He scampered to a mass of rocks and scratched at the ground near the outermost one. The heavy body of an old flin shortly appeared at the mouth of the hole he made. I rolled over and told the flin flinn of Shlestertrap’s requirements.
The doddering burrower examined his broken claws nervously. “The chiefs of the other sexes will probably want to convene above ground. I know how important this stereo is to our race, but I am old and not at all agile—and this is the Season of Wind-Driven Rains—and the great spotted snakes are ravenous enough below the surface—”
“And it will shortly be the Season of Early Floods,” I interrupted him, “when only tkann will have time for conversation. Our civilizing must begin as soon as possible.”
“What have you to fear, old one?” the blap jeered. “A snake would find you tough and almost without flavor!”
Flin flinn edged back into his hole. “But not until he had experimented in a regrettably final fashion upon my person,” he pointed out gloomily. “I will communicate with the new mlenb mlenbb—their moist burrows connect with ours again. Where might we meet do you think, O coordinator who gathers human wisdom?”
“In the sheltered spot at the base of the sixth highest mountain,” I suggested. “It will be fairly safe during the next great wind. And consider, in the meantime, which is the living flin most fitted to represent our race in this our first stereo. Tell the mlenb mlenbb to do likewise.”
After the sound of his claws had diminished in the under distance, the blap and I moved back to the giant fern. It is written in the Book of Ones: A bush nearby is worth two in the by and by.
“The only other sex-chief whose whereabouts I griggo,” the tree-dweller observed, “is the new nzred nzredd. He is in the marsh organizing the coordination of the next cycle.”
“The nzred tinoslep that was?”
“Yes, and little did he relish his honors! Plentiful rose his complaints to High Hope. Vainly he insisted he was still in the very prime of coordination—that he had a good many novel arrangements yet within him. But all know of the pathetic hybrids produced in the last tinoslep cycle. You have heard, I suppose—”