A World of Difference Read online

  The animal let out a low, growling squall, almost what. the pilot would have expected from an angry leopard. The krong did not charge at once, though. It slowly sidled forward. It kept more eyestalks on Tolmasov than on Fralk. Minervans it knew; he was an unknown quantity.

  Its cry rose to a shriek. Even if Tolmasov did not, Fralk knew what that meant. “Run!” he shouted. “Here it comes!”

  The krong’s first bound showed it was faster than a Minervan. It went straight after Fralk. Either it had decided Tolmasov was not dangerous or it hoped to deal with him after it had slain the more familiar prey.

  The bark of the AKT4 rose above the krong’s screams. As the first bullets slammed into it, the animal changed direction with the agility of most Minervan beasts. It rushed at its new tormentor. Tolmasov fired in short bursts, watched blood and tissue spray from the wounds he made. He was wishing for something heavier than a Kalashnikov-say, an anti-tank missile when, less than five meters from him, the krong went down at last.

  Fralk had stopped fleeing as soon as he saw the krong was no longer after him. Now he slowly came back toward Tolmasov and the dead beast. His eyestalks kept shifting from it to the Russian and back again, as if he could not choose which was more important to look at. He was still bright blue.

  “More krongii around?” Tolmasov demanded. He was trying to figure out how many rounds were left in his magazine and swearing at himself for not carrying a spare.

  But Fralk answered, “No. They hunt alone.” He spoke his own language; he was still too rattled to use Russian. Several of his eyes went toward the krong again. “You killed it.” Green began to take the place of blue on his skin.

  “Da,” Tolmasov said shakily. He was doing his best not to think about how close the krong had come to making it mutual. Big game hunting, which he had always slighted, suddenly looked a lot more like work.

  “You killed it,” Fralk repeated. Now his eyestalks turned toward the pilot-or rather, Tolmasov saw in a moment, toward his Kalashnikov. The Minervan said, still in his own speech, “You spoke of this weapon before. I am sorry, but I have forgotten its name.”

  “Firearm,” Tolmasov supplied automatically. “Rifle, to be exact.”

  “Rifle. Spasebo. “Fralk was pretty much himself again, if he could remember to say thank you in Russian. He went on in that language. “What we have to give you so you give us rifle? You say once firearms more strong than ax, hammer. Now see much more strong. What we give, to get rifle?”

  Damnation, Tolmasov thought. So far as he knew, none of the Russians had ever fired a shot where the locals could hear it-Shota and Valery met their krong away from what passed for civilization here. But now Fralk knew what bullets could do… Sure enough, he was staring with four eyes at the chewed up carcass by his feet. “What we give, to get rifle?” he said again.

  “Fralk, I am sorry, but I do not think we can sell you a rifle,” Tolmasov said.

  “Why? Only want to use rifle on Omalo. Fill Omalo full of holes, like krong here full of holes.”

  Tolmasov sighed. “Fralk, I told you before that there are other humans on the Omalo side of the canyon. If you used a rifle to fight the Omalo, you might also hurt or kill one of these other humans. That could bring their domain and ours to war, and in our homelands we have weapons much, much worse than rifles.” We’ve used some of them on each other, too, he thought, and as much by luck as anything else, not the worst ones.

  “What if other humans give Omalo rifles, fill us full of holes?” the Minervan asked. “You leave us so we not fight back?”

  The pilot frowned. “I will find out,” he promised. Fralk had asked before whether the Americans would give firearms to the Minervans east of Jotun Canyon. That had been before he knew what bullets could do, though. Now he was really worried. Tolmasov still could not imagine Emmett Bragg being so stupid as to arm the natives with weapons dangerous to humans, but he could not overlook the possibility, either. Helping the Skarmer would not look good back on Earth, but neither would standing idly by while they got slaughtered.

  Tolmasov felt the wish that came over every commander now and then, the wish to be safely back in the ranks again, with nothing to worry about and nothing to do but what somebody else told him to do. As every commander must, he strangled that wish in its cradle.

  He would have had scant time to indulge it in any case, for Fralk was going on in a mixture of Russian and the Skarmer tongue. “We will give you whatever you want if you give us one of these rifles to take across the gorge and use against the Omalo. Anything! No price could be too great!” The Minervan abruptly stopped, realizing no sensible merchant said things like that.

