An elbow jabbed him in the ribs. Simon muttered urgently. “Straighten up, Fiben. Her Nibs is looking this way!”

Over among the dignitaries Megan Oneagle, the gray-haired Planetary Coordinator, pursed her lips and gave Fiben a quick shake of her head.

Aw, hell, he thought.

Megan’s son, Robert, had been a classmate of Fiben’s at Garth’s small university. Fiben arched an eyebrow as if to say to the human administrator that he hadn’t asked to serve on this dubious honor guard. And anyway, if humans had wanted clients who didn’t scratch themselves, they never should have uplifted chimpanzees.

He fixed his collar though, and tried to straighten his posture. Form was nearly everything to these Galactics, and Fiben knew that even a lowly neo-chimp had to play his part, or the clan of Earth might lose face.

On either side of Coordinator Oneagle stood the other dignitaries who had come to see Swoio Shochuhun off. To Megan’s left was Kault, the hulking Thennanin envoy, leathery and resplendent in his brilliant cape and towering ridge crest. The breathing slits in his throat opened and closed like louvered blinds each time the big-jawed creature inhaled.

To Megan’s right stood a much more humanoid figure, slender and long-limbed, who slouched slightly, almost in-souciantly in the afternoon sunshine.

Uthacalthing’s amused by something. Fiben could tell. So what else is new?

Of course Ambassador Uthacalthing thought everything was funny. In his posture, in the gently waving silvery tendrils that floated above his small ears, and in the glint in his golden, wide-cast eyes, the pale Tymbrimi envoy seemed to say what could not be spoken aloud — something just short of insulting to the departing Synthian diplomat.

Swoio Shochuhun sleeked back her whiskers before stepping forward to say farewell to each of her colleagues in turn. Watching her make ornate formal paw motions in front of Kault, Fiben was struck by how much she resembled a large, rotund raccoon, dressed up like some ancient, oriental courtier.