Harry Turtledove - A World of Difference

Tolmasov was businesslike as usual. “Can you right your vehicle?”

“Not by myself. I’ve tried. If Valery comes around-“ As if on cue, Bryusov moved and groaned. “Rustaveli out,” Shota said. He bent by his companion. “Valery! Are you all right? Do you know who I am?”

“Head-“ Bryusov muttered. He started to lift his left hand to his head, then stopped with another, louder groan. Under the blood that splashed it, his face was gray.

Katerina and Tolmasov were both screaming at Rustaveli on the radio. He ignored them until Bryusov drifted away from consciousness again. This time, though, the linguist seemed less deeply out. He was also, Rustaveli saw with much relief, able to move his legs and right arm, although he whimpered whenever his left arm so much as twitched. The Georgian relayed the news.

“No broken back or neck, then,” Katerina said. “That’s something.”

“Exactly what I was thinking. But that arm…, and he has no idea of where he is or what he’s doing. He took a nasty shot in the head.”

“Do you think he can hold out until Dr. Zakharova and I can reach you?” Tolmasov asked, still sounding very official.

“Comrade Colonel, I do not know,” Rustaveli said with equal formality. “What choice has he, however?.”

“I am coming to that.” Now something was in Tolmasov’s voice: distaste. Whatever he was about to say, Rustaveli thought, he was not happy about it. Then Tolmasov went on, and the Georgian understood why. “Shota Mikheilovich, you were facetious when you said the Americans were nearer to you than we are, but you were also right. They have some sort of very light aircraft with them. If I ask, they may be able to cross the gorge and treat Valery. If I ask. Do you want me to ask?”

Rustaveli knew the colonel wanted to hear a no. Tolmasov had been ready to bite nails in half when the Americans proved as able as he to throw around charges of deception. Begging help from them had to be the last thing he wanted to do. Or almost the last thing-he couldn’t be eager to have Bryusov die, either. To say nothing of the linguist himself, news of a death on Minerva would hurt the Soviet space program the same way one would damage the Americans’ effort.

It all came down to how badly Bryusov was hurt. If he just had a knock on the head and, say, a broken wrist, Rustaveli knew enough first aid to patch him up. If, on the other hand, he had managed to do something nasty like rupturing his spleen, the Georgian would never know it till too late. “You better call Athena,” he said.

There was a long silence from Tolmasov, followed by an even longer sigh. “Damnation. Very well.”

Rustaveli could tell he had just lost points with the colonel.

“Sergei Konstantinovich, think of it this way: if Valery dies after we summon the American doctor, of if the doctor refuses to come and he dies, whose fault is that? Not ours, certainly. But if we do not call-”

“A point,” Tolmasov admitted after another pause. He was sounding official again, which Rustaveli took as a good sign. “I will call the Americans.”

“How do I know what would happen if a mate survived budding?” Reatur demanded. “They come to ripeness, they mate, and then they die. Always. That is what it is to be a mate.”

“But what if one does-did-live?” Sarah Levitt persisted. “If mates grow up, too, what they like then?” She wished her grammar were better and her vocabulary bigger. She needed to be persuasive. “What-how much-of lives you waste when mates not live, die young?”

Reatur did not just order her to shut up and go away, as a medieval English baron might have dealt with someone proposing revolutionary social change. Sarah had to give him that much. Baron was about as close as anyone had come to translating the Minervan word that literally meant “domain master,” but Sarah knew it lacked meanings that were there in the Minervan and added connotations missing from it. And Reatur’s domain was a long, long way from medieval England.

The domain master turned a third eyestalk her way. He began to sing something, or perhaps to declaim. Since he had no music to accompany the words, Sarah was not sure which; whichever it was, he used his arms to help her follow the rhythm of his words. The meaning was something else again. With an obviously memorized piece like this one, Reatur could not pause and explain himself as he went along. Sarah gathered it was a sad-song, but that was about all.

Eventually Reatur realized she could not fully understand. He broke off and started speaking simply again. “It is about a domain master who has had three of his mates bud all on the same day, and about his sorrow as he gives the last of them to the scavengers. Every male who has brought a mate to budding knows this sorrow. How could we not? We are not beasts, and mates are not beasts.”

“No, but mates not people, not now-die too soon. Let mates be people, too. I try to let Lamra live after budding, let her be person, let her grow to be person. Yes?” Sarah watched Reatur intently. She wanted nothing in the world-nothing in two worlds-more than the chance to try to save Lamra. She could feel her face twisting into a frown of concentration as she cast about for the words to make him see things her way. At last she found the very phrase she needed.

The radio on her belt squawked.

She jumped. That perfect phrase vanished from her head.

Reatur was startled, too, startled enough to jerk in his eyestalks.

“You read me, Sarah?” Emmett Bragg asked from the tinny little speaker. “Acknowledge, please.”

“I’m here, Emmett-at the castle, talking with Reatur.”

“Come back to the ship, please, right away.” Even with the “please,” it was an order.

“Five minutes?” she pleaded. Maybe those right words would come back.

“This second,” Emmett said flatly. “Emergency.”

“On my way.” Sarah’s hands folded into fists. Wearing gloves, she did not even get the painful release of nails biting flesh. She turned back to Reatur. “Must go now. Talk more of Lamra later, yes?”

“I suppose we may,” Reatur said.

Sarah had to be content with that. “Damn, damn, damn,” she muttered under her breath as she trotted down the hallway toward her bicycle. The timing could not have been worse. Reatur had been weakening. She was sure of it.

She leapt onto the bicycle and worked out some of her frustration by fairly flying back to the ship. She braked so violently that she almost went headfirst over the handlebars. If this wasn’t a genuine life or death emergency, she thought, she was going to peel some paint off the corridor walls.

But it was. She could see that on Emmett Bragg’s face. Then she hesitated. Emmett was in the control room, and so was Irv- she breathed silent thanks that the emergency had nothing to do with him-and so were Louise and Frank and Pat. Nobody looked damaged, though everyone was as somber as Emmett.

Somber, to Sarah’s way of thinking, did not constitute an emergency. She set hands on hips. “What the hell’s going on?” she snapped. “Where’s the beef?”

“Hon, it’s on the other side of Jotun Canyon,” Irv said.

She stared at him.

“The Russian rover’s had an accident,” Emmett said. “One of their people is down and out-head and arm injuries at the very least, maybe more.”

“What’s that got to do with me?” she demanded. “They have a doctor of their own.”

“Who is at the moment almost seventy miles from the rover, and stuck on foot without it,” Bragg said. “Whereas we have bikes to get to the edge of the canyon fast, and Damselfly to get over it-the rover’s only a mile or so away from the far edge of the canyon.” He held up a map with a red dot felt tipped in to show the location. “This mess happened an hour ago, tops. You could be there before sunset, but their doc is three days away.”