  “Fralk, if I gave a rifle to your people, I would not only have to worry about your hurting the humans east of the canyon; I would also fear for the safety of my own crew here.” Tolmasov spoke first in Russian, then as best he could in Fralk’s language he needed the Minervan to understand.

  “Nyet, Sergei Konstantinovich, nyet,” Fralk said urgently. “Never hurt you-you our friends. Give you-“ He used a Skarmer word the pilot could not follow; Tolmasov raised a hand to show that. “Males you keep so you hurt them if we do any bad thing to you,” Fralk explained.

  “Ah. Hostages.” Tolmasov gave him the Russian word.

  “Hostages,” Fralk repeated. “Thank you. Yes, I am sure Hogram would agree to give you hostages”-he politely dropped the human term into a sentence in his own tongue-“so you could trust us with one of your rifles.”

  Tolmasov knew he ought to say no and walk away. What the Minervans did to each other was their business. If humans meddled in it, only trouble would result. But he didn’t know what the Americans had done on their side of Jotun Canyon, and Fralk was so eager. He would have been, too, in the Minervan’s place.

  The pilot decided to temporize. “I talk with my domain masters,” he said. “If they say yes, then we trade rifle. If no, we cannot.” He was confident even the blockheads back in Moscow had better sense than to authorize letting the natives get their three-fingered hands on an AKT4.

  From the way Fralk’s appendages were quivering, he was confident Tolmasov had in effect just said yes. “Thank you, Sergei Konstantinovich! We would have beaten the Omalo anyhow. Now we will surely smash them-they will widen themselves before us forevermore.”

  “Hmm,” was all Tolmasov said. Fralk made a more enthusiastic would-be conqueror than he quite liked. Maybe changing the subject would calm the Minervan down. Tolmasov pointed at the krong’s carcass. “We leave this here?”

  “Yes, I suppose so-the meat is vile,” Fralk answered. “Long ago there was a bounty on their claws, but since none has been seen this near town in a good many years, I suppose that offer has melted.” He did not want to talk about the krong. He wanted to talk about Tolmasov’s rifle. “From how far away can it kill?”

  “Farther than you can throw a stone,” the pilot answered. He did not want to tell Fralk the Kalashnikov was accurate out to three or four hundred meters and could kill from a kilometer away if a round happened to hit.

  What he did say was plenty. “Wonderful!” Fralk exclaimed. “Wonderful!” Tolmasov had never heard a Minervan burbling before. “Hogram will be as excited as I am at the prospect of doing away with the wretched Omalo while at the same time keeping our males safe.”

  “Remember what I say,” Tolmasov warned him. ‘.’My domain masters may not let us sell you rifle. They say no, we not sell.” He started walking away from the dead krong, back toward Hogram’s town. Maybe if Fralk could not see the beast anymore, he would stop being so heated not really the right word to apply to a Minervan, the pilot thought-about what the Kalashnikov could do.

  No such luck. The Minervan went right on babbling until Tolmasov rudely left him outside the humans’ tent and went in alone. Oleg Lopatin looked up from the radio handset he was checking. “I’ve seen you looking happier, Sergei Konstantinovich,” he said.

  Tolmasov was so frazzled, he did not even mind
unburdening himself to the KGB man. “I almost wish I’d let the miserable creature eat us,” he finished. “That might have ended up doing the mission less harm than letting the locals find out about firearms.”

  “Possibly not, Comrade Colonel,” Lopatin said. Tolmasov grew alert; Lopatin only used formal address when he had something on his mind. “Would it not accord well with Marxist-Leninist principles to render fraternal assistance to this advanced society in its struggle against the oppressive feudal aristocrats on the eastern side of Jotun Canyon? The dialectic of history supports the Skarmer; how can we not do the same?”

  “Two good reasons: This is Minerva, not Earth; and there are people on the other side of the canyon. I have more loyalty to my own kind than I do to dialectical materialism.” The moment the words were out of his mouth, Tolmasov knew he had said too much. And words were never unsayable, not to a chekist.

