Rediscovery (18 page)

Good whiskey, too.” He took a healthy swig of it. “Fine for medicinal use—or better, for conviviality.”

“And yet I don’t see anyone getting drunk,” Aurora commented in a low voice,

looking around her. “This seems to be a culture with substantial social restraints. Evans, I suspect we should be careful about how much we drink and how we act; we don’t want to give them the idea that Terrans are likely to lose control. Especially if they don’t think of themselves as connected to us in any way. The cultures where people don’t get drunk in public put a strong value on social control.”

Evans grinned, “No fear, I’m not stupid enough to get drunk.”

Yet,
Ysaye added to herself. She had seen too much of Evans’ past behavior to put too much faith in his self control.

Evans continued, blithely ignoring Aurora’s skeptical expression. “At least I’ve got a handle on what I can concentrate on—if these people are from a Lost Ship, it’s fairly obvious that whatever they can eat or ingest, the rest of us can, too. So what I’ll be doing here is to find out what use they make out of the various plants they have—like the trees I saw with the pods. If they can distill alcohol, they can distill other things, and they’ve probably got a whole pharmacy of native-made drugs. This planet could be a good source for alkaloids, resins, medicinals, various recreational drugs—”

Aurora made a face. “So as we all expected, you’re already planning out how to

exploit this situation, and this place.”

Evans looked at her as if he could not figure out why she was objecting. “Why

not? That’s what planets are for, and once we open this place up and show these folks all the things we can sell them, they’ll want the maximum number of exports to buy things with.”

“There will be plenty of that with the kind of music they have,” Elizabeth said, indicating the minstrels who had begun to play again. “The instruments are very

sophisticated, even if they are mostly variations on guitars and harps. If they can play them, so can an off-worlder.”

“But all hand-made,” Britton commented. “Not an electronic instrument among

them, and there’s certainly no sign that they have electricity here. But no brass instruments or even reeds.”

“We already knew the planet was metal-poor,” Elizabeth protested, obviously

feeling a need to say something. “While, as for electronics, if we’re going to export recordings, the collectors may simply prefer the sound of natural acoustic instruments.

Some people do.”

MacAran looked around the hall again, and smiled. “Commander Britton, these

people are obviously not going to be making and using synthesizers. I doubt they’d be able to reproduce a vacuum tube, much less anything more sophisticated than that.”

Elizabeth’s attention had wandered back to the musicians. “I wonder if they play any music for dancing; a society’s dances are frequently its society in miniature. Right now, though, I’ll study anything they’ll show us.”

“What about their language, Lorne?” MacAran asked David. “You and Elizabeth

seem to be picking it up amazingly quickly. Why is that?”

His jaw got progressively tighter as David tried to explain, as Ysaye had known it would.

“And you really believe all that stuff about telepathy?” MacAran asked.

David seemed bewildered, and Ysaye cursed him for not picking up the hints of

this earlier. “How can I disbelieve it, sir? It just happened—and to me.”

“Do you think they are entirely human?” Britton asked, suddenly. “Have you

noticed that a few of them have six fingers on both hands?”

“That’s known to be a common human variation,” Aurora answered, obviously

glad to have something to contribute. This came within the field of her professional expertise, after all. “Some families of Basques have had it for generations. It’s one of the most-studied genetic variations among the original Terrans. A strain of Basque ancestry

—and there were a couple of Basques on that lost ship, or a cross with—” she paused, thinking. “It might be a pro-survival evolution in a society where handicrafts and music are highly valued; watch the fingering on that fellow with the big guitar. They don’t all have it, though.”

“No. That man who’s our host—if your translation or so-called ‘telepathy’ is on

track—has only five, but the very tall man who was with him has six. Now I could well believe he’s not all human,” MacAran said, his eyes seeking out Kadarin where he stood watching the others. “There’s a strange look to him, like some kind of wild animal. I’d be interested to get a look at his family tree.”

“There’s never been a nonhuman race known to be cross-fertile with humans,”

Aurora said firmly. “It just can’t happen. The genes can’t be compatible.”

“Not yet, you mean,” Britton commented. “Wouldn’t it be something if we found

one.”

