Amber smiled and shook her head.<br/><br/>"John," she said, "I'm afraid that all of you are intelligent animal species, not to put too fine a point on it."<br/><br/>She found a certain irony in the way he put it. In terms of classifying species, there really wasn't any difference between an intelligent animal and non-intelligent animal beyond their level of intelligence. Small animals who were also intelligent were rare, but seemed, from the Var point of view, to be no more distinct from larger intelligent animals than a large and fast animal was from a small and fast animal.<br/><br/>"Tool using, intelligent, communicating, space-faring, animals," she said, "biology is so wonderfully neutral is it not?"<br/><br/>She laughed again, already prepared to follow him to the Dauntless, she really required nothing from her ship, which would stay, or be recalled, as some other Var required.