Harry Turtledove: A World of Difference

“Orth-“ Reatur prompted.

“Hello,” the guard managed to say. His eyestalks returned to the domain master. “A mate out by herself, living like a male? Forgive me, clanfather, but not even a massi-herder living off by himself with a couple of mates would let them run loose. How could he? They don’t know enough not to get into mischief, and then-“ Orth suddenly seemed to realize Lamra was a person of sorts, even if a mate. “-and then they’re, uh, done,” he finished weakly.

“They die before they learn enough not to get into mischief, you mean, because they drop their budlings,” Reatur said. “Lamra has dropped her budlings and isn’t dead. She can learn. She has time to learn.”

Orth stood silent. “Hello,” Lamra said again in a soft voice. Orth didn’t answer. He doesn’t like me, Lamra thought-nobody likes me out here, either. She started to go back into the mates’ chambers. With the mates, at least she could remind herself how foolish they were. But grownup males weren’t foolish. She knew that. If they didn’t like her, maybe she wasn’t worth liking.

But Reatur said, “Come along,” and started down the corridor. She found herself following him; he was the one link with certainty she had left.

“What’s that?” she exclaimed a little later, pointing into a small room. She had expected to see different things outside the mates’ chambers, but none so different as the-animal? monster? in there.

Reatur wiggled his eyestalks. “For years-for longer than you’ve been alive-I wondered the same thing. I found it in the hills not far from here. Turns out the humans made it. It’s one of their gadgets, fancier than most.”

“Oh,” Lamra said. “Then there were humans so long ago.

I hadn’t thought of that.”

Reatur looked at her. “I hadn’t, either, not in that way. They certainly never showed themselves till this past spring. But you never can tell with humans.”

“No, you can’t,” Lamra said, “because if you could, I wouldn’t be here with you now.”

Males walked by as Lamra stood in the doorway, peering at the human gadget. They peered at her, too. None of them spoke to her, though, or even to Reatur about her. She wondered if they were trying to pretend she didn’t exist. She squeezed her runnerpest. The pressure of it in her hand reminded her she was real.

Then a male said, “Well, well, what have we here? You must be Lamra.”

He was talking to her. She widened herself and stammered, “Yyes, I am. Who are you?”

“I’m Ternat, Reatur’s eldest. Are you, ah, doing well, Lamra?

You must find this whole business about as odd as we do.”

Someone who understood! Someone who wasn’t Reatur or a human but understood! So that could happen! “I’m-better now, thank you very much, Ternat.”

“Good.” Ternat turned an eyestalk toward Reatur. “Why did you decide to bring her out, clanfather?.”

“The mates were harassing her,” the domain master answered. “Males will, too, I fear, but they’ll have the sense to obey me when I tell them to stop. And they’re grown; they won’t try to hurt her just because she’s different. Or if anyone does, the example I make of him will show the others it’s not a good idea.”

Lamra widened herself to Reatur this time. “Thank you for thinking ahead and looking out for me, clanfather.”

“You don’t know how to look out for yourself yet, Lamra. I expect you’ll learn. Some males get to be old and saggy-skinned without ever figuring it out.” Reatur’s eyestalks twitched. “In fact, there’s one of just that sort I’d like you to meet.” He started down the corridor, then paused to wave an encouraging arm to Ternat. “You come, too, eldest. I think you’ll enjoy this.”

The domain master led Lamra out through an open door. Suddenly she realized no walls were anywhere nearby. She stopped walking and watched herself turn blue. “Is this- outside?” she asked faintly. She felt like a speck of dust floating in the middle of infinite space.

“Yes, it is,” Reatur said. “What do you think of it?” He did not mention her color.

“It’s-very big.”

“So it is. Come on, now; we don’t have far to go.” And off he went, Ternat beside him. Lamra had a choice of staying frozen while the two people in the world who cared about her went away or of going after them. She took a step, then another and another. They came ever more easily. Reatur went outside all the time, she thought, and it didn’t hurt him. It probably wouldn’t hurt her, either.

But there was so much of it!

Several eighteens of males-more eighteens than Lamra could easily count-milled about in a large pen made of branches.

Others, these carrying spears, stood all around the pen.

“These are the males from Dordal’s domain that Ternat captured,” Reatur explained. “We’d send them back, but for some reason”-his eyestalks wiggled briefly-“Dordal’s eldest, Grevil, isn’t interested in paying for them.”

One of the males, a large impressive one near the edge of the pen, was saying in a loud voice, “All this talk of humans”-

Lamra knew mates who pronounced the word better than he did-“bores me no end. They’re weird things, true enough, but what can they really do? I’m tired of hearing impossible lies and fables.”

“Hello, Dordal,” Reatur said. “So you want to know what humans can do, eh? Here, let me present you to the mate Lamra. The humans saved her when she dropped her budlings not long after Ternat captured you.”

Dordal’s eyestalks jounced up and down with humor that was obviously forced. “Tell me another tale, Reatur.” Then one of those moving eyes lit on Lamra. “It is a mate,” he said in surprise. “I’d not have thought even one like you would let them run loose. But why does it look so-tattered?”

“I told you, Dordal. You listen about as well as you plan. Lamra dropped her budlings, and the humans kept her from dying afterward.”

“That’s what happened, Dordal,” Lamra agreed. “I was there. I ought to know.” She reached down, pulled wide the still partially open flaps of skin that had once bulged over a budling. Dordal drew back in alarm. Lamra could not see why; only the clamps were still in there, and Sarah had promised that even they could come out in another few days.

“She’ll live longer than you will, Dordal,” Ternat said cheerfully. “A lot longer, if Grevil doesn’t come up with your ransom soon.”

“Humans did that?” Dordal muttered. He turned blue, hurried away from the fence. “Then they’re worse monsters than she is!”

“Don’t let him bother you,” Reatur told Lamra. “He hasn’t any more sense than a runnerpest, you know.”

Lamra squeezed her toy. “I do know,” she said, unruffled. “Some mates are like that, too, even ones who got older than I am before they started budding. I didn’t think it would be true of males, too, that’s all. Of course, the only male I’ve really known till now is you, Reatur.” For some reason she could not fathom, the domain master and his eldest started laughing at each other. “Stop it! What’s funny?”

“Never mind, little one,” Reatur said. To Ternat, he went on, “You see why I wanted to keep this one?”

“Because she can tell you’re brighter than Dordal? A nosver could figure out that much.”

“Disrespectful-“ But Reatur’s eyestalks were wiggling again. “No, because she thinks about the way things work. Don’t you, Lamra?”

“I try to,” she said absently. She wasn’t paying too much attention to the domain master. She was too busy looking at the wide, wide world, or rather, at pieces of it. If she examined one thing at a time, the wideness was less oppressive. She pointed. “What’s that?”