Harry Turtledove - A World of Difference

“Shit,” Irv said softly. He could still see Damselfly off in the distance. Sarah was banking into a long, slow, gentle turn, the only kind the ultra-ultralight could make. He could still call her back-and most likely throw away the battle and Emmett with it… and Lamra and her budlings, too, come to that, if Reatur’s males were beaten.

“What do we do?” Louise asked.

He kicked at frozen dirt, made his choice. “How are you at coping with gore?”

“I won’t lose my lunch, if that’s what you mean,” Louise answered at once. “You want me to help you try to save the Minervan?”

“That’s just what I want. Hang on to Sarah’s clothes. She’s got clamps and bandages in one of those pockets. Pat and I will coach you through as best we can. You’ve got to be quick and accurate twice. Each of us does, and if we are, we have a chance.” Irv wished he were as confident as he sounded. It hadn’t happened yet, not even once.

“I’m not the person you need,” Louise said.

“You’re the person I’ve got. Come on.” They ran for thecastle.

The world wheeled under Sarah as she began another slow, careful clockwise turn. The cold breeze coming in through the freshair tube helped take away the stink of the gunk sprayed all over the bottom of the cabin.

A great circle, she thought-surely this was the long way around to deliver a surprise to the Skarmer. It had a couple of advantages, though. For one thing, it gave her plenty of time in which to make Damselfly climb. She knew she had sugarcoated what she had told Irv. Even in dense Minervan air, the ultra-ultralight climbed like a fat man going up a tall ladder. It wasn’t any worse now than it had been before they fiddled with it, though, so she hadn’t really lied.

The route she was flying would also let her come up from behind the Skarmer, as far as the idea of behind meant anything when dealing with Minervans. This once, Emmett had argued- persuasively, worse luck, it just might. Males in a battle ought to have sense enough to keep all their eyestalks pointed in the direction from which danger came-toward Reatur’s warriors, in other words. They shouldn’t spot her till too late.

Ought to, shouldn’t, ought to, shouldn’t… “If you’re wrong, Emmett, I’ll never speak to you again.” Sarah panted.

That, she feared, was no joke. Her stomach did flipflops when she thought about what a burst of Kalashnikov fire would do to Damselfly-and to her.

Fighter pilots, she realized suddenly, earned every penny they got, and then some.

“Never seen this place so deserted,” Irv said, puffing. His footsteps and Louise’s echoed down the hallways of Reatur’s castle. On any other day, the noise of dozens of males would have drowned them out. Now he had only seen a couple, one barely full-grown and the other ancient.

“At the battle.” Louise, also getting her breath back, was short with words.

The usual racket pierced the doors of the mates’ chambers: mates were sheltered from worries about their fate. Or rather, Irv thought, they never got the chance to grow enough to understand what worrying about their fate meant. Maybe that would start to change today. Maybe.

The guard outside the doors widened himself as the humans came up. He was in his prime, standing by a post Reatur reckoned important enough to keep him out of the fighting. “What word?” he asked anxiously.

“I do not know,” Irv answered. “The battle still goes on.

Let us pass now, please.”

The male unbarred the doors, shut them again behind Irv and Louise. Mates rushed from everywhere at the boom of the falling bar, then drew back, disappointed, when they saw only humans, not Reatur.

“Pat?” Louise called.

“In here.” Irv shook his head when he noticed from which chamber the answer came. It was the one in which Biyal had died. He did not think of himself as superstitious, but he wished Lamra were somewhere else.

Lamra lifted an eyestalk when he and Louise came in. “Hello,” the mate said. “Pat told me I should not say goodbye, not yet.”

“No, not yet,” Irv said soberly. Soon, though, maybe, he thought and scowled at himself. He could hear the unease in his voice when he asked Pat, “How’s she doing?” “See for yourself. The skin is splitting.”

“So it is.” Irv stooped and switched to the Omalo language. “Lift the arm by me, please, Lamra.” Lamra did. The mate kept her fist closed, but Irv saw the graybrown of Minervan wood between her fingerclaws: the precious toy runnerpest, he supposed.

He smiled at that a little and waved Louise down beside him. “See?” he said, pointing at the growing vertical slit over the bud. Louise nodded. “In a few minutes, as the opening gets longer and wider, you’ll be able to see the whole budling, and how it’s hooked on to Lamra by its mouth. When it falls away- when it’s born, I mean-it’ll drop off. That’ll be that, unless we can clamp the vessel it was feeding from, and the ones for the other five, too. With two for each of us, we may have a chance.”

“We can’t afford any fumbling, though.” Pat sounded as if she was talking as much to herself as to Louise. “We’ve got to be right the first time.”

Louise got clamps, bandage packs, and rolls of tape out of Sarah’s parka. “I’ll do the best I can,” she said. She didn’t seem nervous; she sounded intrigued, like an engineer sizing up a new and challenging problem. Only fair, Irv thought-she was one.

“Let’s take our places,” he said. The budling’s wiggling feet were already pushing through the opening in Lamra’s skin. So, through the other slits, were those of its brothers and sisters. Irv slid over to Louise’s right; Pat was on her left.

“What about the six vessels around each central one?” Louise asked. “Shouldn’t we clamp those, too?”

“The bandages should take care of them,” Pat said. “They’re all small, compared to the one in the middle. That’s the one- the two, rather-you’ve got to worry about. When the budlings drop, they’ll go like a fire hydrant hit by a car.”

Irv grimaced. That was a more graphic simile than he wanted to think about. He switched to the Omalo tongue again. “How do you feel, Lamra?” The mate, after all, was no experimental animal, but a person, too, and a young person, at that. She had to be wondering, worrying about, what would happen next.

“It doesn’t hurt now,” Lamra said after a moment’s pause, perhaps for taking stock. “Will it hurt later, when you stop me from ending?”

“I don’t think so,” Irv said, as reassuringly as he could. Actually, he had no idea. He hoped he-and Lamra-would find out. He also hoped the mate was as confident as she sounded. When you stop me from ending… He knew that when was an if. If Lamra didn’t, more power to her, for as much time as she had.

They would soon know how long that would be. The arms and eyestalks of the budling in front of Irv were twitching now along with its legs; its mouth was tightly clamped round the big blood vessel that fed it.

“Any minute-“ Pat breathed. If she was going to add “now,” she never got the chance. Lamra’s budlings all let go at once. Blood gushed forth in a torrent that astonished Irv anew every time he saw it.

The clamps were on the ground between his feet. He seized the spurting vessel in front of him with one hand, snatched up a clamp, stuck it on. That flood slowed to a drip. He shifted leftward, grabbing for the second bleeder and the other clamp.

At almost the same instant, Pat shifted to her right. Just as he had, she had started on the blood vessel further away from Louise so she could deal with both of hers and be in position to help.

Irv fumbled with the second clamp, got it on at last. He looked toward Louise. “How you doing?” he asked. “Need a hand?” From the engineer’s other side, Pat was using nearly the same words to ask the same thing.