Harry Turtledove - A World of Difference

“I don’t suppose one full-grown mate will eat up all the spare food in the domain,” he said. “Go on, Sarah; I said yes before and I say yes again. No matter what happens later, Lamra is worth it.”

Lamra widened herself to the domain master. She had done that countless times before, but only because she had been taught to. For the first time it was the gesture of conscious respect and gratitude it was meant to be-now she understood why she did it.

Sarah bent from the middle toward Lamra-the human gesture that meant the same as widening. “I try hard to save you,” she said.

“Thank you.” Still strongly feeling the ceremony inherent in the gesture, Lamra widened herself in return. Sarah bent again. They could have gone on saluting each other for some time, but Reatur chose that moment to leave, and Sarah walked away with him.

The mates’ chambers were always boisterous, with mates chasing one another and yelling at one another all through the day. To Lamra, the place seemed empty without Reatur and Sarah. She did not feel like playing with her friends. Even if she had, the growing buds were starting to make her too slow to keep up.

Another mate came up to her. Peri was left out of games a lot, too, as she was also growing buds. “What did the domain master and the-the funny thing want with you?” she asked, awe in her voice. Why did Reatur keep spending time with a mere mate, especially one with whom he had already mated?

“Reatur and the human,” Lamra said, flaunting her superior knowledge, “are working on ways to keep mates alive after budding.”

“You’re teasing me,” Peri said shrilly. “Nobody can do that.”

“I’m not, either. They are so.”

“Don’t be silly,” Peri said. “You can’t fool me, Lamra, not this time. Who ever heard of an old mate?”

Something moved, down in the bottom of Jotun Canyon. The motion was tiny, but anything visible at all from down there had to be good-sized. Shota Rustaveli swung up binoculars for a closer look. Having the depths of the canyon suddenly seem to jump seven times closer always unnerved him; it was as if he were flinging himself down into the abyss.

“What is it?” asked Yuri Voroshilov, who did not have field glasses with him.

“Yuri Ivanovich, I don’t know.” Rustaveli could feel his forehead crinkle in a puzzled frown. “I can’t figure it out. Maybe it was just the sun, flashing off water down there.”

‘”Bozhemoi,” Voroshilov said softly.

Rustaveli did not follow him for a moment. Then the biologist echoed that “My God” himself. Yesterday the bottom of the canyon had been dry. If it had water in it today, it would have more tomorrow, and as for the day after that… “Forty days and forty nights and then some,” he said.

“Da.” Voroshilov laughed softly. “Strange, is it not, how after three generations of a godless society, we still have the biblical images in the back of our minds, ready to call up when we need them?”

“Ask the devil’s mother why that’s so,” Rustaveli suggested.

They both laughed then.

“Such impudence.” If Oleg Lopatin had said that, Rustaveli would have bridled. Voroshilov only sounded amused. Then, sighing, the chemist grew more serious. “The flood is upon us, Shota Mikheilovich, in more ways than one.”

“Eh? What’s that?” Rustaveli’s mind was elsewhere. He wanted to get down to the water. There might be-there likely were-plants and animals down in the canyon that stayed dormant until the yearly floods came and then burst into feverish activity. Plenty of Earthly creatures did things like that, but who could guess what variations on the theme Minerva might offer?. No one could guess-that was why they were here, to find out.

But Voroshilov was thinking along very different lines. “We will have trouble, for one thing, if Lopatin does not leave Katerina alone. I know, because I will cause it.”

That got Rustaveli’s attention. His head snapped toward Voroshilov. The chemist was such a quiet fellow that he even announced insurrection as if it were no more important than a glass of tea. He meant what he said, though. The Georgian could see that.

“Slowly, my friend, slowly,” Rustaveli urged, wondering how-or whether-to head off Voroshilov. He had no use for Lopatin, but still… “The chekist is also a man, Yuri Ivanovich,” he said carefully. “I suppose he has the right to try his luck with her.”

“This I know,” Voroshilov said heavily. “To approach her is one thing. But he has hit her, Shota Mikheilovich; I have seen the marks. That is something else again. That I will not stand, even if he has made her too afraid to speak up for herself.”

Rustaveli scowled. Unfortunately, that sounded all too much like Lopatin. And Katerina had been down to Tsiolkovsky lately; she and Voroshilov had just come back to the environs of Hogram’s town. The chemist probably knew whereof he spoke.

“What will you do?” Rustaveli asked.

“Give him a taste of his own when he rotates up here next week. I was hoping you would join me-on the left, of course.”

“A blackmarket beating, eh?” Though not a native Russian speaker, Rustaveli understood the slang expression; everyone who lived in the Soviet Union dealt on the left, some more often, some less. Had the Georgian caught Lopatin cuffing Katerina around, he was sure he would cheerfully have pummeled him. Doing it in cold blood, planning it well in advance, was not the same thing. “Lopatin is a pig, da, but should we not see first if Tolmasov can bring him to heel?”

“A pig and a snake both,” Voroshilov growled. “Not only does he abuse Katya, he paws through my cabin and types my poems into his computer file for evidence. Evidence of what I do not know-perhaps only that, no matter how I try, I am no Akhmatova or Yevtushenko.” The chemist’s broad, fair face darkened with anger. His gloved hands folded into fists; had Lopatin been there at that moment, he would have had a bad time of it.

Rustaveli knew that the chekist snooped. Anything he wanted to keep to himself, he wrote in Georgian-let Lopatin make what he could of that! But then, snooping was part of Lopatin’s job. “Let us talk to Tolmasov,” Rustaveli repeated.

Voroshilov gave him a sour look. “You southerners are supposed to be men of spirit. So much for folk legends.”

“You Russians are supposed to be steady and unflappable,” Rustaveli retorted; he did not add “and boring,” as he might have. “If we go home, we will be heroes, so nothing may happen to us, but what of our families? I, for one, do not care to have the KGB know I assaulted one of theirs. Or do you think we could disguise ourselves as Minervan hooligans?”

He had hoped to make the chemist laugh, but Voroshilov was still scowling. They walked on a while in silence. Finally Voroshilov grunted, “Very well, we will speak with Tolmasov. Once.”

As always, Rustaveli rejoiced at the warmth inside the tent. As always, his valenki squelched on mud; keeping the tent heated to a temperature humans found bearable meant that the frozen ground underfoot thawed out.

By luck, Tolmasov was there and Katerina was not. The colonel glanced up from the report he was writing. He set aside his pen at once. “Why the long faces, comrades?” he asked. Rustaveli nodded to himself; he might have known Tolmasov would notice something was wrong.

Voroshilov did the talking. He was more fluent than Rustaveli expected, more fluent, in fact, than the Georgian had ever heard him-just as he had been all day, come to that. Anger lent him words he could not normally command.

Tolmasov held his face impassive as he listened. Finally he said. “I have seen the mark you mean, I think: the bruise that runs close by her left breast and along her ribs?”