Harry Turtledove - A World of Difference

Emmett Bragg would be wild when he found out about his countryman’s death. And even Tolmasov was leery of Bragg.

“You get him on the radio and you find out what the hell he’s playing at, do you hear me, Sergei Konstantinovich?” Bragg sounded like an angry tiger, Tolmasov thought. He did not blame his American opposite number, either.

“I am calling, Brigadier Bragg, calling repeatedly, I assure you. But he does not reply.”

“Neither does Frank Marquard. What does that say to you?”

“Nothing I like,” Tolmasov admitted.

“Me either,” Bragg growled. “Near as I can see, it says your man’s gone rogue on this side of the canyon. I don’t like that, Sergei Konstantinovich, not one little bit. You better believe I’ll do anything I need to, to protect the rest of my crew. Anything. Don’t say you weren’t warned.”

“I understand.” If Tolmasov could have got Lopatin in his sights, he might have dealt with him himself. “You’d better. Bragg out.”

Silence crashed down in the tent outside Hogram’s town. Tolmasov sat storing at the radio for a minute or two before he got up. The mission had gone so well for so long, but when it decided to come apart, it didn’t fool around. Someone on Tsiolkovsky-Rustaveli or Voroshilov, that had to be-calling the Americans, and whoever had not called cutting him off in midsentence. The pilot did not know whether to be angrier at caller or cutter.

And Lopatin! Tolmasov still did not know what to make of that. He did not want to think even a chekist could go out of control the moment he got off on his own, but he did not know what else to think, either. The fool’s stubborn refusal to start or accept communication did not speak well of him.

The pilot turned to Valery Bryusov and Katerina, who had listened to his exchange with Bragg with as much shock and dismay as he had felt. “Comments?” he asked. Maybe, just maybe, one of them had seen something he had missed.

“Sergei, we have a major problem,” Katerina said. Bryusov nodded solemnly. So, after a moment, did Tolmasov. The only trouble was, he already knew that.

Irv peered down into Jotun Canyon. He’d had the weight of a pistol on his hip before, but now he really felt it. The idea of using the gun on a Minervan horrified him. The idea of using it against an AKT4 horrified him, too, for a different reason-he was glad he had made a will before leaving Earth.

By rights, he thought, trying to blend into the bushes, this was Emmett Bragg’s job. Emmett was a soldier, not an anthropologist playing pretend. But Emmett was also the pilot-the number one pilot and, if the worst had happened to Frank, the only pilot. He was not expendable as a scout.

The Minervans down in the canyon did not look any different from Reatur’s males. Irv knew, though, that none of Reatur’s males were there. These had to be the enemy, then-the Skarmer, the Russians called them.

And Oleg Lopatin. Without the frantic call from Tsiolkovsky, Irv would not have know which Russian accompanied the Skarmer over Jotun Canyon, but a human being’s jointed, jerky motions were instantly recognizable against a backdrop of waving Minervan arms and tentacles. For one giddy moment, Irv hoped the human down there was Frank, but the Americans did not wear fur hats.

How had the Skarmer crossed, anyhow? Irv let his binoculars sweep past the knot of natives to water’s edge. At first, the round bowlshapes he saw there meant nothing to him. Then he realized they had to be boats. They looked dreadfully small and flimsy to stack against the current in the canyon, let alone the drift ice there.

Maybe, he thought, the Skarmer had not known the risk they were taking when they set out. Being too ignorant to worry about trouble had fueled a lot of human enterprises, too. Too bad this one was aimed in his direction.

Some of the Skarmer began moving upslope. Seen through lenses, the motion was magnified, menacing. Irv scuttled backward even while the rational part of his mind insisted he was in no danger. That did not stop his retreat. It did make him keep the binoculars trained as he backed away.

The tight knot of Minervans he had been watching broke up in the advance. He saw what they had been gathered around:

Frank Marquard’s crumpled corpse. The sight came as no surprise, but it was like a kick in the belly all the same.

Irv scrambled onto his bike and raced back toward Athena.

Ternat wished Dordal had been budded as a mate, so he-no, she, he would have been; this was almost as complicated as remembering half the humans were mates-could have died young, while budding six offspring as idiotic as himself. Reatur’s eldest refused to perform the mental gymnastics he knew he needed to make the last arm of that sentence point in the same direction as the rest.

“Is this still our domain, eldest, or is it Dordal’s?” one of the males with him asked.

Ternat considered. He had come this way earlier in the year, trying to convince Dordal that the Skarmer threat was real! All he had succeeded in doing was convincing Dordal that Reatur thought it was real, and so could be raided with impunity. “Still ours, Phelig,” he answered, hoping he would make a better warleader than he had an envoy.

The male’s eyestalks drooped in disappointment. “Then we have to leave that fence alone?”

“I’m afraid so.” Ternat had had an eye or three on the enclosure, too, until he decided where they were. “Don’t worry. It won’t be long.”

That proved even truer than he had expected. The sun was falling west through clouds toward Ervis Gorge when the war band came upon a pen that had been thrown down. Snow had fallen since then, to cover any tracks, but Ternat still caught the rancid stink of massi voidings. He did not have to see to follow the trail. It led north. “Anything’ from here on, we can take back with us. Either Dordal’s males stole it from us, or we’ll steal it from them,” Ternat shouted. His comrades cheered.

No formal post marked the border between Reatur’s domain and Dordal’s. On either side of the border that was not marked, though, males knew who their clanfather was. The ones on Dordal’s side knew to run away when a large band of strangers came up from the south.

The scent trail grew stronger. Ternat began to wonder if he and his males were walking into a trap. He doubted whether Dordal had the wit to set one, but one of the northern domain master’s bright young males-say, a male much like Ternat- might.

Sure enough, not long after the idea crossed Ternat’s mind, a male pointed casually toward a large boulder off to the side of the path. Just as casually, Reatur’s eldest turned an eyestalk in that direction. Someone was peeking out at them.

“Let’s go on a little ways and then rush back,” Ternat said after a moment’s thought. “That way we’ll stand between the spy and his friends, so he won’t be able to run to them.”

As if unaware, the males ambled past the boulder. Ternat swung an arm down. Shrieking, brandishing their spears, the raiding party reversed themselves and ran to catch the male who had been watching them.

“Take him alive!” Ternat yelled. “We need answers.”

Had the spying male fled, he would not have got far, not with nine eighteens of warriors after him. But he did not flee. Indeed, Ternat wondered if he could flee. Even after he widened himself in submission, he was one of the thinnest males Reatur’s eldest had ever seen, and one of the filthiest as well.

He was not blue with fear under his dirt, though, and Ternat understood why a moment later, when he cried out, “Hurrah! You’ve come to get the beasts back!”

Anticlimax, Ternat thought. Having been all keyed up to fight or pursue, here he was, greeted as a savior. Lowering his spears-surely there could be no harm in one starveling male- he said,” ‘Back’? You’re one of Reatur’s herders?”