Harry Turtledove - A World of Difference

Wondering at his hesitation didn’t the fool human know what his friends were good for? the domain master said, “All right, I’ll ask him.” Then he stopped-from what Irv had said, Pat was no more male than Sarah. “I’ll ask one of them,” Reatur said lamely. One of these days, he added to himself.

“Irv, you should have spoken sooner of this-difference- between humans and people.” Ternat sounded accusing. Reatur had trouble blaming him, but hoped Irv could not read his tone.

If the human did, he hid it well. “How?” he asked. “You thought us like you, yes?”

“Yes,” Reatur said. “Of course,” Ternat agreed.

“We thought you like us,” Irv said. “Till Biyal, we thought you like us. After Biyal-“ The human stopped.

Reatur wished humans really changed colors or did something he could gauge to show what they were feelin8. The movements of their strangely placed mouths told a bit, but not enough, at least not for him. He would have given a lot right then to be inside Irv’s head, to know which words the human was choosing and which he was casting aside.

Irv finally resumed, “After Biyal, we knew you not like us. We not know what you think when you know you not like us, so we not say. Now you know, now we talk. Yes, Ternat?”

“Yes,” Reatur’s eldest said reluctantly. The domain master made sure he did not let his eyestalks wiggle. Irv had done a neat job of turning things around on Ternat. However weird humans were-and the more he learned of them, the weirder they got-they were not stupid. He would have to make sure he remembered that.

Ternat got the point, too. “From how far away do you come, to be so strange?” he asked.

“Very far away.” It was all the humans ever said.

Now that Reatur was beginning to get a feel for both how odd and how closemouthed they were, he wondered what surprises lurked behind those three self-evident words. “I believe it,” he said, and for the moment let it go at that.

“Fralk, one of the humans is outside,” a retainer said. “He wishes to speak with you.”

“Do you know what he wants, Panjand?” Fralk asked.

“No, eldest of eldest,” Panjand said stolidly.

Fralk suspected that the servant had not bothered to ask. He felt the muscles around his mouth tightening in annoyance. He did not have time for humans now, even if he was Hogram’s liaison with them. The domain master had given him enough other things to do to keep any three males busy.

“Will you see him, eldest of eldest, or shall I send him away?”

Panjand asked.

“I’ll see him,” Fralk said mournfully. He put his pen beside the cured hide on which he had been writing and stepped away from the table. “Put a few more drops of porjuice into that bowl of isigot blood to keep it from clotting,” he told Panjand. “I’ll finish up these notes in a while, after I’m done with the human.”

Panjand widened himself. “Yes, eldest of eldest.”

Fralk, meanwhile, was gathering effusiveness around himself as if it were one of the outer skins humans wore. He opened the door Panjand had shut. “Zdrast‘ye,” he said, and then peered with three eyes at the human standing in front of him. “Sergei Konstantinovich,” he finished after a barely perceptible pause.

“Hello, Fralk,” the human replied in the Skarmer tongue.

“How are you?”

His accent, Fralk thought, was improving. “Well, thank you. What can I do for you today?” He discarded some of his expansive manner; Sergei was as businesslike as Hogram.

The human proved his instinct right, coming straight to the point. “You use axes, knives from us to fight, all, Omalo across, ah, J’6 Ervis Gorge?”

“Well, of course,” Fralk said. “I told, ah, Shota all about that.”

“Not use for that,” Sergei said.

“What?” Fralk said, though he understood the human perfectly well. “Why not? You traded them to us; they are ours now. What business do you have telling us what to do with them?”

Sergei hesitated, then said, “Humans-more humans-across Ervis Gorge.”

Fralk felt his arms flap limply against his body as he took that news in. Humans were so strange that he had never imagined there being more of them. “How many more humans?” he got out at last, wondering if all the lands he knew were going to be overrun by the funny looking creatures. It was not a pleasant idea; he would not wish a plague of humans even on the Omalo. On second thought, maybe he would.

“Six.” Sergei held up fingers so Fralk could not misunderstand him.

“These humans are of your domain?”

“Nyet,” Sergei said, surprising Fralk.

“Of your clan, then? Of the same first bud, I mean.”

“Nyet,” Sergei said again.

Exasperated, Fralk burst out, “Well, is your clan even friendly with theirs?”

“No,” Sergei repeated after another pause.

“Then why in the name of the first Skarmer bud do you care what happens to them?” Fralk’s satisfaction at losing his temper quickly dissipated in the effort he needed to get meaning across to the human.

Sergei replied as slowly, groping for words and concepts. “My domain, other humans’ domain not fight now. We your friends. Other humans friends with people across gorge. You, they fight, maybe my domain, other humans’ domain fight, too.”

Fralk opened and closed his hands several times. He had not thought about humans having politics of their own, either. He brightened. “How’s this?” he said. “We won’t harm these other humans at all; we’ll just use your axes and hammers on the miserable Omalo.”

“You get hammers, axes from us. What Omalo get from other humans?”

Fralk wished he were back inside, keeping records for a project that had nothing to do with humans-at least, he had thought it had nothing to do with humans. Humans had a gift for making difficulties all out of proportion to their numbers. “What do the Omalo get from these other humans?” he asked. “Not know.” Sergei spread his hands.

“Wonderful.” Along with the advantage surprise would give the Skarmer, Fralk had hoped the males who crossed the gorge would carry with them the superior weapons he had obtained for them from the humans. That would make him a hero as well as the rich male he was becoming. But now… “Do humans have weapons stronger than axes and hammers?”

“Yes. Our-“ Lacking the word in Fralk’s language, Sergei perforce used one from his own. “-firearms stronger. Stronger a lot.”

“Do these other humans also have firearms?” Fralk echoed the strange sound as well as he could.

“Yes,” Sergei said. “Not as good as ours, but yes.”

Fralk had a really appalling thought. “Would the other humans give firearms to the Omalo?”

“Not know,” Sergei said. “Not think so.”

That was something, anyway, Fralk thought. “Do they have hatchets and hammers? Would they give those to the Omalo?”

“Not know if have. If yes, they give, I think.”

As Sergei did not have eyestalks, Fralk could not even vent his feelings by wishing the purple itch on them. His dream of a quick, easy conquest aided by marvelous new weapons he personally had helped obtain from the humans looked to be just that-a dream. He tried to find something to be optimistic about and finally did. “At least,” he said, “the Omalo won’t surprise US.”

The reversal in the sentence left the human floundering, and Fralk was in no mood to help him along. Partially changing the subject, Sergei asked, “How you go across Ervis Gorge, fight Omalo?”

He could not have found a better question to restore Fralk’s good humor. “I was just keeping track of the frames involved when you got here,” he said. “We’re making them faster than we thought we could, and we should have plenty when the time comes.”