BIG ANCESTOR
F.L. Wallace
IN REPOSE, TAPHETTA THE RIBBONEER RESEMBLED A FANCY giant bow on a package. His four flat legs looped out and in, the ends tucked under his wide, thin body, which constituted the knot at the middle. His neck was flat, too, arching out in another loop. Of all his features, only his head had appreciable thickness and it was crowned with a dozen long though narrower ribbons.
Taphetta rattled the head fronds together in a surprisingly good imitation of speech. “Yes, I’ve heard the legend.”
“It’s more than a legend,” said Sam Halden, biologist. The reaction was not unexpected—non-humans tended to dismiss the data as convenient speculation and nothing more. “There are at least a hundred kinds of humans, each supposedly originating in strict seclusion on as many widely scattered planets. Obviously there was no contact throughout the ages before space travel—
and yet each planetary race can interbreed with a minimum of ten others. That’s more than a legend—one bell of a lot more!”
. . .
