Пол Андерсон - Orbit 1

Wystan glared — impassively, he hoped — at the little civ, because he did not know what he was going to do with the two when he got them back. Instinct in the form of the assessment that was — thank God! — always right directing him at the moment. His rational mind had very little to do with the orders he was issuing. Both groups were perfectly calm as two of the Liaison people returned.

The Leloc leader spoke to Mager and then gestured to his crew. Two more aliens departed precipitately.

“He says you are a Great Leader, sir,” Mager reported with obvious delight.

Agnes inquired, “Should we return the compliment — to show that we think he is a Great Leader, too? But we can’t spare anybody! At least, I couldn’t finger anybody.”

“Right, girl. We can’t, but we’d better. That’s what he’s waiting for.”

“You,” said Wystan, “and you. I do not know your relative merits. Random selection, I assure you. We will miss you, gentlemen, but — oh, hell, get some asleep!”

After the little diplomatic flurry, there was another wait. They all sat warily down again while Mager and the Leloc leader conferred further.

Tawmison yelled from the lock. “Boss, I want to come back in. Can I?”

Godwin risked his dignity to yell back. “This is not just fun and games, you know. It could cost you your life.”

“Sir,” screamed the draftsman, “I am a conscript no longer, but I do not think this is a good time to inform the warhawk of my decision. May I-”

“Protocol be damned,” called Godwin cheerfully. “You may. Hold on-” He turned to Agnes. “How do I get that monkey back in here without destroying their illusion that I am a Great Leader?”

She stood up, slowly evolving out of the ritual chair, and the Leloc leader immediately turned his attention from Mager and rose at the same tempo. She raised one finger and beckoned to the lock. The alien imitated her gesture, but to his rear, and Godwin watched while one alien and one human approached the center of the hall. The alien fell into converse with another alien opposite him — who had sat down the instant Agnes indicated she wanted to sit down again — but it seemed to Godwin that in spite of the violent episode that had just blown itself out, the two aliens were merely discussing the weather back in Ursa Minor, or old times, or alien baseball. There was no urgency in their exchange. They were talking because and only because he and Tawmison were talking. Balance, again and always.

He was beginning to get a fine feeling about dealing with these creatures: no rages and no disputes, given half a chance, but all the ritual in the world. He knew he could get along with them, now that there was communication.

The alien leader turned to him, and spoke.

“All Leloc-here?” said the Leloc leader hesitantly. “All? So?”

“He means are all Earthly Leloc like those two, sir,” said Mager, after a moment’s intense thought.

“Yesssss,” said the Leloc positively.

Agnes and Mager between them explained to the noble alien that the two boxing kangaroos were unusually talented specimens, but in all the Earth now there was very few left of the species, and they not much (short-memoried and short-lived, physically degenerate, speechless, dying out — not from illness, competition or mistreatment, but from sheer inability to survive) although under human protection.

“Protection?”

Wystan was not the genius at interpreting alien nuances that Mager was. In fact, he had fallen into the oldest of traps in dealing with aborigines or, he guessed, extraterrestrials. They all looked alike to him. The only way he could tell the leader from the others was by his position and by the black leatherlike apron he wore like a sporran, unique in both size and color.

But even his untrained ears could hear the irony in the alien question. He edged out of the group. He was still aching to see the map on the improvised chart table, before the aliens cleaned everything up. He found the Liaison map without any difficulty, and right beside it a gossamer scroll that looked so delicate he was afraid to touch it. It was in the event so heavy that his first reach of hesitant hands braced for a spiderweb merely abraded his fingertips. As he almost lifted it, on the second try, he saw that it was tridimensional in a now-you-see-it-now-you-don’t fashion. He gasped.

“Beautiful, isn’t it,” said Tawmison. He was not asking a question; he was stating a fact. “The boys were telling me about it. Those places that waver in and out are there, but in colors mostly not visible to our eyes. And then, the human eye being what it is, the mind keeps supplying the missing details in near-color, but with each ripple, the mind seems to think it made a mistake and moves the near-color up or down a shade. It’ll give you a bellyache if you stare at it long enough.”

Wystan tried again, and found that the evanescently exquisite map was only as heavy as an unabridged dictionary. He could lift it easily with both hands. They took the pair of maps, human and alien, back to the center of the hall.

An expectant silence greeted him. He pointed to the corresponding places on both maps and essayed a speech in pidgin.

“All are there. All Earth-Leloc are there. Go? Star-Leloc go there and see?”

“No,” said the Leloc leader unexpectedly. “War. War must here.”

“Godwin, sir,” cried Mager. “He’ll move if the bomber moves first. Threatener has to move, you see-”

“Two sideways and one forward, and then once around the maypole,” muttered Godwin. “Well, Harms is supposed to be here any minute.”

“And then the Leloc can move to capture him,” said Mager eagerly.

“What?” Godwin was remembering those two boxing kangaroos flat on the spaceship floor. “He is a human being, Mager.”

“A lunatic,” said Agnes crisply.

“It was planned for parley,” Wystan said, but he saw that Agnes had gone rigid. He adjusted his mind to going along with whatever her next dictum might be.

“Bomb-man here. Bomb-man Leloc capture.” Agnes pronounced the words with great deliberation and care, and Wystan stared at her. It was the first time he had ever heard of an assessment arriving in pidgin Leloc, but he would not put it past her.

Scarlet-faced and scarlet-uniformed, Exec Harms came through the lock. His military might was emphasized by his immediate staff, all wearing every manner of ancient sidearm. Wystan blinked. Five new Leloc, lugging their own sitz baths, filed in from the other side.

Mager had followed Agnes’ portentous pronouncement with several gestures so rapid that Wystan could not fathom them. All the aliens nodded their heavy heads and folded their little hands on their chests. Feeling a little hysterical, Wystan noticed for the first time that they could all move their ears independently.

“Are they convinced of their own degeneracy? Do they surrender?” said Harms in a voice made shrill by fear.

The Leloc cocked his head at Mager. “This is. . threatener?” He had the usual outlanders’ trouble with his “this” but everyone present understood him. Mager nodded. The Leloc launched himself at his challenger.

Exec Harms opened his mouth in an inarticulate bull roar, whether of frustration or of fear at being so close to the aliens, they never discovered.

Simultaneously a cloud of scent permeated the room, so acrid that Wystan gagged and a wave of coughing spread through the human contingent. “Hey,” said Mager. “They got the idea, all right. They got — look out, Harms!”

His aides were all fumbling with their swords and popguns. Godwin said, “Keep your hands off your weapons!” The Exec had just barely had time to draw himself up to his full height, coughing and sputtering, before an opaque covering shrouded him. It had to have been thrown by the Leloc, but no human eye saw the gesture. It did not so much enfold or expand as flow and mold itself, encompassing every inch of the crimson features and gaudy uniform, the hands and head, turning what had been mottled and crimson, but a man, into a Harms-shaped monotony of immobilized no-color.