A World of Difference (9 page)

The linguist had put down his rifle when he started trying to communicate with Fralk. “Cover me,” he called to his companions, and walked, empty-handed, toward the Minervans. Fralk widened himself as the human came up. In delighted reply, Bryusov bowed from the waist.

That set the Minervans off again. “They’re not used to anything that can bend that way,” Katerina guessed.

“No,” Tolmasov agreed. He knew he sounded absent-minded, and he did not care. The relief washing through him was too great for that. First contact was made, and made without bloodshed. History books—maybe history books on two worlds, he thought, blinking—would not bear his name as a curse.

No one with a lot of arms would try to ram a spear through his brisket, either, which also counted. He stood up, stepped out from behind
Tsiolkovsky
’s immense tires, and let the Minervans see him. He left his rifle at his side but did not put it down. Not yet.

“For me?” Hogram tested the knife blade with a fingerclaw and, like Fralk before him, was amazed at its keenness. “A most generous gift, eldest of eldest.”

“Gift?” Fralk held his eyestalks very still, the picture of innocence. “How can such a thing be a gift, when all the clan possesses is in the clanfather’s keeping?”

Hogram turned a second eye on the young male, who wondered if he had laid the flattery on too thick. Maybe he had. “There is a difference, you know,” Hogram said, “between being in my keeping and being in my hand.” But the domain-master’s eyestalks twitched; he was more amused than anything else.

Fralk did not take another chance. He changed the subject, at least to some degree, saying, “These—strangers—may be valuable to us, clanfather.” “Strangers” seemed a better word than “monsters,” especially as he was trying to speak well of them.

“If they have more knives such as this, certainly,” Hogram said. “Or, better yet, if they can make them with longer blades. Those would help us when we cross the Great Gorge. I would pay well for them.”

“Of course, clanfather,” Fralk agreed. “The trouble is finding what the strange males want. They are so—different—from us that much of what we find valuable may be of no interest to them.”

Hogram’s eyestalks were more than twitching now; they were wiggling with mirth. “That is the trouble with any trade, eldest of eldest, finding out what the other male wants and what it’s worth to him.” The clanfather’s faded, sagging skin and the continual wheezing of his breathing-pores showed that he would never be young again, but with his years had come shrewdness. Clan Hogram prospered, even among the Skarmer clans, where a trading blunder could put a clan up to its eyestalks in trouble.

Fralk had learned a great deal, just watching and listening to his grandfather. Now to apply some of that learning, if he could … “Clanfather, have you chosen a male yet to work with the strangers, learn their peculiar words, and teach them ours?”

“Why, no.” Hogram sounded a bit taken aback.

Good, Fralk thought. The domain-master had not had a chance to work through all the implications of the strangers’ arrival, while he himself had thought about little else since the sky-box—(no, the
sky-boat
, he amended, consciously using the Lanuam word the Skarmers had borrowed)—almost fell on top of him.

“Surely it would be better to have a single male handle such matters than to scatter them piecemeal among several,” he said.

“So it would, so it would.” Hogram’s fingers twiddled as he thought. “You see to it, if you care to, Fralk. You’ve been dealing with the creatures since they came here, so you know more about them than anyone else.” The domain-master paused. “I’ve given you two hard tasks together now, first dealing with the Omalo domain-master and now with these strangers. You are still a young male. If you decline here, I will not think less of you.”

“I will try, clanfather.” Fralk did his best to put a doubtful tremor in his voice, but had all he could do to keep from dancing
with glee. If he was the channel through which the strangers dealt with clan Hogram, some of what went by would stick to him, just as debris littered the sides and bottom of Ervis Gorge after the summer floods passed. He suspected the strangers had things much more interesting than the little knife. No trader with even the tiniest sense gave away his best stock as an opening present.

And Hogram, the young male vowed to himself, would not see everything the strangers had to offer. Some Fralk would keep or dispose of for himself. Though clanfathers’ rights were as strong in theory among the Skarmer clans as with the Omalo across the gorge, in practice a male still under his clanfather’s power could also accumulate a limited amount of wealth for himself. Or even, Fralk thought, not such a limited amount, so long as he was careful.