“And you think telepathy is unlikely?” Elizabeth protested, angrily. “You

postulate a nonhuman race that could interbreed with humans, and you think
I’m
given to fantasizing? Remember, sir, I was able to talk to our host. Maybe you have a better explanation for how?”

She flushed when Britton stared at her skeptically, then, carefully not answering, he moved away and went to study one of the instruments. Elizabeth followed, taking refuge in her beloved hobby. The musician handed it to her; Elizabeth examined it, struck a note or two and began to play and sing one of the oldest Gaelic folk songs she knew. After a minute the musician, smiling a smile that nearly split his face in two, joined in.

“Universal language,” commented Britton. “And there is your answer.”

“Not telepathy?” David asked.

“Come on, David. There could be other explanations besides your own personal

hobby-horse,” Evans said scornfully. “Granted, I don’t know all the new electronic devices—”

Suddenly Ysaye felt an enormous revulsion for Evans. She said, “I don’t know

absolutely all of them either, but I know what happened. And I simply don’t think these people are capable of creating electronics that we can’t detect! I don’t think they’re capable of creating electronics at all! What’s the matter, do you think they’re putting all of this on for us, to trick us into thinking they’re low-tech? Don’t you believe anything you can’t see or hear?”

“Damn little,” Evans answered, cynically. “And I wouldn’t put tricking us with a low-tech act past them. Look, here’s someone new. What’s this?”

Ysaye turned toward the entrance, following Evans’ gaze. Two ladies, richly

dressed, had entered the room. One was a girl who seemed hardly out of her teens, who bore a strong resemblance to Kermiac; the other was much taller than many of the men, with masses of very fair fine hair and large compelling eyes of a most unusual gold color. It struck Ysaye that she looked even less human than Kadarin. They joined Kermiac where he stood, and after a moment he beckoned to the Terrans.

“My lady Felicia,” he said, “and her companion, my sister Mariel.”

Mariel seemed just an ordinary girl, although her face was both handsome and

intelligent. But Ysaye, from her first look at the one he had called Felicia, thought, as MacAran had said about Kadarin,
I’d like to get a look at her family tree.
Felicia was unusually tall and slender almost to emaciation; she had those strange eyes, and six fingers on each of the long slender hands. Even discounting stories of nonhumans, Felicia did not look quite human. There was something eerie, almost birdlike, in the golden eyes.

What are you?
Ysaye wondered silently. Those strange eyes were bent on

Elizabeth, who was joining in the songs. The musicians were going from song to song now, trying to find some she did not know. Elizabeth was evidently enjoying the game, for the moment forgetting her distress.

Music was a universal language, right enough.

Felicia listened for a time, then went over to the musicians, and stood there,

listening and evidently asking Elizabeth something, but obviously not in words. Ysaye felt curious; she was perhaps Elizabeth’s best female friend on the ship, and she had shared in the apparent telepathic contact with Kermiac, but she could not “hear” what was going on now. What were they saying to each other? She was too well-mannered to try and join in, and after several minutes, Felicia, her curiosity apparently satisfied for the moment, turned away, and went out of the room.

Elizabeth joined Ysaye, and they went to get themselves a drink at the long table.

Ysaye asked, “What did she want?”

Elizabeth was flushed and relaxed-looking, and it seemed to Ysaye as if she fit in
here
better than she ever had on the ship. “Felicia? I think she wanted to make sure that Kermiac hadn’t made a pass at either of us. Between ourselves, I wouldn’t be surprised if the man’s a womanizer; he has all the marks of it. I could tell her honestly Kermiac hadn’t said a word to me he couldn’t repeat in front of my mother. You might be a lot too exotic for him, but you never can tell. Anyhow, I’d think Felicia is pretty exotic myself, so maybe he has a taste for exotics.”

Ysaye laughed; Elizabeth seemed to have forgotten—or dismissed—MacAran

and Britton’s discounting of her telepathy. Or perhaps she had decided that it didn’t matter; that she would continue to play translator as long as they needed her, and let them make up whatever ridiculously convoluted explanation they had to in order to convince themselves that telepathy was not the way Elizabeth was handling the

problem. A reasonable attitude; it really
didn’t
matter what the Commanders believed, as long as the job got done.

