A World of Difference Read online

  He could only see if he was right, though, after Lamra was dead. He hated the idea of that, more than he had for any other mate he had known. Air hissed out through his breathing pores. Even without the humans, he would have had plenty to keep his eyestalks all knotted up.

  “The boats are coming along excellently, clanfather,” Fralk told Hogram. “We have plenty of workers to put frames together and stretch hides over them. As you foretold, the prospect of work has drawn males from many straggling farms.” A little flattery never hurt, Fralk thought, especially when what he was saying also happened to be true.

  Hogram, though, had been hearing-and discounting-flattery longer than Fralk had been alive. “By the time Ervis Gorge fills, I presume we will have made enough boats to send across as many males as we have planned.”

  “Yes,” Fralk said confidently. Again, he was telling the truth-no point to lying about something Hogram could so easily check, and something where failure would make itself so obvious come the day.

  “Good.” Hogram’s voice was dry. Fralk had to remind himself that the domain master was smart enough to think along with him. After a pause perhaps intended to let the younger male remember just that, Hogram went on, “Will the cursed things actually stay on top of the water once our males are in them?”

  “Float, you mean?” Fralk brought out the Lanuam technical term as if it belonged in his mouth; he could see he had impressed his overlord. He beckoned with the arm opposite Hogram and called, “Panjand, Iverc! Bring up the basin and model. I’m ready to show them to the domain master now.”

  The two males slowly came up from the back of Hogram’s reception hall. They carried the heavy stone basin between them, holding on with three arms apiece. One of Iverc’s hands slipped. The basin tilted until he could regain his grip. Water sloshed over the edge.

  “Ah,” Hogram said, extending another eyestalk toward the advancing males. “I’d wondered why they weren’t using a vessel made of ice. Now I see.” His eyestalks wiggled. “Put water in ice and you won’t keep either one long.”

  “No,” Fralk agreed, as respectfully as if Hogram had said something clever rather than coming out with a clich6. “Set it down here,” the younger male added when Panjand and Iverc brought the big stone bowl up to him.

  The two males widened themselves to do as he asked and stayed in the posture of respect until a wave from Hogram released them. In one of his free hands, Panjand was carrying a small boat. He passed it to Fralk.

  Fralk gently set it on the water. “You see, clanfather, it doesfloat. “ “So it does, by itself,” Hogram said. “But will it bear weight and still stay on top there?”

  The domain master might reject the fancy foreign word with which Fralk enjoyed showing off, but he knew what questions to ask. “lverc,” Fralk said.

  The male handed him the stickwork cage he had been holding in the hand away from Hogram’s eyes. A half-tame runnerpest scurried about inside. Fralk undid the lashings that held the cage closed. He reached in and picked up the runnerpest. Its tiny arms flailed at him, but it did not really try to claw.

  “The runnerpest’s weight, clanfather, is about the same in proportion to this small boat’s capacity as that of a load of our males will be to a fullsized boat,” Fralk said. He set the little animal down in the boat. The unfamiliar sensation of moving on water made the runnerpest chitter with terror but also made it freeze in place where Fralk had put it.

  Hogram peered at the laden boat with three eyes, turning another on Fralk. “Very interesting, eldest of eldest,” he said at last. “You seem to have most of the answers we need.” Coming from Hogram, that was highest praise.

  The runnerpest, of course, chose that exact moment to try running away instead of holding still. The boat overbalanced; water began pouring in. There was a fancy foreign word for what happened when something that had been floating abruptly ceased to do so. Fralk could not have thought of it to save his eyestalks. He stared in numb dismay as the runnerpest, all its appendages writhing frantically, went down through the water to the bottom of the stone bowl.

  As befitted his years, Hogram kept his self-possession. He pulled the runnerpest out of the basin and set it on the floor. It scuttled off with the speed that had given its kind their name. Fralk watched it go, wondering if his hopes were fleeing with it.

  “I presume our males will be instructed not to leap over the walls of their boats while crossing Ervis Gorge,” Hogram said drily.

