Harry Turtledove - A World of Difference

Bryusov pointed to himself. “Valery.” He pointed to Rustaveli. “Shota.” He pointed to the Minervan and waited. For this, Tolmasov thought, we need a linguist?

It might have been simple, but it worked. The native pointed toward itself with three arms at once and said, “Fralk.” Its voice startled Tolmasov again-it was a smooth contralto. To his way of thinking, nothing taller than he was, and unbelievably weird looking to boot, had any business sounding like a woman, a sexy woman, at that.

Get used to surprises, the colonel told himself. Expect them. After all, you were just reminding yourself this is a whole different world. He wondered how many times he would end up giving himself that order. A great many, he guessed.

Bryusov was still talking at the Minervan, trying to pick up nouns. The tape recorder in his pocket would save the replies he got for more study later. Tolmasov chuckled to himself. The recorder was just as good as the Americans’. Both expeditions used Sonys.

While the linguist worked, Rustaveli walked halfway around Fralk so he could take some pictures of it-him? her? and Bryusov. But when he pulled out his camera-also Japanese, again like the Americans’-the Minervan sprang away from him and Bryusov. Its body got short and plump, so its arms could reach the ground. A moment later it was tall again, and it was holding stones in three hands.

“Hold still!” Katerina shouted, startling Tolmasov and the Minervan both. A couple of Fralk’s eyestalks whipped toward her. The native did not put down the rocks it had seized, but it made no move to throw them, either.

At the same time Fralk was watching Katerina, it was also keeping an eye on Bryusov, another on Rustaveli, and one more on Tolmasov. A Minervan, the colonel realized, was a creature that had no behind, any direction was as accessible to it as another. He wondered how the natives chose which way to go.

Worry about that some other time, he told himself firmly. First things first. “I think the photographs will have to wait, Shota Mikheilovich,” he called. “At least until this Fralk understands that your camera is no weapon.”

The biologist’s thin, mobile features twisted in a grimace, but he lowered the camera, moving slowly and ostentatiously. The eyestalk Fralk was using to watch him followed the motion. The Georgian signed. “You appear to be right,” he said mournfully. “I will go turn over some flat stones. With luck, nothing I find under them will want to slay me for taking its picture.”

Seeing Rustaveli go off to do something that had nothing to do with it seemed to reassure Fralk. It staged giving long answers to Bryusov. It talked, in fact, at such length that the linguist threw his hands in the air. “This will be wonderful later, when I and the computers back at Moscow have a chance to analyze it,” he said plaintively, “but for now it’s only so much nonsense.”

He had picked up a couple of rocks of his own, a small white one and a larger gray one. He held the white rock above the gray one, then below it. “Spatial relationships,” he explained to Tolmasov, then turned back to Fralk, who was saying something or other.

Eventually, the colonel thought, he would have to learn Minervan. He ought to be just getting fluent in it when Tsiolkovsky lifted off. Then he likely would never use it again. Things worked that way sometimes.

The thought he had had before occurred to him again. “How are you going to learn the native words for ‘front’ and ‘back,’ Valery Aleksandrovich? This Fralk doesn’t have either one.”

For a moment, Bryusov looked scornful, as he did whenever anyone presumed to comment about his specialty. Then he must have realized he had no impressively crushing rejoinder handy. He tugged at his mustache. “A very good question, Sergei Konstantinovich,” he admitted.

The alarm rang in the headsets of the crewfolk on the ground. Oleg Lopatin’s voice followed it. “A large party of Minervans heading this way out of the northeast. They appear to be armed.”

“Then we should have the one here on good terms with us, to speak well of us to its companions,” Rustaveli said. He reached into a jacket pocket. The motion made Fralk turn an eye from Bryusov to him. The biologist pulled out a pocket knife and opened its blade. Fralk hefted the rocks it was holding.

“You are not endearing yourself to the native, Shota,” Katerina remarked.

That had comebacks obvious even to Tolmasov, but Rustaveli was, for once, pure business. “Hush,” was all he said. He bent, set the knife on the ground, and stepped back from it. Then he pointed to it and to Fralk and waved an invitation to the Minervan. “Go ahead; it’s yours,” he said, though Fralk could not hope to understand his words.

The gestures got through, though. Fralk moved toward the knife, hesitantly at first but then with more confidence as Rustaveli and Bryusov backed farther away to show that it was all right. The Minervan grew short and wide and picked up the knife-by the handle, Tolmasov saw, which meant it knew what a knife was. Well, Lopatin had as much as said that.

Yes, Fralk knew what a knife was, It held the blade in one hand and tested it with the fingers of another. It must have approved of what it found. It pointed to the knife, then to itself, and made a noise that Tolmasov mentally translated as, “For me.’?”

Rustaveli must have read it the same way. “Da, da,” he said. When he did not try to take away the pocket knife, Fralk must have gotten the idea.

Tolmasov heard faint contralto cries in the distance. The Minervans sounded angry. His face quirked into a smile, almost against his will. Angry Minervans sounded like angry sexy women-an unexpected perk of the job. The American slang threatened to make his smile wider. He forced himself to seriousness.

Katerina also heard the locals approaching. She took cover behind one of Tsiolkovsky’s huge tires. That made such good sense that Tolmasov crouched behind another one.

He watched the Minervans approach. They were within a couple of hundred meters now, carrying spears and stones and other things less easy to identify. The Kalashnikovs could make bloody hash of them-and of the Soviet mission. If the Americans made peaceful contact while he got into a firefight…, he shuddered. He would not end up a Hero of the Soviet Union when he got home. He would end up begging for a bullet, more likely.

Bryusov did not seem to have noticed the-army? gang? posse? He gestured vehemently, like a man in the grip of an overpowering itch. Maybe he was getting through to Fralk, though; the native had three eyes on him, for whatever that was worth.

“I suggest you come to the point, Valery.” Shota Rustaveli was on his belly on the cold ground, behind a stone that would give him some cover. He knew the Minervans were coming. So did Fralk, who kept an eye on them.

Evidently Bryusov did come to the point. Fralk hurried out toward its-countrymen? Probably, Tolmasov thought. If they were enemies, it would have run the other way.

Fralk shouted something. The onrushing Minervans came to a ragged halt. A couple of natives emerged from the crowd and hurried up to Fralk. They made themselves short and wide, then resumed their usual shape. If Bryusov had gone through contortions before, they were not a patch on the ones Fralk put on now. Of course, having six arms and eyestalks gave it an unfair advantage there.

One of the natives who had approached Fralk said something. Fralk broke in loudly. The other native went short and wide again. “That must be a token of submission, like a salute or a bow,” Bryusov called.

Fralk shouted to the whole group of Minervans. They set their weapons on the ground. “Valery!” Fralk called in that thrilling voice.