It was a good point. Only the survivors of male-phase competition became Mothers. Typically about one male out of every eight or nine born lived long enough to resume development, so everyone was descended from Mothers who had preferred to be continuously pregnant. "Did your Mother send a container?"
"No. I believe she intends to invite you home."
"What, like a war hero?" Ucomo said, flustered.
"If that plan works, you are a war hero. And how's your analysis coming?"
Ucomo was immediately all business. "The kzinti are still unaware that we can monitor their message lasers by observing trace effects on interstellar dust and gas. Their encryption remains uninspired. I believe I've figured out why they always call us Smart; the prisoners they take naturally address one another formally, being mutual strangers at peace with one another, and kzinti speech lacks the overtones needed to distinguish the word Ally" [pi'rrin] "from the word Smart" [Pierin]. "Given that the words undoubtedly have a common origin, this is not unreasonable."
"It certainly makes more sense than the theory that they're being polite," Dabak agreed. "Is there any sign that the kzinti can monitor us?"
"I believe there would be no sign if they could," Ucomo said. "To combine clarity with brevity our communications are in Ancestral mode. We are descended from creatures that spent some time living in shallows, before the oceans became too dangerous, and our brains still possess structures designed to grasp 3-D sonar pulses. This is why it's so difficult for most males to express a thought unless it's completely formed, but it also means that we get far more information out of holographic data than any alien could. If they broke our encryption, the kzinti would obtain only linear and visual information from our messages. Even their sonar-using slaves use it primarily for vision equivalence. Incidentally, I'm convinced the kzinti believe our females are nonsentient, like theirs."
Dabak went rigid with amazement, and stayed immobile for at least ten heartbeats. Then he said, "Why?"
"Because they never see them."
"They never see them for the same reason we never see their Patriarch!"
"Of course. But it's well for an enemy to have false beliefs. Oh, and they've found another alien race. Quite numerous, apparently. A fleet is being assembled to invade one of the aliens' planets, and since the force we face is the largest they have deployed, it will be contributing the largest number of ships. I intend to recommend to your Mother that we strike just as the convoy is formed, to maximize disruption."
"What are the aliens like?" Dabak wondered.
"I couldn't find anything about that. The annoying thing about spying on carnivores is they don't give enough information to each other, either. However, 'the enemy of my enemy is my weapon,' after all. Whatever else they're like, they're useful."
"True," Dabak said. "Well, maybe they can keep the kzinti distracted for a few years."