  “What? Yes, clanfather. Certainly, clanfather!” Fralk realized he was babbling and did not care. The domain master’s sarcasm was a small enough price to pay for a botched demonstration; Hogram could have canceled the whole boatbuilding effort or put another male in charge. In his relief, Fralk missed something Hogram had said. He contritely widened himself. “I’m sorry?”

  “I was wondering, eldest of eldest, if the humans know anything about these boats. They’re such hot creatures that tricks with water should come as naturally to them as those with ice do to us.”

  “They have said one or two things, clanfather,” Fralk answered cautiously, “but as I am still only a budling in such matters myself, I am not certain how much help they can be. I also have not shown them the fullness of my ignorance, lest they demand more for what they know.”

  “Good enough,” Hogram said, and Fralk had to fight to keep from changing color in relief-he had dreaded that question and been sure Hogram would ask it. The domain master went on. “I was wise, it seems, to set you over both the building of the boats and dealing with the humans, if the two enterprises have the links they appear to.”

  “No male of your clan has ever doubted your wisdom,” Fralk said. That was true enough and politer than saying that no male- himself very much included-expected Hogram to go so much as a fingerclaw’s width against his own advantage.

  “Keep at it, then, eldest of eldest,” the domain master said. “Be sure I shall be watching with six eyes what you accomplish.”

  “The notice you grant me is more than I deserve.” Fralkwidened himself. He had already suspected that some of the males who helped build boats also passed word on to Hogram. Had he been domain master, he would have kept an eyestalk or two on that project himself. As he had thought a moment before, Hogram was too clever not to protect his interest so.

  After a few more polite exchanges, Fralk took his leave. A little while later, he unrolled a hide in front of one of the leading town merchants. Small red rectangles, each decorated with a white cross, spilled out.

  “And what are these?” asked the trader, whose name was Cutur.

  “Something new from the humans,” Fralk answered.

  “Look-an eighteen of tools in one-a knifeblade, a rasper, an awl…” He used a fingerclaw to pull each tiny claw out of the case as he named it. “And they are all of this hard shiny stone the humans use, see, not of ice, so they’re good winter and summer, but so small and light that no one will mind using them.”

  “Interesting-some, anyway.” Cutur never sounded more bored than at the start of a dicker.

  III

  This time, though, Fralk had the edge. He had gotten the humans to promise not to give out the little redcased tools through any other male. A similar promise from him to Cutur made the price the merchant paid hefty enough to suit him.

  Of course, a good part of that price would go back to the humans, in exchange for the little cylinders that kept some of their gadgets alive. Hogram would get a fair chunk himself, as was the domain master’s right. Even Fralk, though, had little about which to complain over what was left. Before long, he thought, he would be the richest male who was not a domain master throughout all the Skarmer lands.

  The humans, taken as a group, would not be much poorer, although Fralk was convinced he was cheating them outrageously. Their trade goods were not only unlike any that had ever come into the Skarmer domains but did things Fralk had never imagined tools doing. They could have demanded eighteen times as much for them as they got
.

  But as long as they stayed satisfied with perfectly ordinary local products in exchange for their unique ones, Fralk was not about to argue with them. No one held a knife to their eyestalks to make them deal as they did. And no one, Fralk thought, had to hold a knife to his eyestalks to make him turn a profit. None of the males sprung from Hogram’s buds was that kind of fool.

  Irv was at the control board when the ship-to-ship light went on. He picked up the mike. “Athena here, Levitt speaking,” he said in fairly good Russian. “Go ahead, Tsiolkovsky.”

  “Thank you so much, Irving Samuelovich. Colonel Tolmasov here. Be so good as to fetch Brigadier Bragg, if you please. What I have to say must be discussed at the command level.”

  “Hold, please.” Frowning a little, Levitt cut the mike. Tolmasov’s English always sounded starchy, but this was worse than usual. Irv hit the intercom switch; Bragg, he knew, was in his cabin, going over computer printouts. When the pilot answered, Levitt said, “Tolmasov’s calling-says he won’t talk with anyone but you. Something’s hit the fan, sounds like.”