His musing made him miss something Hogram had said. “Your pardon, clanfather,” he said, widening himself contritely.

“I wonder where these strangers—creatures—whatever they are—come from,” Hogram repeated. “We’ve not seen nor heard of nor smelled their like.” His arms waved in agitation. “Imagine not having eyestalks, being blind to half the world all the time. Imagine having only two legs, and two hands. Imagine wanting to stay so
hot—
”

“That is unnerving,” Fralk agreed. The strangers had a device with fire somehow trapped inside it and had used it on the journey to the castle when night came. They huddled around it, though the evening was mild. The heat had been so savage that no one wanted to go near them, not even Fralk, who was curious about the fire. He knew of few things that burned readily; a new one would find a ready market among ice-smiths and also could be useful in war. When he got more words, he would ask about that.

“They follow strange gods, too, if what you and the others have told me of them is true,” Hogram went on. “I’ve never heard of anyone worshiping the Twinstar.”

“They do, clanfather,” Fralk insisted. “They roused a little before dawn this morning, as did we, and through clouds low in the east they spied the Twinstar, the bright blue one and its little faint companion. As we watched them, they pointed to it, to themselves, and to it again. I cannot think of any reason for such a rite as that but worship.”

“For all we know of them, they may have been trying to tell
us they’re
from
the Twinstar,” Hogram said. “They’re weird enough.”

Fralk’s eyestalks started to twitch. Then he noticed that Hogram was not laughing. He thought about it. It made as much sense as anything else, he supposed. He said so. He was still thoughtful when he left the domain-master’s presence a little while later. He was reminded he would have to be even more cautious in his dealings with the strangers than he had thought. Taking Hogram for a fool would never do.

“I hope
they don’t mind us watching as their young get born,” Pat Marquard said as she walked along behind Reatur.

“So do I,” Irv said. “From the way they keep their females so restricted, I’m afraid they might. But I hope Reatur will see we’re so different from his kind that we don’t count.”

Though he had gloves on, he kept his hands in his pockets. He noticed himself doing that whenever he was inside Reatur’s castle. Just the idea of being in a building made largely of ice gave him goose bumps. He glanced over at his wife. She was doing the same thing.

“Do you think it’s being so restricted that makes the females here nothing like the males?” Sarah asked him.

“More likely just a universal constant,” he said, which earned him a glare from his wife, a snort from Pat, and, at the noise, the brief honor of a second eyeball on him from Reatur. If it was an honor, he thought, and not simply a reflex.

He wasn’t really sure about that. After two and a half weeks on Minerva, he wasn’t really sure about much. Back on Earth, the people to whom
Athena
’s crew relayed data all sounded certain they knew what was going on. Irv would have had more confidence in them if the advice they sent agreed with itself more than two times in five. As it was, he was looking forward to the day when the Earth slipped behind the sun. Being out of radio contact for a while was beginning to seem a delightful prospect.

Reatur brought him back to the here-and-now by opening the door to the females’ part of the castle. As always, the din that came from the other side of the door when the females saw him
was impressive. “Reserved” was not in the Minervan female vocabulary.

The din redoubled when the females spotted the three humans behind the—baron? chief? Irv still had no sure feel for the best rendering of Reatur’s title. One of the few things Minervan he did have a feel for was what the local females thought about humans.

They thought humans were hilarious.

They came crowding around, staring, falling over one another, prodding, poking, pulling their arms back in amazement every time they directly touched warm human flesh, then reaching out to do it again. “They’re like a bunch of berserk puppies,” Pat said as the wave washed over her. She was smiling; it was hard not to smile around Minervan females.

Irv jerked his head back, just in time to keep a female’s fingerclaw from poking him in the eye. The female reached up and ran the finger under the earflap of his cap instead, then let out an almost supersonic squeal.

“Reminds me even more of my two-year-old niece,” Irv said. The thought saddened him; Beth was three now, not two, and would be five when Irv got back to Earth. She probably would not remember Sarah or him.

“They
are
like toddlers, aren’t they?” Sarah said slowly.

