Paws and Planets by Candy Rae Page A

games, gambolling around, but here were two adults
dashing here there and everywhere and generally acting like a pair
of crazy idiots and now that Saru knew to listen he thought he
could discern some attempts at speech.
    By the eggs
of my ancestors , he thought as his talons hit the dirt, not the
tidiest of landings which was not surprising, so preoccupied was
he , I am a part of a tremendous thing, a great leap forward for
any species. No doubt they would have learned to talk anyway, in
the future but what a blessing our advance party didn’t interpret
their curiosity and behaviour for what it was. If they had we’d
still be travelling around the universe in the Limokko and would
have missed all this!
    By the time he
had gathered himself together, he found that there were many more
Lind around him than his own Aei and Aya. There were around twenty
of them, all jumping around seeking attention. Every heartbeat or
two one would stop for a moment and concentrate hard and try to
speak. Saru thought it was funny how their eyes became half-lidded
as they did.
    How long have
they been trying to talk and I have never noticed?
    He responded to
their greetings with wry good humour, speaking slowly and clearly
and enunciating each syllable and they were listening he realised,
listening hard, ears cocked as the assimilated each new sound.
    Maru, Velua and
little Belu came pounding over, simply bursting with questions.
    “Father, what
is happening? Come tell Mother. She can’t leave the eggs but she
wants to know.”
    “Mother says
you’ve to come to the daga immediately.”
    “Mother says
now and not a tvan later.”
    “Quieten down
all of you,” said Saru, raising a wing for silence.
    Both Lind and
Lai ceased their tumult.
    “Go tell your
mother that I will be there in a tvan or two,” he told Maru, “you
can tell her also that our little furry friends here are far more
clever than we thought they were.”
    “How’s that
Father?” asked Belu.
    “It seems that
they can talk. At least Dakaru’s Andei can and I’m sure the rest
won’t be long in being able to as well.”
    “But Father,”
said Velua, rolling her eyes in exasperation, “we three have known
that for ages!”
     
     
    * * * * *
     
     
    EPISODE 5 –
DAGAN
     
    FIRST
LESSON
     
    There is a mix
of Lai and English words for numbers in this story as it was far
too confusing not to do so. It’s not that important anyway, it’s
the story that matters.
    In Lindish dun
is one, vad is two, lok is three, san is four and rak is five.
     
    Before he had
left the triumphant Dakaru, Saru had extracted his promise not to
mention his findings to anylai else until he, Saru gave him leave.
He extracted the same promise from Sanua, Maru, Velua and Belu.
They all promised readily enough.
    Before ‘it went
public’ so to speak, Saru wanted to test it all out for
himself.
    Now get your
brains to work my Lai, how am I to do this? He was sitting on
the eggs in a brown study, aware that Aei and Aya were seated
nearby and staring at him in an expectant manner. After some
thought, he decided on a possible avenue of approach. He would
attempt to teach them their numbers! That would separate the truly
intelligent from the merely well-trained!
    Ltsctas copied
their parents with actions and words. During their early xanus they
had no real conception of what the words they were uttering in
their squeaky voices actually meant. They merely repeated them
parrot fashion (of course Saru did not know what a parrot was but
back on Daiglon his ancestors had kept as pets bird-like creatures
of a similar type who had spoken words that had been repeated by
the Lai in their hearing. Like the parrots of Earth, these
creatures had no real understanding of what they meant). Perhaps
the Lind, despite what he had seen were the same.
    Saru meant to
find out, not before he was much older, but that very day.
    If the Lind
could be taught a few numbers and could make the jump between the
spoken word for