  “Doesn’t it just?” As usual, Bragg sounded calm, unhurried. Irv was reasonably sure that behind his cool facade he had the same worries and fears as any other man, but if so, he did a hell of a job of hiding them. “Be right there,” Bragg finished. “Out.”

  Levitt opened the channel to Tsiolkovsky again. Tolmasov replied at once. “Sergei Konstantinovich, here is my commander,” the anthropologist said as Bragg came in and sat down beside him.

  “What do you have to say to me that you cannot tell my crew?” the pilot demanded. The blunt question sounded even ruder in Russian than it would have in English.

  “Brigadier Bragg, I am calling to convey to you a formal protest over your concealment of the true landing site of the Viking, and over your cynical exploitation of this concealed knowledge to contact the natives who encountered that spacecraft after it touched down.”

  “Protest all you like, Sergei Konstantinovich,” Bragg said. “We got new landing coordinates just a little before we set down-we had to recompute our burn to get down where the boys in Houston told us to.”

  “The new coordinates were contained in the coded message you received?”

  “You know better than to expect an answer to a question like that.”

  “Perhaps I do.” Tolmasov’s chuckle fell into place as if it had been included in stage directions. He went on reprovingly. “The cultured thing, Brigadier Bragg, would have been to share your new information with us. Your failure to do so naturally makes us doubt your cooperative spirit.”

  “The cultured thing, Sergei Konstantinovich, would have been to tell us the Minervans on your side of Jotun Canyon were thinking about mounting an invasion of this side.” Bragg’s voice went hard. “Since you didn’t bother doing that, I don’t see how you have any cause for complaint.” Silence stretched.

  “The natives here are not under our control, Brigadier Bragg,” Tolmasov said finally. “Whatever they intend, they had it in mind long before our arrival.”

  “I never said they didn’t. I only said it was uncultured not to warn us about it, which it is. Bragg out.” The mission commander broke the connection. He leaned back in his chair, pleased with himself.

  Irv Levitt did not blame him. “That hit Tolmasov where he lived. Call a Russian uncultured and then take away his chance to say anything back-”

  “Mmhmm.” Bragg steepled his fingertips. “Have to remember to thank Frank for picking up on that-it let me embarrass Tolmasov instead of the other way around. He ought to be about ready to chew nails.” The pilot blinked. “You know what, Irv? I wish I had a cigarette. I quit fifteen years ago, but the urge still comes back sometimes. Sneaks up on me, I guess.”

  Irv had a tough time imagining anything sneaking up on Emmett Bragg. Picturing him through a haze of tobacco smoke was much easier. No wonder, Levitt thought with one of those odd bursts of insight that are at once crazy and illuminating. Bragg looked like nothing so much as the original Marlboro Man.

  The mission commander got up and stretched. “That was fun, but I’m going back to work now.”

  “Off to paint a hammer and sickle under the window?” Irv asked innocently.

  Bragg snorted. “You know, I just might. Only trouble is, Sergei’s got hisself-himself-a Yankee star or two under his. Just stayin’ even with that one is nothing to be ashamed of.” He turned serious. “Them and us, we’ve been saying that about each other since the end of the Second World War now, and each usin’ the other to push himself along. And here we both are on Minerva. Not too shabby, is it?”

  He was gone before Irv came up with an answer. Even after a year, Bragg had depths that could take him by surprise.

  Lamra scratched herself in four places at once. The skin that stretched over her growing buds itched. Sarah pointed a picture-maker at her. It clicked. “Give me a picture of me, please?” Lamra asked. She held out the two hands that were not busy.

  “Not that kind of picture-maker,” Sarah said after Lamra had repeated herself two or three times.

  Embarrassed, Lamra pushed in her eyestalks. “That’s right. I forgot. The one that lets you give pictures right away voids them out of its bottom. This is the other kind, the one that holds them in.”

  “Yes, Lamra.” Pat stooped beside her. That made the mate nervous, the same way she had felt funny when Reatur widened himself to her. The human went on. “Other mates not see that. Some males not see that.”