“Not the one named Biyal,” Pat said. Sarah and Irv both had to nod. No toddler on Earth could have been so dramatically gravid as Biyal. The bulges above her legs made her instantly recognizable to the humans, where even with Reatur they had to pause and consider before they were sure who he was. Those bulges also made her move very slowly, so she was the last female to come out and see the humans.

“Hello, Biyal,” Irv said, waving.

“Hello, Irv,” she answered, and waved back with three arms at once. Except for that, both words and gesture were eerily accurate echoes of what the anthropologist had said and done. Such a gift for mimicry was something young children often displayed; Irv thought his wife might have put a finger on an important truth.

Biyal was still wading through the crowd of females toward the humans when she suddenly stopped. “Reatur!” she called, and followed the chieftain’s name with a stream of what was still gibberish despite nearly sleepless efforts on the part of everyone from
Athena
.

Reatur and the females understood, though; they all turned
an extra eyestalk or two toward Biyal. The rippling motion reminded Irv of a wind blowing through a forest of snakes.

Reatur shouted something at the females between him and Biyal. They moved out of the way, clearing a path for him to go to her. The humans followed him.

Sarah’s hand tightened on Irv’s arm. “Look!” she said. “The skin over that bud has split vertically! Reatur timed it well—she must be right on the point of giving birth!” Irv saw that his wife was right. Excitement ran through him. Learning how Minervans were born surely would give him clues to other aspects of their culture, to say nothing of the importance the knowledge held for Sarah and Pat.

Reatur seemed like any other concerned father-to-be. He took two of Biyal’s hands in his own and helped her waddle backward toward the passage out of which she had come. The other females did not go with them. Instead they called out Biyal’s name and one of the few Minervan words Irv was certain he understood: “Good-bye!”

“Do we go on?” Pat whispered to Irv. “I want to.”

“Let’s,” he said after a moment’s thought. “If Reatur or Biyal don’t want us along, they’ll let us know about it.” His first thought was that they would get far enough along behind Reatur’s back that the chieftain would let them continue instead of sending them away. But of course Reatur had no back to be behind. With eyes all around, he saw the humans’ first steps after him.

He hesitated, then used one arm to wave them on. This time Sarah and Pat both gave Irv a squeeze. “You were right,” Pat said, her blue eyes glowing.

Reatur led Biyal into a small chamber. It was crowded when the humans also came in. There was no place to sit down except the floor; Minervans were not built for sitting. All the humans stayed on their feet. Their boots were much better insulated than the seats of their pants.

Biyal reached out with a fingerclaw, scraped some ice from a wall, and reached up to put it into her mouth. Reatur got her more. He gently touched her while she crunched it up.

“He takes good care of her,” Sarah said approvingly. She studied Biyal. “She doesn’t seem to be in much distress, does she?” Sarah laughed at herself. “Of course, I have no idea whether she’s supposed to be. It would be nice if she weren’t, wouldn’t it?”

Pat moved around as best she could in the cramped space,
taking picture after picture. Biyal pointed at the camera. “Noise? What?” she asked. Females always spoke more simply than males, Irv had noted; Biyal simplified still more to get her meaning across to humans.

“Autowinder,” Pat said: not an explanation, but at least a name to give to the thing that whirred. Reatur, by now, was used to the noise. Then Pat spoke to Irv and Sarah. “The splits in her skin above each bud are getting longer.”

“Six babies born all at once?” Irv shook his head. “My cousin and her husband have two little kids, a couple of years apart, and they’re ragged.” Remembering the chaos at Victoria’s house made him have trouble thinking like an anthropologist. Finally he managed, musing, “An enormous-extended family like the one Reatur has here must make things a lot easier.”

“Splits are longer still,” Sarah said. “If things go on at this rate, either those babies will be born very soon or Biyal’s going to fall apart in so many segments like an orange. And she’s perfectly happy, too. When we send the data back to Earth, I think a lot of women are going to be jealous.”

The splits were growing wider, as well as longer. Minervans, Irv saw, were born feet-first. Six young, each with six legs, plus Biyal’s six … Irv began figuring out how many legs that was, and found himself thinking of the man with the wives and the cats and the rats, all on their way to St. Ives. Adding in arms and then eyestalks as they appeared only brought the nursery puzzle more strongly to mind.