Pictured is a Parturian from Fellow Tetrapod. It is a large, fllightless ground-hornbill with a relatively large head, small eyes, and stocky legs. Its beak is sickle-shaped. [https://64.media.tumblr.com/688ab0dd5e4101c1647caea1808bb396/1099fc35875197d9-a6/s640x960/31556bee16d9040eaf08cb0bbc640a8126b22a7a.pnj]

Picture by Timothy Morris

"Shambling ape!" cawed General Graa. "I demand to know the function of this barbaric term: 'team-building session'!"

"It's a ropes course," Mark said as heartily as he could. "It's supposed to foster bonds of comradeship through a sense of shared danger."

Graa cocked his head. First one beady eye, then the other focused on the ropes stretched between the trees. He shifted position, titanium-wrapped claws scratching the branch on which he perched. "You think heights are dangerous?" A human might have snickered. General Graa let loose a small white dropping.

Thirty feet below, Koen said, "Hey!"

He threaded the loop at the end of the thick balancing rope through the strap that would secure it to the tree. "We can't fly," he said.

"I am glad you abase yourself before me."

Mark mentally kicked himself. A ropes course with a bird? But here he was, thirty feet off the ground, securing a tight-rope while Koen talked into his translator, trying to cram all he knew about Parturians into Laura's as she and Ambassador Li blasted off for the moon and the first contact ceremony. He was saying something about hornbills, but Mark didn't need to listen. His task was insultingly simple.

There'd been no need for heavy machinery. Graa had simply flown up into the big tree with a guide-line in his beak, and Mark had used that to raise something strong enough to bear his weight. He wouldn't even use most of his equipment.

Mark had brought it all the way from Earth. Ascenders and descenders, energy absorber lanyards. Harnesses, helmets, and ropes. He'd touched none of it until today.

Now Koen was talking about northeastern Africa colliding with Eurasia.

Mark had bought his first set of equipment with the fee from his first solo workshop, and used it in his next. Those had been a good two years, pumping money back into his own business, growing as he grew. He'd stayed afloat during the pandemic, and made a very successful transition to politics, but it wasn't the same.

Mark remembered now what his intention had been when he'd first come to the Zogreion. Career progress, yes, but also he'd been looking forward to dusting off his old skills. Team building with nonhumans. Well, the nonhumans didn't want him. Screw 'em.

Koen said something about young males helping older males breed so they could get experience. Mark snorted. Now that he had lured Graa safely away from the Embassy, Mark's brain no longer felt the need to think about that. Instead, it moved to the next worry, which was what Severo would do with Mr. Grumbles, and anger that he couldn't be there with her, and thinking about muscles that ran up her back. His resentment grew.

"Is this something you invented for me?" asked Graa.

"No." Mark wrapped the end of the strap around the axle of the tension ratchet. He liked being too busy doing important work to talk to this powerful nonhuman.

"Interesting. You still want to climb trees even though you're no longer dumb animals."

He pulled the loose end of the strap away from the ratchet until the slack was gone, then stated pumping the ratchet handle. The strap tightened around the tree trunk.

What Mark wanted to ask was "Did you like my team building? Was it a good team building? Or was what mix Sty said true?" But Mark was not an asker. He was a teller. He knew what to tell people.

"I think that's rather offensive," he said. "I don't like this evolutionary psychology, and I don't like this putting animals in a different category from people."

"I discussed this last night with Humans Koen and Laura. You are people because you can talk."

"Maybe we're talking animals." He closed the ratchet handle, locked it, and gave the balancing rope a tug. Firm as a rock. He paused a moment to admire it, thick as his wrist and stretching out toward the other tree. Then he thought about what he was saying.

Mark usually had some greater strategy in a conversation, but now he was letting his mouth do whatever it wanted. Was that a problem? Maybe not. Mark's plan with Mr. Grumbles would yank him home as surely as the ripcord on a parachute. He was sleeping with a gorgeous woman. He was doing something he was good at. Why shouldn't he indulge for once and speak his mind to a bird?

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

"Your Excellency," Mark said. "I'm curious about something. Do you eat your steeds?"

"Clarify? Do we butcher them? Raise them to be eaten then slaughter them and hang their bodies to culture organisms that improve the texture of the carrion?" The Pick growled. "Yes. I am happy."

"Don't you feel guilty about that?" asked Mark, and went on before General Graa could ask for clarification. "Would you like it if Mr. Grumbles ate you?"

