Harry Turtledove - A World of Difference

“He from domain called Russia,” Sarah replied, which told Reatur nothing. “Not same domain as ours. He hurt on far side of Ervis Gorge.”

More humans? More domains of humans? The idea disconcerted Reatur as badly as it had Fralk. The domain master started to ask about it, then stopped. Something else Sarah had said was of more immediate concern to him. “You went across Ervis Gorge?” he asked, hoping he had misunderstood. But Sarah was moving her head up and down once more. “How?” Reatur asked faintly.

“In small machine that goes through air.” Sarah spread her single pair of arms to mimic wings and moved her two legs as she did when she was inside the contraption.

Reatur felt brief relief, then had another unsettling thought. “These other humans from the other domain”-he did not try to pronounce it-”do they also have one of these machines for moving through the air?.”

“No.” Sarah’s answer was quick and positive.

“Then they couldn’t give one to the Skarmer?” The idea of humans dropping out of the sky was quite bad enough. Thinking of armed westerners crossing Ervis Gorge through the air was simply horrifying.

But Sarah said “No” again. Reatur turned an eyestalk on himself. Good-he had not been alarmed enough to turn blue. Showing fear to any human would have been embarrassing; showing fear to a human mate did not bear thinking about. Mates had enough trouble in their poor short lives that they should never be burdened with a male’s concerns, as well. Intellectually, Reatur knew the three human mates were not like those of his kind. Emotionally, that still had not sunk in.

Sarah helped drive the point home, though. “About Lamra-“ she resumed, more stubborn than any of Reatur’s males would have been when the domain master was so plainly unwilling to discuss the matter.

“We will talk about Lamra another time, not now,” Reatur declared.

That should have settled the matter, but Sarah rudely refused to let it stay settled. “What you do now instead? What more important than Lamra? You not talk of Lamra, Lamra die. What more important than Lamra not dying?”

He had to think for a moment to come up with an answer, but at last he did. “I am going to check with the watchers I have placed at the edges of Ervis Gorge. If the Skarmer somehow manage to root themselves on this side, Lamra will not be the only one who dies.” He started to leave.

“You run from me,” Sarah said. Reatur watched himself start to go yellow. That it was partly true only made him angrier. The human went on. “How Skarmer-how anyone-cross Ervis Gorge?”

“How should I know?” Reatur yelled, so loud that Sarah stepped back a pace and a male stuck an eyestalk around a corner to make sure everything was all fight. The domain master was a person who, if poked by one fingerclaw, hit back with three. He kept fight on shouting. “Until you told me, Sarah, I didn’t think anyone could cross it through the air. For all I know, the sneaky westerners may come by way of water when the gorge fills up.” That was the most ridiculous thing he could think of, but he was cursed if he would admit it. “Since I don’t know what they’ll do, I have to point my eyestalks every which way at once, don’t I?”

“Yes,” the human mate conceded reluctantly. Reatur had not intimidated her, though, for she continued. “We talk of Lamra later, yes?”

“Later, yes. Not now.” This time, when the domain master walked past Sarah, she let him go.

But her voice pursued him. “Maybe Skarmer does-do-use water. Humans go by water sometimes.”

Reatur kept walking. His color slowly faded. He decided he preferred being bored to being harassed. He had grown so used to being harassed by humans that it had taken some time without them to remind him how things had been not so very long ago.

A drop of water hit him in an eye as he walked out of his castle. Summer was close now, everything was starting to melt. Dealing with humans gave the domain master the same feeling as that splash. They melted all his certainties just as the summer sun worked on his home.

The males working in the fields, he saw, were not working very hard. He started to shout at them, then decided he would be wasting his temper. Stone tools made everyone slow. At least the males were accomplishing more with those than they would have with ice, which grew more frangible day by day.

Some of the males were working in the very shadow of Athena, and not turning so much as a single eyestalk toward the huge, strange structure. They were used to humans, too. Reatur wondered if that was good or bad. Good, he supposed: nothing at all would have gotten done if everyone was still as bemused as at first. But finding a human as normal as an eloc did not seem right, either.

Having.just had that thought, Reatur had to wiggle his eyestalks at himself when he passed the human called Frank, who was on his way back from Ervis Gorge, without even stopping to chat. And this Frank had shown Enoph that rocks, of all the crazy ideas, had ages just like people! That was a notion deserving of days of talk, but Reatur had other things on his mind at the moment. Frank, after all, would be here tomorrow, and the day after, too.

Reatur had watchers posted along the entire stretch of Ervis Gorge that marked the western frontier of his domain, but most of them clustered close to the castle. That was where most of his people lived and also where the bridge across the gorge had been.

Ternat was one of the watchers. He carded three javelins, as if he expected a horde of Skarmer males to come roaring across the gorge at any moment. He widened himself when he saw Reatur approaching.

“Never mind that, eldest,” Reatur said impatiently, and Ternat resumed his normal height. “I’m glad to see you so alert.”

“One day the domain will be mine, clanfather, unless the Skarmer steal it from me. I do not intend to let them.”

“Well said. I came to ask you to spread word to your fellow watchers: use one eyestalk to look at the sky from time to time.”

“The sky, clanfather? No one can go through the sky. No one save humans, I mean,” Ternat amended, as he would not have before Athena came down.

“Aye, humans,” Reatur said-no escaping the creatures, not anymore. “I learn there are humans on the western side of Ervis Gorge, too, humans of a different clan from the ones here. Who knows what treacherous tricks they may have taught the Skarmer?”

“The Skarmer need no one to teach them treachery,” Ternat said. “But-more humans?”

“I don’t like the thought any better than you, eldest, but pulling in my eyestalks won’t make it go away. So-look to the sky.”

Ternat let the air sigh out through his breathing pores. “The sky, clanfather.” He sounded as happy as Reatur felt.

The two males bored in on Fralk. Each of them carded two spears and two light spears, as did he. Each watched him with three eyestalks and used a fourth to see what the other was doing. The smooth way they moved together told of how often they had done this before-to them, Fralk was just another victim to be dispatched.

He sprang at one of the males, hoping to put him out of action and make the fight even. But, though he shifted his own spears to the hands near the male he had chosen, that warrior blocked his blows with almost bored ease. And Fralk, who needed a shield of his own to protect himself against that male’s counterthrusts, had but a single shield to withstand the onslaught of the fellow’s comrade.

That sort of fight could not last long. Fralk knew a brief moment of triumph when he managed to deflect a couple of thrusts from the second male, but all too soon one got home.

Fralk let out a high-pitched squeal of pain.