Диана Дуэйн - Lifeboats

“I’m so sorry, they said you wouldn’t be here for another hour yet, dai stihó cousin!” said the one who slowed and came to a stop in front of him, and a tiny wizard-light flicked on over his shoulder and caught Kit in the eyes, so he had to blink and laugh while they adjusted again.

“Dai stihó!” Kit said. “It’s all right, there’s a lot going on at the other end. Maybe they swapped somebody else’s schedule with mine…”

“Well, it’s sad!” said the wizard who’d come to meet him. Kit looked him up and down as the other did the same with him. Fur, definitely: a blunt flat muzzle, round dark eyes, ears small and round and set far back—the general effect made Kit think of the face of one of the big cats, maybe a panther. But there was nothing predatory about these eyes, and they were quick and clever. “Here you are standing about in the dark all by yourself like no one cares you’re here!”

“Don’t worry about it,” Kit said.”I’m just glad to get where I’m going, finally.”

“We’re glad to have you too,” the other wizard said. “The gate’s been acting up and we can use your help. But I’m sorry, you don’t even know my name! It’s Djam. There’s a lot more of it, but there’s no point in worrying about that now.”

“Djam,” said Kit said, trying it out. “That right?”

“Quite right. Which is right for you, cuz, Rodriguez or Christopher?”

“Neither actually. Kit works better.”

“Kiht. And you’re a he, then?”

“Uh, yeah.”

“All right, thanks,” Djam said. “Just curious. Actually, just curious because Cheleb’s curious about it, that’s our watchmate, coming out in a moment. I never paid much attention to it before but that one’s such a stickler…”

Kit chuckled. “What,” Djam said, looking concerned, “did I say it wrong?”

“Oh no! It’s just, my wizardly partner and I have a friend—” Kit’s thought went immediately to Sker’ret, not rushed off all his feet as he was today, but in calmer times. “He calls her that all the time, a stickler. And she kind of is…”

“All right. Well, Cheleb’s a ‘hae’—”

Kit took a moment to work out the word he’d just heard in the Speech, and then realized it was a different gender pronoun, structured somewhat like the way the words for “he” and “she” were in the Earth-based Speech recensions. “Okay,” he said, because for the moment he hadn’t the slightest idea how the word mapped onto Earth-based Speech-words about sex and gender, and also had no idea if it was even going to matter all that much. “Is it okay to ask where you’re from?” That was usually a smart question to get out of the way, as some species were sensitive about discussing the locations of their home star systems, or even saying where they came from at all.

“Of course it is,” said Djam. “Alnilam.”

Kit nodded, though for the time being he couldn’t think where that might be, except that the star’s name sounded familiar. At least it was one he’d run across at some point in his casual manual reading, which meant that it was most likely somewhere fairly close to earth in the great Galactic scheme of things—probably no more than a few thousand light-years away. “We’re neighbors, then.”

“I’d say so,” Djam said, “though don’t ask me right now in which direction, or how close.” He rubbed at the longer fur on top of his head as if his head ached. “It’s been a long day…”

“This the him?” said another voice, a soft scratchy one, and out from behind the biggest of the rocks in the stone circle came another humanoid, taller than Djam and broader too; big-shouldered and wide in the chest, long-waisted but surprisingly short-legged, and moving very fast and light. The approaching figure came hastening over to them and stopped right by Kit, looming over him.

“This is the him,” Djam said, and the newcomer leaned in more closely, near enough to sniff at Kit’s hair. Apparently hae didn’t have anything like a human’s sense for personal space, but that was something Kit had run into before, and so he looked haem over in return without feeling too freaked about it. Hae was wearing several layers of clothing, with something like a biker’s heavy jacket over the top of it all, each layer made of very different fibers or hides. Hae had a long neck and an elongated skull covered in rough, dappled skin, a pair of big, forward-set eyes, and a large, toothy grin that apparently meant the same for haes species as it did for Earth-humans, as Kit could practically feel the good cheer and interest boiling off haem. Kit liked haem on sight.

“Kiht, this is Cheleb,” said Djam.

“Dai, cousin!” Kit said. “Well met.”

“And I,” Cheleb said. “Mebsuta’s home for me. Yours, though— Looked in the Knowing, got confused. Planet called Ground in milk tongue? Or possibly Dirt? Translation into Speech equivocal.”

Kit laughed. “Yeah,” he said, “the home cultures haven’t really settled on a formal name for the planet because they don’t know there are other species who’re going to want to know what to call it. ‘Earth’ gets used a lot at home. Some of our scientists call it Sol III. Some people use Terra: that’s older. Or Tellus… Not so popular, but it has kind of a ring to it. Or Gaia…”

“Come sit down, drink water, eat food, get briefed, then tell us more names later and we’ll pick one we like,” Cheleb said, laughing.

The three of them headed back toward the circle. “‘Him’, huh?” said Cheleb as they went.

Kit gave the Mebsuth an amused look. “Yeah, that’s right. What’s so interesting about the gender words?”

Cheleb did a sort of arm flap that Kit thought might have been a shrug. “Just like to be polite. Going to be doing long hours together sometimes on this job, don’t want to get anyone annoyed.”

That made a certain kind of sense. “So first things first. Where should I put my pup tent?” Kit said as they passed through a gap between stones into the circle.

“Pick a rock, slap your portal up against it,” Djam said, pointing at one of the nearby stones that had a portal adhering to it, active—to judge by the faint glow around the edges—but not patent at the moment. “That’s mine. Cheleb’s is across the circle. Maybe you want to be in between?”

“Makes sense,” Kit said, and headed over to do it. The outer stones of the circle were all wider than they were thick and were fairly rough-hewn on three sides; the inner side was the only one that was smooth. I wonder why, Kit thought, making a mental note to have a look at the manual later to see if it threw any light on this. Now where did I stick the portal interface… He started to reach for his otherspace pocket, then thought, wait a minute, of course it’s not there—it being a very bad idea to put a collapsible “pinched space” inside another one. It’s in my regular pocket. He leaned one-handed on the standing stone while with the other he started rummaging in his jeans. Nope, house keys, wallet, other pocket—

And then something soft and strong and weird wrapped suddenly around the hand that was leaning on the stone, and reflexively Kit pushed himself violently away from it and didn’t quite scream.

The other two wizards looked at him rather oddly. Kit, though, was staring at the standing stone and pointing, and trying to recover himself, because he felt like an idiot. Nonetheless, something was clinging to the side of the stone, staring back at him with numerous strange, dark eyes. “What the hell is that?”

To his complete chagrin, both Djam and Cheleb started laughing, one high, one low. Djam hurried over to him, saying, “Come on, Chel, I thought you said you got rid of them all!”