Harry Turtledove: A World of Difference

Hogram turned yellow. Tolmasov did not blame him. Reatur had all too good a grip on how the arrival of humans was changing Minerva. But the Skarmer chieftain said what he had to say. “I will.”

“Now tell me,” Reatur said, “why you want me to feed and house-and guard-your warriors until fall.”

“Because when the flood subsides, by your leave we will stretch the bridge across Ervis Gorge once more. Our males can cross to our side, and we will send payment to you in return.”

“Send the payment first,” Reatur said promptly.

“I trust you no more than you trust me,” Hogram retorted.

“Send the males first.” “No.”

Hogram turned yellow again. He did not answer.

“We’d best do something,” Bryusov whispered to Tolmasov.

Tile pilot nodded. The spectacle of Russians and Americans helping Minervans fight a war had done nothing for the prestige of the Soviet Union or the United States back home. Helping Minervans make peace might possibly repair it. But the silence was getting icy-a good word for silence on Minerva, Tolmasov thought.

“Suggest they takes turns,” Tolmasov whispered back. “Do it in trade talk, so they’ll both understand.” Bryusov, by now, was fairly fluent in the local lingua franca.

“Honored domain masters,” the linguist said, “perhaps if some males are freed, then some of the payment made, then more males freed-”

“Perhaps,” Hogram said thoughtfully. “A third of the males, a third of the payment, and so on.”

“First you pay, then we release males,” Reatur said. “And we will do it in six turns, not three. If we tried it the other way round, you could cheat us out of the last third of the payment and leave us with no arm of yours to grab.”

Tolmasov waited for Hogram to get angry again. Instead, the Skarmer domain master wiggled his eyestalks. He said, “You are wasted as an Omalo, Reatur; you should have been budded as one of us.”

“No, I’m no thief, Hogram. My job is keeping thieves in line.”

Irv Levitt quickly cut in, in English: “He’s laughing. Is your boy?”

“Yes,” Tolmasov answered, and switched to the Skarmer tongue to let Hogram know what the American had said. Hogram waved an indulgent arm-he had known without being told. Tolmasov felt annoyed, then resigned.

The Skarmer domain master spoke into the radio. “Do we agree?”

“Yes, provided we can work out the cost of feeding the captives each day,” Reatur said. “If not, I suppose I can always start getting rid of them.”

If that was humor, Tolmasov thought, it was in poor taste.

Hogram did not seem put out. “We will work it out,” he said.

“Are we finished, then?”

“I think so,” Reatur answered.

This time, Bryusov interrupted without Tolmasov’s prompting. “Honored domain masters, while you talk with each other now, why not pledge not to fight each other anymore so long as you both abide by today’s agreement?”

“What a foolish pledge that would be,” Hogram said. “Reatur and I do not spring from the same bud. We are not friends.

We may well go to war again, and we both know it. Why lie now?”

“For once we agree, Skarmer,” Reatur said. “And who can say on which side of Ervis Gorge the fight may be? We can make baskets that float on water, too, you know, now that we’ve seen some.”

Hogram made a whistling noise Tolmasov had never heard from a Minervan before, one that reminded him of a teapot coming to a boil. “None of my males grasps the importance of new things as quickly as you do, now that-now that Fralk is dead. I wish you were of my budding, Reatur; I would name you eldest-designate.”

“Dealing with humans”-Reatur said it in English; Tolmasov put it into Russian for the Skarmer-“has taught me more about new things than I ever expected to know.”

“Yes.” Hogram stepped away from the radio. He told Tolmasov, “That is all.”

“Levitt, are you there?” the pilot called. When the American answered, he went on, “We have a success to report, it seems.”

“Yes, they’ll be relieved back home,” Irv answered in English. “I don’t think people back home could stomach a cold-blooded prisoner massacre.” He let the obvious joke lie.

Tolmasov respected him because of it; this was business. “Come to that, I’m not sure I could, either.”

“Out,” was all Tolmasov said. He and Bryusov bowed their way out of Hogram’s presence and started back toward their big orange tent.

“Foolish, the Americans, foolish and soft,” Bryusov said after a while. “One deals with whomever one has to deal with.”

“They talk softer than they are, Valery Aleksandrovich. Never forget it.” Tolmasov had had that same swift flash of contempt for Irv Levitt but changed his mind after a little thought. “For one thing, as you said, Levitt would go right on dealing with Reatur no matter what Reatur did. He may not want to admit it to himself, but he would.

“And for another, before you call them soft, remember what happened to Fralk and Oleg Lopatin. I am trained as a combat pilot, but I would not care to attack a Kalashnikov with a glorified hang glider.”

Bryusov was very quiet for the rest of the walk. That suited Tolmasov fine.

Emmett Bragg was hurrying up the corridor when Sarah came through the airlock into Athena. He stopped and grinned at hex with the peculiarly male grin that never failed to set her teeth on edge. “Will you stop it?” she hissed. “Anyone who sees you will know exactly what that stupid expression means.”

The grin didn’t go away. “Nobody here but you and me.”

“Oh.” That hadn’t happened since the day of the battle. Since then, Sarah had stayed close to Irv most of the time, partly because they both spent a lot of time with Lamra and partly because it kept her from having to think about those frantic minutes on Pat’s mattress. Irv seemed happy enough to be with her, too; they had probably spent more continuous waking time together since Lamra’s budlings dropped than in all the previous months on Minerva put together.

Now she would have to think about those minutes. “Let it slide, Emmett, all right?” In similar circumstances Irv, she was sure, would have come back with a raunchy pun. Emmett just stood there, warrior-alert, and waited for her to go on. That her first thought was of Irv told her some of what she needed to know. “Not that it wasn’t good while it happened, but-”

“But what?” He stepped closer.

“Emmett!” She heard her voice get shrill. That infuriated her, but she couldn’t help it. If he went ahead regardless of whether she wanted him to, she would try to give him a dreadful surprise. But he was bigger, stronger, a trained soldier… Of all the nightmares shell had about being cooped up on Athena with too many people in too small a space for too long, this was the worst.

Smooth as ever, he moved away from her. Then he started to laugh. “What’s so goddamn funny?” she barked, angrier than ever.

“You, gearin’ up to kick me right where it’ll do the most good. You don’t need to do that. Have I ever gone any place I wasn’t welcome?”

“You’d know better than I would.” But that wasn’t fair, either. “Not with me,” Sarah admitted.

“All right, then. Probably better this way, anyhow.” That cool calculation of risk was Emmett to the core.

She did her best to imitate him. “I think you’re right. For the ship and for-everything else.”

“Suppose so.” He cocked his head, studied her. “Do you really think you could’ve stopped me?”

“No,” she answered honestly. “But I was going to give it my best shot.”

“I noticed. Okay-can’t ask for more than that. Now I’m gonna get back to work.” He headed toward the control room, never looking back. For all he showed, he and Sarah might have been at the office water cooler, talking about the weather. She envied his detachment and had no idea how to duplicate it.