Sharon Lee: Adventures in the Liaden Universe. Collaterial Adventures

I have made a few of the first two myself, though I am a novice. It would interest me greatly to learn how your knives are formed.”

“You might have had the privilege,” the T’carais said with deliberate cruelty, “but you chose to cast it away from you and enter without permission.”

“And how was I to ask permission,” wondered the impudent one, “when there is no person I have found in the valley who will speak to me?”

“Foolish eggling! Do you expect persons of consequence to speak to one to whom they have not been introduced?”

The small one took time to consider this, eyes on a rock at his feet. He looked up.

“You are.”

Had he been capable of it, the T’carais would have gaped. As it was, he merely moved his head from side to side, slowly, before speaking with great care. “This is a different matter. Your noise endangered the blades. I am T’carais. Of course I must speak, that I might command you to cease.”

“Ah,” said the other. “I understand.”

Edger thought that perhaps he did and was not comforted. Sternly, he said, “I have ordered you to begone.”

“Yes,” Val Con agreed readily, “and I would like to comply. But I am lost. It’s stupid of me, but my sense of direction seems to have gotten misplaced, and I can’t find my way out.” He slanted bright eyes upward. “I did try.”

Absurd that a being so frail should have so much life in it.

“Very well,” said the T’carais stiffly, “I shall escort you to the cavern door.”

“Thank you,” said the other with a bow. “I am grateful for your kindness.” He bent to retrieve the lantern and straightened, face thoughtful.

“I have just considered…Will it be dangerous for the blades to encounter light? If so, I must ask if I might hold to your harness as we go. My eyes are too poor to see here…”

Edger was touched, both by the eggling’s care and the grace with which he accepted his limitation.

“You may keep your light at that level,” he said gruffly. “The blades will not suffer from it.” He turned, heading back the way he had come. “Follow.”

In keeping with his judgment, the T’carais led his charge by a route that avoided the growing rooms; and in due time they reached the cavern mouth.

Outside, he turned, meaning to leave wordless, as was proper.

“Edger,” called the small one, who appeared to have no shame.

Reluctant, the T’carais turned back. “I hear.”

He had clipped the lantern onto his belt and stood now, hands out, palms turned up. “You have been very kind and it’s true that I am grateful. In spite of this, I feel I must ask for yet another kindness.” He took a breath and plunged hastily on. “Would you please introduce me to some of your Clan members? I have come to learn about you—your language and your ways—and it would be much easier if someone would speak with me…”

Was he a scholar, then? The T’carais was uncertain of the word “scout.”

“What you ask may be possible,” he conceded. “I will consider it. However, a decision will not be made this moons’ phase, for I leave tomorrow moontime for a visit to another Clan.” He paused.

“Perhaps it would be wisest for you to go someplace else. Or, if you must stay here, to avoid the egglings. You frighten them.”

Once again that ironic glance down at his soft self, the straight look into Edger’s face.

“I think that, beside yourself, the egglings are the only people I have seen here who are not frightened of me.”

This eggling was out of reason perceptive. Edger turned away, speaking the wellwish.

“K’mentopak, eggling. Be you well.”

“K’mentopak, T’carais,” came the soft reply. “My thanks to you.”

VAL CON STRETCHED taut in the pilot’s chair and relaxed, abruptly boneless. The log was once more up-to-date.

He considered the T’carais, grinning as it occurred to him to wonder if that person thought him Terran. There were those of that long, burly race who would not be best pleased by that. Though, to be fair, the general configuration was the same, and perhaps, from a height of nearly nine feet, a seven-foot person and a five-foot one are both merely small.

Knives. Growing knives? They had passed nothing that looked to his untutored eyes to be blades a-growing on their way out of the cavern last night. Of course, Edger had said he might not, as punishment. Possibly, the T’carais had chosen a route that bypassed such wonders.

But growing? And sensitive to—energies—created by music, but not the everyday radiant variety?

What sort of energy, he wondered, nourishes a sense of direction?

A senseless question, certainly: A sense of direction was nothing but itself.

Or was it?

He snapped to his feet; moved to the center of the ship.

Planetary north, he told himself; turned on his heel, pointing.

East. a smaller turn.

South…

West…

Home, standing tall, arm raised, finger indicating that area in the Fourth Quadrant where turned the planet Liad.

Sense of direction back on duty, sir.

And where had it been last night? He lowered his arm slowly. Music, but not light. A man lost, who never misses the way. Blades growing out of ancient rock…

A sense of direction is a low-level psychic phenomenon.

Music?

Not psychic—a skill anyone might learn, subject to the physics of the universe…

Two strides to the storage locker and the ’chora within, still shrouded in yellow silk. He set it on the table and pulled the cloth away, exposing its smooth newness.

This was an expensive portable, far superior to the one he had owned formerly. He had lately had neither heart nor joy to play, but now he flipped the power on; hands flickering over the stops, setting values and intensities.

Lightly, fingers joking, he played the line of the rhyming game that had so charmed the eggling; drifted into the ballad that had defeated him upon the reed.

Gods, what a beautiful instrument.

What sort of energy is music?

He let his fingers slow; flipped off the power. Eyes still on the ’chora, he lifted the kit and belted it around his waist. Hefting the keyboard by its strap, he arranged it across his back—like a shell, he thought, half-smiling.

He left the ship, whistling.

SOUNDLESS, HE SLIPPED out of the vegetation at the path’s end, blinked and nearly laughed. To his right, three egglings, running hard from a much larger individual. And walking toward him with infant nonchalance, his acquaintance of the previous afternoon.

“Good morning, youngling,” he greeted it in soft Trade. “Will your nurse be angry with me again?”

“D’neschopita,” the eggling told him, with emphasis. “T’carais’amp b’lenarkanarak’ab.”

He lifted an eyebrow and walked forward. “Say you so?” he murmured, keeping his voice smooth. “Well, she is your kin and I must bow to your judgment in the matter.”

At this, the eggling burst into a storm of volubility, emphasized by meaningful blinks of the huge eyes. Val Con shook his head. Too much, too fast, lacking structure… Perhaps. He pulled on the ’chora strap; brought the keyboard across his chest; flipped on the power.

The eggling paused for breath, eyes glowing. Val Con moved his fingers over keys, manipulated stops—playing back the rhythm and sound of the child’s speaking, wondering what would happen…

A much larger sound interrupted the experiment. He looked up to see the nurse approaching, arms upraised for a strike.

The ’chora! Instinctively, he bent forward, shielding the instrument with his body; tensing his shoulders to take the blow…

Which did not fall. Instead, she stood over him and loosed an ear-ringing tirade, no doubt listing his faults and probable bad habits, annotated, cautiously, he turned his head and looked at her out of the corner of an eye.