Now, if they could just convince Kermiac that they all weren’t escapees from a

mental hospital…“Relax, Elizabeth; nobody ever makes passes at me. I don’t invite them.”

“Or you honestly don’t notice them when they happen,” Elizabeth teased.

“Whatever,” Ysaye said lightly. “I don’t play those games. And I shouldn’t think he’d say anything offensive anyhow, while he’s depending on us for communication. If he bothers you, tell him you’re betrothed to David.”

Elizabeth’s enthusiasm overflowed.

“It’s so exciting for David and me, after all these years never knowing if telepathy can be real outside ourselves—”

“To find a world where it’s accepted as commonplace. Felicia at least seemed to

take it entirely for granted,” Ysaye murmured. “Well, if they’re reading our minds—

maybe we don’t need to worry too much about misunderstandings. If they can tell right away what’s behind everything we say, it might help communication. There isn’t the possibility for mistranslation, at any rate. But it would certainly make diplomacy difficult.”

“True enough,” Elizabeth said, then her face clouded. “But it’s possible that this world will be declared off-limits and closed. After all, it’s a pre-industrial culture.”

“Can they do that, if it’s a Lost Colony and the people are really all Terrans?”

Ysaye wondered. “I don’t believe there’s any precedent for this situation.”

“I think they can, if the consensus is that they need protection,” Elizabeth said, hesitantly. “I don’t know of any legal precedent. I don’t think there’s ever been a case like this before. But Evans is already considering what this planet could be good for; how to exploit it best. Somehow I don’t think these people are ready for that.”

“I heard him, too, but it’s not as if they were simple-minded folk, or a race that wouldn’t be capable of defending themselves from something they didn’t want,” Ysaye said. “There must be some trace of their Terran heritage—and please remember that if they’re descended from Scots, there’s a strong tradition of shrewd traders and judicial advocates among them, not to mention a good touch of larceny.” She smiled at

Elizabeth. “Have you appointed yourself their unofficial protector, then?”

“Maybe, if the alternative is to let somebody like Evans have his way with them.”

Elizabeth frowned unhappily. “David says that at the university Evans majored in botany and minored in recreational pharmacology—and I’m not at all sure he was

joking. I hope we can get the personnel from the ship down here soon, though God alone knows what will happen then.”

Ysaye shrugged. “Let’s just take it one step at a time,” she suggested. “We have our hands full with convincing Lord Kermiac that we aren’t lunatics, Commander

MacAran that you haven’t been hallucinating these translations, and Commander Britton that you haven’t taken a bump on the head that makes you think you’re telepathic.”

“But—” Elizabeth protested.

“Never mind that you
are,”
Ysaye said, “If he doesn’t believe it, he won’t trust you. So let him come up with an explanation that satisfies him, and don’t argue with him.”

“The lie that will work being better than the truth that isn’t believed?” Elizabeth replied with a sigh. “All right. I don’t like it, but all right.” She looked broodingly at the musicians. “But it doesn’t seem right, that the very basis of our understanding with these people is mixed with a lie. It just feels—wrong. As if—”

“What?” Ysaye prompted.

“As if something bad was going to come of it,” Elizabeth said, and shivered.

The day dawned bright and clear, and blessedly free of snow. Ysaye, awake at

dawn as usual since their arrival, watched the great red sun coming up behind a line of snow-laden trees from the single, tiny window in the guest room where she—and

Elizabeth and Aurora—had spent their nights for more than a week now. A movement at the far edge of the trail caught her eye—a line of riders approaching the castle gates below. They rode under a banner, blue and silver with a device she could not make out.

Some of the riders, who so far as she could tell were all men, rode horses, or something so like them she could not tell the difference, while others rode heavy-set antlered beasts not unlike deer.

Ysaye had never seen live horses before; they were a toy for the rich and

powerful; she was completely fascinated by them, by the way they moved, their slow, deliberate steps through the snow, hardly faster than a human could walk, and the way their complicated harness was put together. She watched them for a time, wondering how someone could afford so
many
horses—thinking how slow and tedious a long journey would be on something so limited—then coming to her senses, and thinking that of course the attitude toward horses would be different on a world where they were the most commonplace means of transportation. It was beginning to look as if that were the case here. But surely, that first night, Kermiac had spoken of gliders?