Harry Turtledove - A World of Difference

The linguist had put down his rifle when he started trying to communicate with Fralk. “Cover me,” he called to his companions, and walked, empty-handed, toward the Minervans. Fralk widened himself as the human came up. In delighted reply, Bryusov bowed from the waist.

That set the Minervans off again. “They’re not used to anything that can bend that way,” Katerina guessed.

“No,” Tolmasov agreed. He knew he sounded absentminded, and he did not care. The relief washing through him was too great for that. First contact was made, and made without bloodshed. History books-maybe history books on two worlds, he thought, blinking-would not bear his name as a curse.

No one with a lot of arms would try to ram a spear through his brisket, either, which also counted. He stood up, stepped out from behind Tsiolkovsky’s immense tires, and let the Minervans see him. He left his rifle at his side but did not put it down. Not yet.

“For me?” Hogram tested the knife blade with a fingerclaw and, like Fralk before him, was amazed at its keenness. “A most generous gift, eldest of eldest.”

“Gift?” Fralk held his eyestalks very still, the picture of innocence. “How can such a thing be a gift, when all the clan possesses is in the clanfather’s keeping?”

Hogram turned a second eye on the young male, who wondered if he had laid the flattery on too thick. Maybe he had. “There is a difference, you know,” Hogram said, “between being in my keeping and being in my hand.” But the domain master’s eyestalks twitched; he was more mused than anything else.

Fralk did not take another chance. He changed the subject, at least to some degree, saying, “These-strangers-may be valuable to us, clanfather.” “Strangers” seemed a better word than “monsters,” especially as he was trying to speak well of them.

“If they have more knives such as this, certainly,” Hogram said. “Or, better yet, if they can make them with longer blades. Those would help us when we cross the Great Gorge. I would pay well for them.”

“Of course, clanfather,” Fralk agreed. “The trouble is finding what the strange males want. They are so-different-from us that much of what we find valuable may be of no interest to them.”

Hogram’s eyestalks were more than twitching now; they were wiggling with mirth. “That is the trouble with any trade, eldest of eldest, finding out what the other male wants and what it’s worth to him.” The clanfather’s faded, sagging skin and the continual wheezing of his breathing pores showed that he would never be young again, but with his years had come shrewdness. Clan Hogram prospered, even among the Skarmer clans, where a trading blunder could put a clan up to its eyestalks in trouble.

Fralk had learned a great deal, just watching and listening to his grandfather. Now to apply some of that learning, if he could… “Clanfather, have you chosen a male yet to work with the strangers, learn their peculiar words, and teach them ours?”

“Why, no.” Hogram sounded a bit taken aback.

Good, Fralk thought. The domain master had not had a chance to work through all the implications of the strangers’ arrival, while he himself had thought about little else since the skybox(no, the skyboat,. he amended, consciously using the Lanuam word the Skarmers had borrowed, almost fell on top of him.

“Surely it would be better to have a single male handle such matters than to scatter them piecemeal among several,” he said.

“So it would, so it would.” Hogram’s fingers twiddled as he thought. “You see to it, if you care to, Fralk. You’ve been dealing with the creatures since they came here, so you know more about them than anyone else.” The domain master paused. “I’ve given you two hard tasks together now, first dealing with the Omalo domain master and now with these strangers. You are still a young male. If you decline here, I will not think less of you.”

“I will try, clanfather.” Fralk did his best to put a doubtful tremor in his voice, but had all he could do to keep from dancing with glee. If he was the channel through which the strangers dealt with clan Hogram, some of what went by would stick to him, just as debris littered the sides and bottom of Ervis Gorge after the summer floods passed. He suspected the strangers had things much more interesting than the little knife. No trader with even the tiniest sense gave away his best stock as an opening present.

And Hogram, the young male vowed to himself, would not see everything the strangers had to offer. Some Fralk would keep or dispose of for himself. Though clanfathers’ rights were as strong in theory among the Skarmer clans as with the Omalo across the gorge, in practice a male still under his clanfather’s power could also accumulate a limited amount of wealth for himself. Or even, Fralk thought, not such a limited amount, so long as he was careful.

His musing made him miss something Hogram had said. “Your pardon, clanfather,” he said, widening himself contritely.

“I wonder where these strangers-creatures-whatever they are-come from,” Hogram repeated. “We’ve not seen nor heard of nor smelled their like.” His arms waved in agitation. “Imagine not having eyestalks, being blind to half the world all the time. Imagine having only two legs, and two hands. Imagine wanting to stay so hot-”

“That is unnerving,” Fralk agreed. The strangers had a device with fire somehow trapped inside it and had used it on the journey to the castle when night came. They huddled around it, though the evening was mild. The heat had been so savage that no one wanted to go near them, not even Fralk, who was curious about the fire. He knew of few things that burned readily; a new one would find a ready market among icesmiths and also could be useful in war. When he got more words, he would ask about that.

“They follow strange gods, too, if what you and the others have told me of them is true,” Hogram went on. “I’ve never heard of anyone worshiping the Twinstar.”

“They do, clanfather,” Fralk insisted. “They roused a little before dawn this morning, as did we, and through clouds low in the east they spied the Twinstar, the bright blue one and its little faint companion. As we watched them, they pointed to it, to themselves, and to it again. I cannot think of any reason for such a rite as that but worship.”

“For all we know of them, they may have been trying to tell us they’re. from the Twinstar,” Hogram said. “They’re weird enough.”

Fralk’s eyestalks started to twitch. Then he noticed that Hogram was not laughing. He thought about it. It made as much sense as anything else, he supposed. He said so. He was still thoughtful when he left the domain master’s presence a little while later. He was reminded he would have to be even more cautious in his dealings with the strangers than he had thought. Taking Hogram for a fool would never do.

“I hope they don’t mind us watching as their young get born,” Pat Marquard said as she walked along behind Reatur.

“So do I,” Irv said. “From the way they keep their females so restricted, I’m afraid they might. But I hope Reatur will see we’re so different from his kind that we don’t count.”

Though he had gloves on, he kept his hands in his pockets. He noticed himself doing that whenever he was inside Reatur’s castle. Just the idea of being in a building made largely of ice gave him goose bumps. He glanced over at his wife. She was doing the same thing.

“Do you think it’s being so restricted that makes the females here nothing like the males?” Sarah asked him.

“More likely just a universal constant,” he said, which earned him a glare from his wife, a snort from Pat, and, at the noise, the brief honor of a second eyeball on him from Reatur. If it was an honor, he thought, and not simply a reflex.