  But Lopatin’s response was mild. “Marxist-Leninist principles hold universally, Sergei Konstantinovich. You know that as well as I. Tell me, what had you planned to do about Fralk’s request?”

  “Nothing,” Tolmasov answered honestly. “Or rather, say I had consulted with Moscow and they told me he could not have his rifle. A little discreet checking with Bragg will let me make sure he isn’t giving the Omalo firearms.”

  “Yes, by all means check with Bragg,” Lopatin said. “But perhaps you also really should ask Moscow about this question. Then there can be no room for misunderstanding. This is only a suggestion, of course.”

  But it wasn’t only a suggestion, as Tolmasov knew. That was what he got for leaving himself open to the KGB man. “Let me talk with Bragg first,” the pilot said, dickering now. “If I have his clear assurance that he is not giving guns to the locals, a decision from Moscow is unnecessary. Otherwise-”

  “Good enough,” Lopatin said, to Tolmasov’s surprise and relief. “Call now, why don’t you? Even I will admit, Sergei Konstantinovich, that our colleagues back on Earth are not always as timely as they might be. The longer the opportunity we give them, the better.”

  He said that with the air of a man making a great concession, perhaps so he could act as if he were repaying Tolmasov for his slip of a few minutes before. But the pilot, like most men on the frontier, already had a low opinion of the alleged experts back home. Not only were they slow in making up their minds, they were sadly disconnected from the reality he was living. That scheme for peace talks between Hogram and the eastern chieftain, for instance… Tolmasov could have told them-did tell them-it was a waste of time. They had forced him to go ahead with it anyway and proven him right.

  So who knew what Moscow would instruct now? They might well order him to let the Minervans have an AKT4. That would leave the whole expedition vulnerable in a way it had not been before. As a soldier, he hated the idea of making himself more vulnerable.

  Well, odds were Bragg would bail him out, he thought as he went over to the radio. The American mission commander was an enemy, but never a stupid one. He had to have better sense than to go arming the natives. Tolmasov turned a dial to get the frequency he needed. “Soviet Minerva base calling Athena,” he said in English.

  The answer came promptly enough, in Russian. “Athena here, Sergei Konstantinovich.” A woman’s voice, more heavily accented than his when speaking her language. “Pat Marquard here.”

  “Hello, Patricia Grigorovna. I need to ask a question of Brigadier Bragg, if I may.”

  “Wait, please,” she said. He did, but not long. Bragg came on the other end of the hookup.

  “Hello, Sergei Konstantinovich. Not your usual time for a call. What’s up?”

  The shrill American flavor he gave his words and the lazy way he drawled them out should have made him sound like a fool when he spoke Russian. Tolmasov wished they did. Unfortunately, he could not imagine Bragg sounding like a fool no matter what language he used.

  Swallowing a sigh, the colonel got on with it. “I was, ah, wondering, Brigadier, whether you’ve traded any firearms to the Minervans on your side of Jotun Canyon.” Only the faint pop of static came from the circuit. “Brigadier Bragg?” Tolmasov said at last.

  “I’m here,” Bragg answered at once. “Why do you want to know?” Hard suspicion filled his voice.

  Because if you haven’t gone and done something idiotic, then there’s no chance I’ll have to, either, Tolmasov wanted to say. He could not, not with a Soviet tape recorder and an American one preserving his every word. “I was curious about how they’ve adapted to them,” he replied instead. “Not what the natives are used to at all, don’t you know?”

  “No, I don’t,” Bragg said flatly. “I don’t believe you, either, Sergei Konstantinovich. You sound more like someone sniffing around to find out what his little friends will be up against if they manage to get across the canyon. And that, Comrade Colonel”-the contempt with which he loaded Tolmasov’s rank was stinging-”is exactly none of your damned business. Athena out.”

  Tolmasov found himself staring in numb dismay at a silent microphone. He made himself look up from it and saw Oleg Lopatin aiming his best I-told-you-so smirk at him. “Moscow,” the KGB man said.

  “Moscow,” Tolmasov echoed dully.

  “You should have seen it, clanfather!” Fralk exulted. “The krong was nearly on me, but then the “rifle”-he pronounced the human word with care-”roared louder than half an eighteen of klongii and put holes in it. It turned on Sergei, but he made the rifle roar again and again, till the krong fell over, dead.”

