Hellspark (18 page)

“Here, John,” said Kejesli—he was at least partially aware of the problem, Tocohl noted—“Beside me.” With poor grace, which Kejesli was unaware of, John the Smith once more rounded the table, this time to “outrank” his captain.

Tocohl mentally wished the team’s chamfer the Death of a Thousand Butts. To put a Sobolli, guaranteed to approach on the left, on the same team as a Bluesippan, who took a left approach as threat was to court disaster. Not to mention severe injury to the Sobolli… She found sweat beading her forehead and wiped it away.

Om im chuckled. In Bluesippan, he muttered, “If I haven’t killed him for blind-siding me yet, Ish shan, I’m not likely to today. I think I mentioned we were chamfered by a moron…” In GalLing’ he said, “The Hellspark’s in search of sprookje tales. I promised her each of us had one of her own, certainly to the acquiring of her own personal sprookje.”

“Do we!”

That was Kejesli reaffirming his status by taking the first word, and telling the first tale. When he had finished, a half a dozen others told their own in turn, but the end result was no new information about the camp sprookjes. In every case, the experience had been almost identical to Om im’s: each sprookje had

begun to mimic one surveyor—no apparent reason for the choice, no apparent understanding of the words echoed, and no sprookje echoed more than one surveyor.

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“And,” contributed Hitoshi Dan, the team’s botanist, when he had finished his own acquisition tale, “they don’t speak unless they’re spoken to. They never volunteer a word. In fact, you don’t know if the sprookje’s ‘yours’ until you say something, and then you wish you hadn’t.”

“Wrong,” said Om im genially.

Just as genially, Hitoshi Dan splayed his fingers before his throat. “Never insult a man with a knife,”

he said. “I did forget: my small sharp-edged friend there can tell the sprookjes apart before their echo gives them away.”

Jabbing both thumbs at his temples, John the Smith made a scoffing sound. Luckily, both Om im and

Hitoshi Dan took notice only of the scoffing sound.

“True, John,” Om im said, “I’ve gotten to the point where I can tell which sprookje is whose.”

“He can. Ask him sometime as they come into camp,” Hitoshi Dan said, but he shifted his gaze from the Sobolli who so clearly disbelieved to Tocohl, who assured him with a tap to her nose that she planned to do just that.

To Tocohl, Om im explained, “Each of the sprookjes has its own face and its own personality. I can tell you which will mimic whom. But Dan’s right that they never speak unless spoken to.”

Then, once again turning his attention to John the Smith, he said, “Homo sap is essentially lazy.

He looks at two cats and he says all cats look alike. Or he’ll go so far as to acknowledge that one cat is striped and the other isn’t, but he’ll only acknowledge gross differences.”

He rose with an easy arrogance, as if the act of standing proved his point. “People look at me and say, ‘Ah, a Bluesippan!’—I am forced to say, no, that’s not sufficient. I’m Om im Chadeayne, I am myself.” He paused, then, “I am different than you are but I am an individual. I am informed by my culture and my world but I am not defined by it.”

Very true, thought Tocohl, or you would have drawn on John the Smith. But even that is unlikely to have made an impression on him.

As Om im resumed his post (to all appearances settling himself easily back into his chair), John the

Smith said, “But that’s hardly the question here. We’re talking about sprookjes and they aren’t—” He broke off suddenly.

“Yes?” said Om im, and the Smith looked embarrassed.

“You were, perhaps,” said Om im, “about to add, ‘and they aren’t human,’ were you not?”

“Yes,” the Smith admitted.

“But that’s a question we have yet to decide,” Om im said. “You see? I’m not faulting you in particular, John. It’s a language problem in more ways than one. Assuming the sprookjes have a language, then we’re having trouble with their language and with our own as well.”

Confident now of his ability to retain his audience, Om im paused to sip his winter-flame, then continued, “You call them all sprookjes, which defines them in a certain way—and limits your ability to think about them. I’m not much better: I think of them as John’s sprookje, swift-Kalat’s sprookje, and so on.”

“All right, Om im, but calling them human won’t make them human.”

“True, but calling them nonhuman or inhuman will set limits on our perceptions of them.—Tocohl, you see what I mean?”

