the circle

The tribal elders gathered around the plasma fire and debated issues of
great importance. Arrhuque Goremberasal crouched, clad only in scraps
and scrags, the only technological accoutrement beweirding Arrhuque's
pfistic face was a data glaive hovering over her left eye and giving her
a direct mainline into one of the globular cluster Silyarmang's
hyperintellgences. The other elders were Canhut, Seoreon, Bevmalqua,
Allincu and Devurthug Brayassabil, but none of them were quite old
enough and hadn't passed the same tests and trials that Arhuque had
passed. They were younger and generally more pretentious, clad in rich
ermine gaberdines and pale fluorescent cyan galligaskins. The women wore
metallic blue beards spun whipped into decorative airy froths, while the
men's third horn was customarily scrimshawed into a figurine of a
moth-dragon. Canhut offered that they could wait another season before
rotating in the Western fields, as they had been fallow for two seasons
and the food stores were well stocked.

Arrhuque nixed this -- she knew that the Plyntherian vassalary over the
Michtmuntav mountains would likely be agitating for war soon, both
because her informants had mentioned it and because her data mainline
had directed her to energy decompositions of the Plyntherian's energy
arbitration -- the Prince Cenulo and his demented advisor Cynthelego had
been making really poor decisions about resource allocation and at the
rate things were going they would spin some religious based excuse for
attacking and raiding the tribe's food stores. So, they'd grow
cilinberries and hohugo grain in the food fields and various exotic
matter hyperbafflers in the manufactury fields, for when the Plyntherian
vassalary agitated for war.


Seoreon idly scratched his third horn -- the third horn is vaguely
innervated amongst the tribal men, and grows more slowly than the
primary and secondary horns, but is more sensitive and without the
scrimshaw is a source of perpetual bother. Seoreon, rather
uncustomarily, has his third horn scrimshawed into a figurine of the
sane god Galthagyllia, pen in the left hand, conch shell in the right.
He's taken to plasma depositing a fine layer of bismuth onto it, more
for show than anything else, but this has given him the reputation of
being somewhat vain -- which is fortunately offset by his reputation as
being the deepest thinker -- at least without the data feed that
Arrhuque uses. "What about the Oscrillyve?" he asked "It's been about
three seasons since they sent a representative to us -- the robotic
wildebeest with that really pathetic paint job, Ithyn, its name was, I
think"

Allincu tousled her beard -- think not a matted or curly collection of
green fibers but a froth of intersecting metallic green filaments
evanescing -- "It's concievable that Ithyn malfunctioned -- it wasn't in
very good condition when it came to make the trade negotiations for
flower nectar. I wouldn't be surprised if..."

Arrhuque interjected "Ithyn is currently upside down in a tarpit eighty
spans from here. Fortunately, while dormant, the memories of the
negotiation are intact. I have made a request to have Ithyn teleported
to the Oscrillyve city Menelopolis with an explanatory text confirming
that we still wish to engage in trade and to apologize for our late
response"

Arrhuque continued on another issue "The Sahangarel Consortium would
like to remove a segment of the Stirchisto mountain range on the Eastern
continent because they believe, at least according to their simulations,
it will, when appropriately inserted into a geological configuration
some eighteen gigaparsecs from here, stabilize a region rather prone to
earthquakes and volcanic activity for which population migration is not
an option at the moment. The part of the Stirchisto they want is around
two hundred cubic tharns in size, and mostly consists of tectonic
material with a high basalt/feldspar ratio. They are offering a
planetary scale 3cr data pipe and three hundred cubic tharns of memory
diamond in exchange for it. Opinions?"

Allincu spoke: "Tetheresty and Blanquile would not have a problem with
it. The Oscrillyve have been agitating for a faster planetary data
connection for a while. Though we'd have problems with the vassalaries
-- rapid technological change and multiple order of magnitude leaps of
data bandwidth usually provoke cultural immune responses. Could we do a
soak?"

Seoreon: "I've read through the Plensive Commentaries on doing soaks --
we may have to physically have some umbrella dancers here to work
through the process of the soak. I would be okay with the Sahangarel's
offer if they could provide umbrella dancers"

Arrhuque looked up, "yes. they would be okay with that. They could get
umbrella dancers here at a timescale -- details to be sorted out later
-- which would work with their material removal timetable"