  “A krong, so close to town?” Hogram’s fingers opened and closed in distress. “I’ll send out some males, to make sure none of its mates can drop her buds anywhere near here. I thought we’d hunted them out long ago. I’m glad you weren’t hurt, eldest of eldest.”

  Not an eighteenth so glad as I am, Fralk thought. But it was not like Hogram to miss the main point so completely. “Aye, send out the hunters, clanfather,” Fralk said, “but get one of those rifles for us, no matter what it costs. If it fills a krong full of holes, think what it would do to the Omalo.”

  “Hmm. I suppose so, yes. The humans are careful with them, aren’t they? They never left one lying around so we could, ah, borrow it to see how it works. That always made me think the things were valuable;”

  “Valuable?” The younger male was still so excited, he could hardly contain himself. “Clanfather, listen to me: Sergei said that if his own domain masters refused his permission, he could not yield one to us no matter what we paid for it.” “Did he?”

  That piqued Hogram’s interest, Fralk thought. “He did. He also said the humans on the other side of Ervis Gorge may have these firearms for the Omalo.”

  “Did he?” Now Hogram was roused all right, Fralk thought.

  “And these humans-our humans-would refuse them to us?”

  “No matter what we paid,” Fralk agreed.

  “The humans take our goods, aye, but I have not seen them go wild over anything, nor use it as we use the tools and trinkets we get from them,” Hogram said. “That says to me they are what they claim, explorers seeing the kinds of things we have rather than merchants in the same sense as ourselves.”

  Fralk had not worked that through for himself, but it made sense. Hogram’s gift for pointing an eyestalk toward such subtle points had helped lift his clan to the status it enjoyed among the Skarmer these days. “If they do not truly need anything we have, it weakens us,” Fralk remarked. “How can we make them reach out with the arm that is turned in the direction best for us?”

  “They have only two arms apiece, but they turn them every which way,” Hogram said. “Were they not so strange in seeming, I would take them for spies. If I were to order them to stay in their own tent and their skyboat until they do as we desire, I think that might persuade them to obey. After all, eldest of eldest, what good are explorers who are not allowed to explore?”

  “None.” Quite without calculation, Fralk widened himself before Hogram. The domain master’s gift
for subterfuge had not diminished as his years grew long. It grew with them instead, until even creatures as weird as the humans held few mysteries for him. Fralk was used to believing his own machinations hidden from Hogram. Suddenly he suspected that what he had imagined to be a wall of solid earth was in fact but a thin pane of clear ice.

  A motion of Hogram’s arms recalled the younger male to himself. “You said our humans will be talking with those on the other side of Ervis Gorge, and with their own domain masters?”

  “Yes, clanfather.” Fralk slowly resumed his usual height. “That will take some time. Let’s give them, oh, half an eighteen of days. If after that time they still refuse to sell us one of these what-ever-they-call-thems, we will find out how they enjoy exploring the hot, muddy inside of that gaudy orange tent-the cursed thing reminds me of the color a presap mate takes on when it’s ripe for budding.”

  “It is ugly, isn’t it?” Fralk’s eyestalks quivered a little.

  “Hideous is a better word.” Hogram changed the subject.

  “The boats are now ready, I take it?”

  “Yes, clanfather.” Fralk never would have come where Hogram’s eyestalks could spy him were that not so. “We have the boats, we have the males to fill them. Now we are only waiting for the waters to grow calmer. As you yourself said, we do not want accidents while we are crossing the gorge.” He knew there would be accidents anyway; if they waited for the waters in Ervis Gorge to be completely calm, they would wait until the flood had drained away.

  The odor of resignation Hogram exuded said he knew the same thing. The domain master asked a different question. “How will our males react to being in these boats on the water? They will never have done anything like that before. If they are all blue with fright when they get across, they will prove nothing but prey for the Omalo.”

  “Clanfather, I think I am more afraid of Juksal than I could be of any water,” Fralk blurted. This time Hogram’s eyestalks wiggled, and not a little. “Laugh all you like,” the younger male went on, “but I don’t think I’m the only male who feels that way.”