Dirge (31 page)
Authors: Alan Dean Foster
Following an initial outpouring of human gratitude for the insectoids’ assistance in defeating the Pitar, there came a gradual return to normalcy, to the business of living lives and devoting time to more insular concerns. Colonies continued to expand, and potential colonies continued to develop. Worlds such as Wolophon III and Amropolus that technically fell within the human sphere of exploration but were too redolent of greenhouse effect for human comfort were conceded to the busy thranx, while humankind’s chitinous friends willingly turned over to the more cold-tolerant bipeds information on planets they found too frigid to conveniently accommodate their kind. Given an extensive technological effort, each species
could
colonize the other’s preferred worlds, of course, but the mutual trade-off in climatological comfort zones made infinitely more sense. Interstellar distances being what they were, there was no real perception of one species intruding on the space of another.
The AAnn watched these developments unhappily. Unable to challenge the maturing human-thranx axis directly, they pondered less confrontational means of impeding the resolution of a deeper, stronger alliance. There were many ways of doing this, at which the insidiously artful AAnn were masters. Their advantage lay in the fact that a great many humans and thranx remained ultimately suspicious of one another, and of any expansion of intimate contact.
With a little luck, and much shrewd manipulation of opportune circumstances, sagacious AAnn nobles and their skillful xenologists felt it might even be possible to bring both transient allies into open conflict with one another.
The AAnn set to work.
By Alan Dean Foster
Published by The Random House 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
IMPOSSIBLE PLACES
DROWNING WORLD
THE CHRONICLES OF RIDDICK
LOST AND FOUND
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
FLINX’S FOLLY
SLIDING SCALES
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
Praise for Alan Dean Foster’s Founding of the Commonwealth
PHYLOGENESIS
Book One
“Foster does a fine job with his misfit heroes and even with his minor characters (such as the reptilian Aann). He shows his usual mastery of narrative pacing and slips in a great deal of wry wit. The novel will be a treat for those who have followed Foster’s tales of the Humanx Commonwealth.”
—Publishers Weekly
DIRGE
Book Two
“Foster’s mining of the human-Thranx affinity continues to yield compelling stories.”
—Booklist
“Fast-paced action and likable human and alien protagonists.”
—Library Journal
This book contains an excerpt from
Reunion
by Alan Dean Foster, published by Del Rey
®
Books.
Copyright © 2001 by Thranx, Inc.
A Del Rey
®
Book
Published by The Random House Publishing Group
Copyright © 2000 by Thranx, Inc.
Excerpt from
Reunion
by Alan Dean Foster copyright © 2001 by Thranx, Inc.
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Del Rey Books, an imprint of The Random House 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.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2001116592
eISBN: 978-0-345-49426-9
v3.0