Harry Turtledove: 3 x T

"Let's take them back to the ship and get them into cold sleep," Greenberg said. "I don't want them awake in there and bouncing off the walls."

"Sounds good to me," Jennifer said. She spoke for the first time to the guard. "Honored Great One, could you please carry these humans to our ship? With your great size and strength, you can easily take them both at once."

Flattery got her nowhere. The guard said one word: "No."

She appealed to Solut Mek Kem. She got four words from him: "No. Carry your own."

She and Greenberg went over to the CroMagnon couple. Whatever had kept them in their corner of the room didn't keep the traders out. Greenberg grabbed the unconscious man by his shoulders. Jennifer took hold of his ankles. He was hairy, scarred, flea-bitten, and smelly. He seemed to weigh a ton, and Jennifer was sure he would only get heavier as she toted him.

"Let's go," Greenberg grunted. Neither of them had much practice at hauling what was in essence deadweight. Having the Foitani guard alongside watching did nothing to make matters easier. Getting the limp CroMagnon into and through the cramped air lock of the Harold Meeker was a separate wrestling match in itself. Breathing hard, Greenberg said, "Give him another dose, Jennifer. We want to make sure he's out until we can bring his mate back."

"Right," Jennifer said. Thinking of all the trouble a primitive who woke up too soon could get into on a starship was enough to make her blood run cold and then some.

After the man was sent into deeper unconsciousness, she and Greenberg went back for the woman. She was just as dirty and smelly and flea-bitten as her companion, but, fortunately, a good deal lighter. Greenberg once again handled the head end. "You know," he said, looking down at his burden, "clean her up a little?well, a lot?and she might be pretty."

"Maybe," Jennifer said. "So what?"

"It makes life easier." After a few steps, Greenberg noticed Jennifer hadn't answered. "Doesn't it?" he asked.

"A lot of the time, all it does is make things more complicated," she said. She thought about it for a few more steps, then added, "This one, though, will need all the help she can get. For her, I suppose, being pretty really is going to be an asset instead of a nuisance."

The woman was starting to wiggle and moan by the time they got to the Harold Meeker. Greenberg stunned her again before he and Jennifer hauled her through the air lock. He said, "Let's put them into cold sleep as fast as we can, before they start getting frisky again."

The cold-sleep process was designed to go fast, so it could be activated in case of sudden emergency aboard ship. As Jennifer hooked the male of the pair up to the system, she said, "What are they going to do when we get them back to human space? Nobody's had to deal with human primitives for hundreds of years; it must be a lost art."

"I haven't the slightest idea what they'll do," Greenberg answered. "I'm not going to worry about it, either. Whatever it is, it has to be better than life as experimental animals for the Foitani."

"You're right about that," Jennifer said. Just as she was connecting the nerve-retarder net, the communicator buzzed. "No, damn it, not now," she shouted at it. "We're not even screwing!"

The communicator ignored her. The words that came from it were more like snarls than speech. The translator turned them into flat Spanglish. "Answer me, you pestilential sub-Foitani creatures. When Voskop W Wurd deigns to speak with you, you are to take it as a privilege."

"Oh, shut up for a minute," Jennifer said, enjoying the license given her by a good many thousand kilometers of empty space between herself and the Rof Golani warleader. When the CroMagnons' pod retreated into its storage bay, she decided to notice the communicator again. "Now, what is it you want, Voskop W Wurd?"

"Whatever documents you have passed on to the Oderna and the kwopillot, " Voskop W Wurd answered.

"Oh," Jennifer said. "Yes, I can do that. I would have done it sooner, but it never occurred to me that you might want them, Voskop W Wurd. You hadn't shown much use for humans, you know." You haven't shown much use for anything, you know, she added mentally.

The warleader said, "If my potential allies and my enemies have these data, I should be privy to them as well. Explain to me why the Oderna and kwopillot are interested in these long effusions by sub-Foitani."

"I love you, too, Voskop W Wurd," Jennifer said sweetly. But the more minds trying to find avoid a new round of Suicide Wars, the better, so she did explain to the warleader the concept of science fiction and its potential application here. Voskop W Wurd was vicious, but not stupid. Jennifer finished, "The books and stories are examples intended to turn your thinking in the appropriate direction."

Voskop W Wurd remained silent for some time after she was through. At last, he said, "This new concept will have to be analyzed. We on Rof Golan write and declaim sagas of great warriors of the past, but have nothing to do with the set of organized lies you term fiction, still less with using it as if it were fact."

"Let me know what you think when you've looked at the documents," Jennifer said. "You might also want to talk to Aissur Aissur Rus. He comes fairly close to being able to grasp another race's point of view."

Voskop W Wurd switched off without replying?typical Foitani manners, Jennifer thought. But she remained more cheerful than otherwise. The Rof Golani hadn't dismissed the concept of trying SF techniques to extrapolate ways in which kwopillot and vodranet could live together in the same galaxy. From him, that was an excellent sign.

Greenberg said, "The primitives are down and freezing. Assuming we ever get to leave?and assuming we don't run into any more leftover weapons from the Suicide Wars?we shouldn't have any trouble getting them back to Saugus."

"Saugus? Why Saugus?" Jennifer said.

"For one thing, it's the planet you live on these days. For another, I assume the university where you're teaching is a good one." He waited for her to nod, then went on, "It ought to have some good anthropologists, then. I can't think of any people better suited to helping show our unwilling passengers how the world has changed since they were last around to look at it."

"Makes sense," Jennifer said.

"Saugus also ought to have a merchants' guild hall." Again, Greenberg waited for a nod before continuing. "In that case, I can do a couple of things. First, I can recommend you for master status." He held up a hand to forestall whatever she might say. "You've earned it, you ought to have it, and you're going to get it. If we do manage to get out of this mess, it'll be thanks to your expertise. And we'll show a profit, and a good-sized one. You qualify."

"All right." The only thing Jennifer really wanted was to get back to teaching and research, but she'd learned that having something else to fell back on could come in handy. She said, "That's one thing. What turns it into a couple?"

Greenberg hesitated before he answered. "The other thing I was thinking of was transferring my base of operations to Saugus. That is, if you want to turn us into a couple once we're back."

"Oh." She felt her face twist into a new expression as the implications of that sank in. The expression was an enormous grin. "Sure!" She hugged him.

"I don't want you to leap into this, you know," he said seriously. "I'm not going to stop trading, which means we may be apart big stretches of time. And I know you'd sooner stay at the university."

She shrugged. "We'll do the best we can for as long as we can. That's all we can do?that's all anyone can do. Right now, I don't want to worry about complications, except the ones that are keeping us stuck in Foitani space."