Harry Turtledove - A World of Difference

Reatur felt like pulling in all his eyestalks and pretending to be a stump. He might have done so, had he thought Onditi and Venots-or even one of them-would let him get away with it. Sadly, he knew better.

“One at a time, please,” he said wearily. Onditi had got to him before Venots, so the domain master pointed to him first.

“What have the cursed, miserable, stupid eloca gone and done now?”

“Are you sure you should have brushed Tolmasov off that way?” Irv asked Emmett Bragg after listening to the tape of the conversation between the two pilots.

Bragg bristled. “Damn straight I’m sure.” When he swore, Irv knew, he was both angry and in earnest. “Long as the Russians keep to their side of Jotun Canyon, none o’ their business what we do over here. Besides, if they even think we’ve given guns to the Minervans here, maybe they’ll get serious about keeping Hogram’s gang on their own side where they belong.”

“Or maybe they’ll give them guns, too, to keep things balanced,” Irv pointed out.

“Hadn’t thought of that.” Bragg frowned, but his face cleared after a moment. “I don’t believe it. Tolmasov’s not that dumb. No matter what he thinks of us, no way he’d let the natives have the drop on him. I wouldn’t, not in his long johns.”

“I suppose not,” Irv said. “If we started shooting at each other here, it could even touch off a war back home.”

“Yeah.” Bragg nodded. “Like I said, Tolmasov’s not that dumb. But he’s no friend of ours, either-good for his digestion to get stirred up every once in a while. Let him stew.”

“All right, Emmett.” Somewhat reassured, Irv went back to work. He had spoken his piece, and Emmett hadn’t gone along. Fair enough. Bragg’s judgment had been good so far, he told himself. Likely it was this time, too. He didn’t necessarily trust the Russians that far himself, either.

Tolmasov listened to the tape from Earth once more. He shook his head. He wasn’t used to getting orders this simple. “’Use your own best judgment regarding firearms for the Minervans,’ “he repeated. “Who would have thought Moscow could be so generous?”

“And what is your best judgment, O mighty boyar?” Shota Rustaveli asked.

“If I were a boyar, my best judgment would be to clip the tongue of such an impudent subject,” Tolmasov retorted, but he could not help smiling. Rustaveli reveled in being impossible. More seriously, the pilot went on, “My best judgment is to be very sorry that I have to tell Fralk my domain masters will not let us sell them any Kalashnikovs.”

Rustaveli wore gloves, even inside the tent. He clapped just the same. “That is an excellent best judgment to have, I think.” “Da,” Katerina said, looking up from a microscope.

Oleg Lopatin did not say anything. His wide shoulders jerked in a shrug. Tolmasov did not think Lopatin was pleased. He did not much care. If the KGB man knew what was good for him, he would follow orders. To give Lopatin his due, something the pilot did only reluctantly, he had been obeying Tolmasov with military exactness. Let him keep right on doing it, Tolmasov thought as he went out to find Fralk.

As he explained himself, he watched the Minervan turn yellow. He had seen them do that among themselves, but rarely at him: humans and Minervans tried to stay on best behavior around each other. He knew it was not a good sign.

“Your domain masters do not understand that we need these rifles,” Fralk said. “They are far away. You are here. Let us buy a rifle, and the success we have with it will float above their orders as ice floats on water.”

“I am sorry.” Tolmasov spread his hands. “Even though they are far, I cannot disobey my domain masters any more than you can Hogram.”

“Cannot?” Fralk said, now resembling nothing so much as an outraged banana with a great many arms. “Will not, I think, comes nearer the truth.” An outraged sarcastic banana, Tolmasov thought. He shook his head to try to drive away the mental image-this was what he got for spending so much time with Rustaveli.

The real problem was that Fralk had it right. Tolmasov did not like lying to the Minervan. He did not hesitate, either. “Do you go against Hogram’s wishes as soon as he cannot see you? My domain masters would punish my disobedience when we got home.”

“This is your final word?” Fralk demanded.

“I am sorry, but it is.”

“You will be sorrier.” Had Fralk been a human, he would have turned on his heel and stomped off. Instead he averted all his eyestalks from Tolmasov as he left. That got the same message across, the pilot thought glumly.

He walked through one of the market areas that ringed Hogram’s town. If he shut his eyes, the racket there reminded him of the little stalls in Smolensk-and every other Russian town- where farm women sold city housewives the beets and chickens they raised on their private plots of land. Minervan males’ high voices only made the resemblance closer.

Two males came up to Tolmasov, one on either side. One carried a spear, the other a Soviet-made hatchet. “Please go back to your cloth house now, human,” the male with the spear said. It did not sound like a request.

“Why?” Tolmasov asked. Doubting whether either male spoke any Russian past the word human, he went on in their language. “Many times I, people like me come here. Not do harm, not bother Hogram’s males. Just look. Why not look now?”

“Because Fralk demands it, in Hogram’s name,” that male replied. He lifted the spear to block the pilot’s path. “Go back to your cloth house now.”

“I go,” Tolmasov said, thinking Fralk had wasted no time in starting his petty revenge.

When he got back to the tent, he found the revenge was not petty. More armed males surrounded the orange nylon bubble. One of them was laying down the law to Oleg Lopatin-the Minervans had never heard of the KGB. Lucky them, Tolmasov thought.

Then he got close enough to hear what the Minervan was saying, and things abruptly stopped being even a little bit funny. “You strange creatures have interesting devices, and for their sake we have let you do and go as you would,” the male told Lopatin. “Now you will not share one of these devices with us, so why should we keep extending to you the privileges you earned only with good behavior?”

He sounded like a soldier repeating a memorized message. Tolmasov suspected that was partly because Lopatin’s grasp of the Skarmer language was still weak, and he would not have understood everything on the first try.

“Only want to go out, look,” Lopatin protested.

“You strange creatures have interesting devices-“ The male went through his routine again. As far as Tolmasov could tell, he used just the same words he had before. Someone had given him those words. Hogram or Fralk, the pilot thought, disquieted. They were ready for us to say no.

Shedding his own escort, he strode over to the male who was keeping Lopatin just outside the tent. Lopatin actually gave him a grateful look, something he had never before earned from the chekist. The Minervan, of course, used a spare eyestalk to see Tolmasov coming-no chance of taking a native by surprise, as he might have a human guard.

“What you do here?” Tolmasov asked in his sternest tones. When the male started to go into his routine once more, the pilot cut him off. “I hear this before. What you do with us humans?”

The Minervan had more than one groove to his record after all. “From now on, you stay here inside this ugly house. You do not go out for any reason. If you do not do what we want, the domain master says, we will not let you do what you want. He is a trader, not a giver.”

“We only do what our domain masters order,” Tolmasov said.