“Perfectly,” said Tocohl. “You took one look at me and made up your mind that I fit your image of

Ish shan—a legendary giant from Bluesippan folklore,” she added for the benefit of the others around the table, “who was known for her ability to outwit the gods. So, from that moment on, anything I did in your presence became highly charged: my successes will be more than successes, my failures will be more than failures. All this through no fault of mine. Being thought more than human has problems all its own.”

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Having taken Om im’s audience from him, she paused for a sip of winter-flame before continuing.

When she resumed, it was to say, “Take von Zoveel for an example. He named them sprookjes.

To him, they’re fairy tale creatures, something from a story for kids. Surely that affects his image of them.”

Hitoshi Dan stabbed the air for attention. “Your point is well taken, but what do you suggest we do?

Shall we call them ‘native humans’?—Must we, in order to see them as human?”

“I don’t know what human means,” interjected John the Smith, “especially after Tocohl’s story about the Pasicans. Human is itself a highly charged term!”

“Human means like me

,” Tocohl said.

“Human means having art, artifacts, and language,” Rav Kejesli corrected sourly. “That’s the legal definition.”

“Which,” said Tocohl, smiling, “is nothing more than a complex way of saying like me

.”

For a brief moment, Kejesli tried to stare her down, but still smiling, she met his stare with her own level gaze, and at last he touched the pin of remembrance. “For the moment, I’ll grant it,”

he said.

Touching her pin of high-change in acknowledgment, Tocohl went on, “Convince enough people—and I use that term loosely—that any given species is enough like them and they may even find a way to circumvent the legal definitions. Witness the dolphins. Perhaps it was just wishful thinking on the part of

Homo sapiens

, but dolphin song was judged an artifact. Personally, I think Homo sapiens wanted so badly to ally itself with such a graceful, gentle, and talented species that cheating was the obvious answer.” She drew her hands close about her wrists.

“I don’t begrudge the cheating, certainly.” She smiled. “It gained for Homo sapiens a greater humanity in that other sense of the word.”

Hitoshi Dan smiled wistfully, as if in remembrance. Evidently he’d had some contact with the Gaian dolphins. “Perhaps we’re using the wrong term,” he said, “if it’s a language problem.

Perhaps sentient or

HILF

would be less loaded?”

“In GalLing’, yes,” said Tocohl, “but how many of you actually think in GalLing’ rather than translating automatically into your homeworld’s tongue? The Yn word for sentient translates literally as

‘she who speaks.’” She gestured toward Rav Kejesli: “And the Sheveschkem term means

‘sparked’ or

‘enflamed’—though neither GalLing’ word quite captures the imagery of the original.”

John the Smith said, but with a slight smile, “You have an admirable talent for confusing the issue, Hellspark.”

“That wasn’t my intention; I meant merely to break down the boundaries to some extent, to show you how flexible reality is when compared to our means of expressing that reality.”

There was a long moment of silence. Tocohl scrutinized the faces of those around her: Kejesli scowled, John the Smith looked thoughtful. In fact, to Tocohl’s satisfaction, thoughtful looks predominated. At last, Hitoshi Dan broke the silence. “All right,” he said and—as if in positive answer to a question—rose and strode away.

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His departure signaled a general turnover of those assembled. Most of the deserters, Tocohl felt confident, were off to think over what she and Om im had said. Only John the Smith and Kejesli, still scowling, remained.

“What else can we tell you about Flashfever,” Om im prompted. “What else might be of help?”

“Tell me what’s so valuable about this world,” said Tocohl. “You’re the geologist—is there anything that might make Flashfever especially interesting to colonists or exploiters?”

Kejesli’s scowl deepened, but this time was not directed at her. When he unwittingly touched his pin of remembrance, she knew he too was thinking of the sort of exploiters who had burned Veschke.

“Not from my end,” said Om im. “Flashfever has the usual supply that you’d find on any previously unexploited planet in its category; a colony wouldn’t have any lack of resources, certainly. But ores aren’t worth the cost of export, and so far I haven’t turned up any unusual gemstones that would be.”

“Not gemstones,” John the Smith snapped suddenly, “forget gemstones, Tocohl. This is one of the most valuable planets ever surveyed!”

