Robert Silverberg - The Shadow of Wings

Revulsion dizzied him. He forced himself to wrap his arms around the barrel of a body while the wings blanketed him, and they stood that way for a moment, locked in a tight embrace.

At length the alien released him. “Now we are friends. It is only the beginning of a long and fruitful relationship between our peoples. I hope to speak with you again before long.”

It was a dismissal. On watery legs Donaldson tottered forward toward the opening airlock, pausing only to mutter a word of farewell before he stumbled through and out into the arms of the waiting men outside.

“Well?” Caldwell demanded. “What happened? Did you swear brotherhood?”

“Yes,” Donaldson said wearily. “I swore.” The stench of the alien clung to him, sweet in his nostrils. It was as though throbbing wings still enfolded him. “I’m leaving now,” he said. “I still have a little of my vacation left. I want to take it.”

He gulped a drink that someone handed him. He was shaking and gray-faced, but the effect of the embrace was wearing off. Only an irrational phobia, he told himself. I shouldn’t be reacting this way.

But already he was beginning to forget the embrace of the Kethlani, and the rationalization did him no good. A new and more dreadful thought was beginning to develop within him.

He was the only Terrestrial expert on Kethlani B, too—the Thygnor tongue. And some day, perhaps soon, the Thygnor were going to come to Earth, and Caldwell was going to impress him into service as an interpreter again.

He wondered how the toad people pledged eternal brotherhood.