Chamal

NOT AN EASY WORLD ... A world where all the warm-blooded animals can interbreed and the genes for intelligence spread freely is not an easy world. The wise creatures of Chamal, risen up from the wild, live together like cats and dogs and lions and lambs. Those genes mix and spread rapidly, wise tribes rise up from the wilderness, then scatter their genes and return to the wild. Their wisdom leads them to wild breeding schemes ... which inevitably fail. They recognize their own perversity and know that their failure is their moral fault. They have managed to put together an advanced technological world - and are almost ready to destroy themselves with that technology. Then the ship from Earth arrives on the edge of their solar system. The chamalians, who recognize the perversity of their genealogy, immediately decide that the humans aboard the ship are purebreds - avenging angels come to destroy their unpure world. They build a great warship in orbit to defeat them upon their arrival. But in Suridash, a desert city isolated from the great states of the planet, they recognize that the angelic humans are their only hope to avoid their self-destructive destiny. Zepp is a small green ape who is caught up in the intrigues of his leaders and sent on a mission to sabotage The Killer of Angels and save Chamal - if he can survive.

Nothing ever happens smoothly on Chamal. Intelligence is not confined to a single species on Chamal, but floats freely among the various breeds of warm-blooded furry creatures. One step separates the wild from the wise and the wise recognize the moral depravity their biology presents. When the human scout ship Cousteau arrived, the wise saw them as purebred angels, come to judge them for their sins and destroy their world. So it is no wonder they tried to destroy them - and no wonder they failed. Now Mark Paradis, of the ship's cultural survey team, and Zepp, a small green ape sent as an ambassador to the Cousteau, must deal with the aftermath of the arrival of the humans. And hanging in the balance is the fate of Chamal itself - because the wise chamalians are right.

Three tales of Chamal, where the genes for intelligence are a free-floating trait and all the warm-blooded animals can interbreed - Harralld is a pilgrim of Jobe, an ancestor who once walked around the globe, who gets involved in border wars among several chamalian breeds. Before he is done, he meets a scientist from Earth, come to see if the team here has discovered the secrets of chamalian genetics. Jerome Sullivan has discovered those secrets, but before he can tell anyone on the science team, he is kidnapped by the Red Monkeys. They want him to find a way for them to breed true and rise back up to take political control of the great rift valley. Will he ever escape their control? By day, Pog is houseboy to Dr. Wu, a human scientist in a port city on the Meshkar Sea. By night, Pog can be many things - because Pog has learned to read the books of the humans. But when Dr. Wu is murdered, Pog is suddenly on the run. Before he is finished, his whole world will be turned upside down.