"Mr. Grumbles would never harm me or any Pick. He is too well trained. But if you mean a wild steed, yes, it would eat me if it could. But it cannot because it cannot fly and isn't intelligent."

Mark found himself on familiar territory. He didn't relax, but he slipped into a state of automatic response as he pulled himself up the tree and reached out to the dangling end of the safety rope. "Intelligence? Is there really such a thing?"

Graa's head feathers puffed in and out as he watched Mark rise toward him. "Clarify? By intelligence, I mean the ability to acquire and use information."

"Doesn't Mr. Grumbles do that?"

"Not as well as me."

"Isn't that a rather arrogant way to think?"

Graa's throat hackles puffed out, and pale nictitating membranes flickered over his eyes. "Thank you. I am proud!"

Mark's face was level with Graa's branch now. "I mean. How would you know if Mr. Grumbles was intelligent?"

"His species would have domesticated mine, rather than the reverse." The throat puffed out more, feathers raised to form a crest along the top of his head. He crossed the tips of wings, and barked, "I am dominant! Your species kills ravens, do they not?"

Mark secured the safety rope to the ratchet strap and started ratcheting. The safety rope jerked and rose as it was pulled tighter. "We have animal rights laws that stop people from killing animals. And conservation."

"Protection implies weakness." Graa flashed his nictitating membranes again. "I am proud! I have found the tender eyeball of your argument."

Mark decided not to worry about that metaphor. "I'm just saying that maybe there is no such thing as general intelligence. Maybe there are many specific kinds of intelligence, and each one is good for something different. We evolved to be good at forming social groups, and Mr. Grumbles's species for something else."

General Graa closed his nictitating membranes over his eyes and spread his wings. Throat and head bristling, tail raised, he let loose a barking rasp, layered over long, resonant qworks.

On the forest floor, Koen look up from his conversation with Laura. "Are you all right up there?"

"I am drunk with dominance!" crowed General Graa. "You flatter me too much, but you are so cute!" He folded his wings and settled his head feathers with a quick shake of the head. "I like you, Human Mark. I will play with you. You say Mr. Grumbles has a different kind of intelligence. Does he have a different kind of flight?" Graa rustled his wings in unmistakable emphasis. "He cannot build a civilization, and he cannot jump out of a tall tree and live."

"Neither can I," said Mark, who was beginning to believe he was being patronized at. "Are you suggesting that because you can fly and I can't, you're better than me?"

Graa shook his head again and made quiet rasping and booping noises. "I am slightly annoyed. That is really too much flattery, Human Mark. I will speak plainly. My species is more powerful and influential than yours. We would win in a war, but we have not done so yet. It is inappropriate for you to beg for my mercy before I have even conquered you."

What could he say to that? Whatever the truth was about animal intelligence, Graa had certainly succeed in making Mark feel stupid.

"Alright. Done." He straightened his legs and pushed himself away from the tree trunk. He looked up to inspect the rope that connected his harness to the branch. "Descending."

"I am disappointed." Graa looked around as if for more interesting discussions. "I expected another reprisal from you, rather than surrender."

"I'm not talking about conquest and subjugation. I'm talking about equality," said Mark.

"Do not mistake me for a philosopher. I am a soldier-politician. It is my job to balance the forces acting upon the state in flight, and equality is only one of those forces."

There was a sound like a hard wind turning an umbrella inside-out, and Mark froze as wings engulfed his head.

"I understand your problem, Human Mark." Graa growled in his ear.

Mark gripped the straps that held him, stopping himself both from falling and from tearing the raven off his head. With his willpower diverted to his hands, however, Mark's mouth was free to work. "What is it with people telling me what my problem is? I thought my problem was that I didn't have enough fun."

"I don't know you well enough to offer an opinion on that," said Graa. "Maybe you have more than one problem."

Mark began to descend again. At least Severo had shown him what fun felt like. Was this war bird supposed to give him lessons in being non-judgmental?

"You are like the Tensors," Graa continued. "You believe there is a privileged moral reference frame. You compare my path to a point of absolute rightness. In this way, you judge me. However, by the law of relative motion, you also judge yourself."

Mark let out a long breath. A wave of tiredness overwhelmed him, protecting him from understanding what Graa was telling him. All he could think was that now he could rest. He could rest and think of Severo, while Koen took on the job of distracting General Graa.

"Thank you," was all he said.