Kejesli jerked to face him, eyes widening in surprise at the Smith’s sudden animation. A quick yank brought the Smith’s chair an inch closer to Kejesli: the Sobolli meant to convince. When what would have impressed another Sobolli only made Kejesli kick his own chair the same inch backward, John the

Smith turned his attention back to Tocohl.

His irritation vanished in his general excitement. “Animals that give electric shocks have been known on other worlds. But for Flashfever, biologists will have to establish whole new categories of plants!

Plants!” He threw up his hands. “I see what you mean about the flexibility of reality. I’ll bet Hitoshi Dan calls them plants because there isn’t a GalLing’ word that covers them. don’t know of any.

I

“Take the drunken dabblers, for instance—they grow in the middle of a fast-running stream and convert the energy of the water into electricity and use that for sugar conversion, cell-building, and so on! As common a weed as flashgrass has its own biological piezoelectric cells and uses wind power as an energy source.”

“So that’s why it’s so thick in the vicinity of the hangar,” Tocohl said.

“Right,” said the Smith, “flashgrass gets on with daisy-clippers like… you and Om im.”

Tocohl grinned at the analogy. Om im said, matter-of-factly, “I’m the windy one.”

With a chuckle and a sidelong glance at Kejesli, John the Smith went on. “All due deference to you, Captain, but I wish we’d put the camp beside a stand of lightning rods, just for the show.”

“The tall black spines,” asked Tocohl, “I’ve only seen them from a distance. I admit the show’s spectacular, but I side with the captain on this one—I’m not sure I’d want to be that close, either.”

“Ah,” said the Smith, “but they really are lightning rods. That’s the beauty of the thing. They are that tall purposefully to catch the lightning they use for cell-building, energy, reproduction. They also channel the lightning’s energy to the shorter, younger shoots in the stand; any excess beyond that, they bleed harmlessly into the ground.”

In his enthusiasm, he rose from his chair to lean across the table, blind-siding Om im once more.

This time was not as threatening from the Bluesippan’s point of view, for both of the Sobolli’s hands came down flat on the table. All to emphasize the authority of his conclusion…

“On this planet,” John the Smith said, “the safest place to be during a thunderstorm is in a grove of lightning rods.”

Tocohl inclined her head to the left to acknowledge. John the Smith eased back into his chair,
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adding, “That’s theoretically speaking. Nobody’s tried it, you understand, and I certainly wouldn’t advise you to experiment.”

Feeling it best to acknowledge that as well, Tocohl once again tilted her head left. “Don’t worry,” she said, “I don’t plan to.” She reached for her cup of winter-flame, found it empty, set it back down.

“Mine too,” said John the Smith. “Refill?” A rumble of thunder drowned out her response but, reacting to the tilt of her head, he gathered both cups and headed for the dispenser.

Most of the other surveyors stood in small knots at various corners of the room, some in highly animated conversation. For the moment, John the Smith was alone at the dispenser.

Tocohl said, “Excuse me, Captain,” and rose. Motioning Om im to stay put, she strode across to join the Smith.

Quite deliberately, she came up on his left side, “outranking” him. In this matter, she was fully confident she deserved the position. Her spoken Sobolli was not the best, but it was more than adequate to make her point. “A word in your ear, John,” she said, taking her cup nonchalantly from him. “High status to a Bluesippan is the reverse of yours. If you continue in this fashion, Om im will consider you a groveler of the worst sort, completely beneath contempt.”

His upturned face went white. “Are you sure?”

“As sure as I’m standing here,” she said. The reference to her high-status position was quite sufficient to reinforce her information.

“I didn’t know… !”

“Neither did your team’s chamfer. You’re hardly to be blamed for that. It’s not your area of expertise.”

“What should I do?”

“Approach him from the other side. Start now; you’ve a lot of damage to your image to repair.”

“Thanks, I will.”

RUTHFULLY, LAYLI-LAYLI

,” Timosie Megeve urged, “do you really think the sprookjes murdered Oloitokitok?” Responding to her gesture, he touched the cadaver with obvious reluctance, grasped it by the shoulders, and helped her roll it into a prone position. He rubbed his hands against his thighs. “Isn’t it more likely that he just blundered into an Eilo’s-kiss or was hit by lightning?”