Harry Turtledove - A World of Difference

Maybe being big like Reatur helped.

He had been talking to Peri. Filled with her own not quite happy thoughts, Lamra had paid no attention to whatever he was saying. She was a little surprised when Peri, after squeaking, “I will,” hurried away. Several of the other mates were playing a game of tag. Peri joined them. In a moment, her trouble with Lamra forgotten, she was frisking about.

“Now you,” Reatur said to Lamra. He had not forgotten, even if silly Peri had.

“It wasn’t her ball,” Lamra said.

“I know that,” Reatur said. “You all play with everything here in the mates’ chambers, so how could any of it belong especially to any one of you? That’s not what I wanted to talk with you about, Lamra.”

Then he did something Lamra had never seen him do with any other mate, though he had before with her, once or twice: he widened himself down very low, so that he was hardly taller than she. She still did not know what to make of that-she felt proud and nervous at the same time.

“You ought to know better than to squabble that way with Peri,” he said.

“It’s not fair,” Lamra said. “She squabbled with me, too.” She saw Reatur’s eyestalks start to wiggle, saw him make them stop. That was just one more thing she did not understand: Why would he want to make himself stop laughing? Laughing was fun.

“So she was,” he said. “But she”-he lowered his voice a little, so the others could not hear-“is just an ordinary mate, and you, I think, are something more. So I expect more from you.”

“Not fair,” Lamra said again.

“Maybe not. Would you rather I expected less from you than you are able to give?”

“Yes. No. Wait.” Lamra had to stop and work that one through. Reatur was talking to her as if she were another male. His words were as badly tangled as she had hoped to make Peri’s arms. “No,” she said at last.

“Good,” Reatur said. “So you’ll behave yourself, then?”

“Yes,” Lamra said. Then she wailed, “I don’t want to behave myself!” The world suddenly seemed a more complicated place than she wanted it to be.

“I know you don’t,” Reatur said gently. “Doing it anyway is the hard part. It’s called being responsible.”

“I don’t want to be whatever you said-responsible. It’s silly, like not laughing when you want to laugh.” Lamra turned an eyestalk away from Reatur to show she was not happy with him. “And like widening yourself so you’re so short and fat that you look like a toy nosver.”

“Do I?” Reatur laughed then, so hard that Lamra doubted he could see straight. He also resumed his regular height. “Is this better?”

“Yes,” Lamra said, though she could hear the doubt in her own voice.

“All right.” Reatur hesitated. “How are the buds?”

Lamra looked down at herself. She was beginning to have a swelling above each foot, but the buds did not inconvenience her yet, and so she did not think about them very much. “They’re just-there,” she said, which seemed to satisfy Reatur. “How are Biyal’s budlings?”

She saw that she had startled Reatur; his eyestalks drew in, then slowly extended themselves again. “One mate has died,” he said. “The others seem to be holding their own. It won’t be long before we bring them back to live in here. The male is doing well.”

“I miss Biyal. She was fun to play with-not like Peri, who squawks all the time,” Lamra added pointedly. She let air hiss out from her breathing pores in quite a good imitation of Reatur sighing. “I suppose the new ones will be even more foolish.”

“I suppose they will.” Reatur turned an extra eye her way. “I’ve hardly ever heard a mate say she missed another one after that one-after that one budded,” he said slowly. “You remember more than most, don’t you?”

“How can I tell that?” Lamra asked. There Reatur went, confusing her again. “I only know what I remember, not what anyone else remembers.”

“That’s true.” Reatur was trying not to laugh again, she saw. He stopped for a while, then went on in a musing tone. “What would you be like if you could hope for my years, or even Ternat’s?”

“Don’t be silly,” she told him. “Who ever heard of an old mate?”

“Who indeed?” he said, and gave a sigh so much like hers that she could not help wiggling her eyestalks. He reached out and awkwardly patted her between her eyestalks and her arms. “All I can tell you, Lamra, is that I hope the male you bear takes after you. Having such wits around to grow would be precious.”

Lamra thought about it. She was not used to taking such a long view; being as they were, mates did not have occasion to. Finally she said, “You know, that would be nice, but I’d rather it was me.”

Reatur looked at her with all six eyes at once for a moment, something he had never done before. “So would I, little one. So would I.” Then he said something she did not understand at all. “I’m beginning to envy humans, curse me if I’m not.”

He left the mates’ chambers very quickly after that.

Several Minervans kept an eye, or two, or three, on Frank Marquard as he got ready to descend. The lead male of the group was the one called Enoph. “Why are you going down?” he asked for the third time as Marquard checked and rechecked the lashing of his line around the big boulder that would secure it. “Tell me again, in words I can understand.”

“I try,” the geologist said in halting Omalo. He knew he could not have explained even if he spoke the language fluently. The Minervans had not developed the concepts they needed to grasp what he was up to.

“You know I walk on path down this far, more than halfway down J6tm” He caught himself; the human name for the canyon meant nothing to the locals. “Down Ervis Gorge.”

“Not just on the path,” Enoph said with the sinuous wriggle of his arms that Marquard mentally translated as a shudder. “Away from it, too. How do you dare go where you might fall? Especially since you have only two arms and two legs to hold on with.”

“How I go? Carefully.” Marquard sighed when Enoph only opened and closed a couple of his hands in agreement. So much for the old joke. But see how I go. When not on path, always have rope-how you say? tied to big rock. If fall, not fall far.”

“Yes, I grasp that,” Enoph said-a natural image for a six-armed folk to use. “You humans are clever with ropes. I suppose you have to be. But why do you do what you do?”

“To learn from rocks,” Marquard said. That was as close as he had come to rendering geology into Minervan.

“A rock is a rock.” Enoph had said that before. Now, though, he paused to think it over. “Maybe not,” he amended. “Some rocks are harder than others, some better to chip at than others. Do you want to learn which ones are best for tools? I could show you that.”

“No, not for tools. Want to see how rocks change in time.

New rocks near top of Ervis Gorge, rocks older down low.”

Enoph wiggled his eyestalks, which meant he was laughing at Frank. I do better as a comedian when I’m not trying, Marquard thought. “All rocks are as old as the world. How could one be older than another?” Enoph asked.

Marquard shook his head; like other Minervans who had spent a good deal of time with humans, Enoph understood the gesture. “Think of two fossils I find in rocks,” the geologist said.

The key word was in English. Again, though, Enoph followed; the locals had not really started wondering about long ago life preserved in rocks, but Marquard had shown them the couple of specimens he had discovered and had found giving them a new word easier than the elaborate circumlocution he would have needed to say the same thing in Minervan.