  “I have eyes. Eyes are for seeing with.” Lamra shut all of them at once. Sure enough, the world went away. She opened them and it came back. Both of Sarah’s eyes were pointed at her. “How can you stand only seeing half of things?”

  Sarah’s body made the jerky motion that meant the human was not sure what to say. Finally Sarah answered, “Humans like this. No humans different-humans not think what different like.”

  “How sad,” Lamra said.

  The place where Sarah’s arms and body were joined jerked again. “Some ways you people not think what different like, too.”

  Lamra turned a third eyestalk toward the humans-this was the kind of talk she loved, and she got it too seldom. None of the other mates cared about it; even Reatur did not talk that way with her every time he visited the mates’ chambers. It was as if he had to remind himself to take her seriously, while Sarah always seemed to.

  “What could be different about us?” Lamra asked. “We’re only people, after all. People are just people, aren’t they?” Sarah did not say anything. “Tell me what’s different about us,” Lamra persisted. “Tell me. Tell me!” In her eagerness to find out what Sarah was talking about, she hopped up and down.

  “How you different?” Sarah said at last. Something had changed in the human’s voice. Lamra could hear that, but she did not know enough of humans to be sure what the change meant. Sarah hesitated again, then went on. “Lamra, you know what happens after-after you bud?”

  “After I bud, I’m over, of course,” Lamra answered. “Who ever heard of an old mate?”

  “Humans not like that. Not male, me-mate.” Sarah pointed at himself-no, herself, Lamra thought through roaring confusion. “I old-old like any other human. Mates-human mates- who, uh, bud not die then. Can live on.”

  “Live on?” From her tone, Lamra might have been talking about one of the three moons coming down from the sky and dancing in the fields. She did not so much disbelieve Sarah as find her words beyond comprehension. “Live on?” she repeated. “Who ever heard of an old mate?”

  The proverb helped anchor her to the familiar, the here and now. She had never needed such an anchor before-this was much stranger than Reatur’s turning all his eyes on her.

  “Who ever heard of humans?” Sarah asked. Lamra had no answer to that. The human-the human mate continued. “Because a thing is, does that mean it must be?” He-no, she- said that several different ways, working hard to get the meaning across to Lamra.

  Even so, it was a s
truggle. “Too hard,” Lamra complained. She hadn’t liked it when Reatur asked that sort of question, either.

  “All fight. Question not so hard: You want to have buds, live on after?”

  Sarah asked it as if it could only have one possible answer. Lamra did not see it so. “What would I do?” she wailed. “Who ever heard of an old mate?” This time the saying truly reflected how perplexed she was.

  “Not want to live on?” Sarah pressed. “Want to die like Biyal, put blood over whole floor?”

  Lamra had never really thought about not dying until the human raised the question in her mind. Now that she turned a couple of eyestalks on it, the prospect of spilling her blood out all over the floor did seem unpleasant if another choice was available. “Will you make my buds go away?” she asked. “I don’t think I want you to do that.”

  “Not know how,” Sarah said.

  “What will you do, then?”

  Sarah muttered something to himself-no, herself; Lamra would be a long time getting used to that-in her own language, then dipped her head to the mate in the human motion that meant the same as widening herself. After a moment, the human started talking people talk again. “You know fight question to ask.”

  Sarah sounded like Reatur, Lamra thought. The mate realized that was true in a couple of ways-Sarah’s voice was like a male’s. How could she be a mate? That whole tangle of eyestalks would just have to keep. “You didn’t answer me,” Lamra said accusingly.

  “Not know good answer.” Sarah’s sigh was just like a person’s. “Try to stop blood when buds fall from you. Not know how now. Not even know if able. Try, if you want.”

  “I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know.” Lamra again thought how much Sarah sounded like a male, both in the timbre of her voice and in the complex way her mind worked. That thought helped the mate find a reply at last. “Ask Reatur,” she said. “If Reatur says it’s all fight, then it’s all fight with me, too.”