Poul Anderson - The Man Who Counts

“They aren’t, my lady — around Thursday Landing,” he replied. “But this is a big planet. Roughly four times the surface area of Earth, and we only know a small part of one continent.”

“Then you know not what they are like, these sailors?”

“My lady, I have no idea.”

Nicholas van Rijn came puffing up the companion-way at their shout. “Death and damnation!” he roared. “A boat, do you say, ja? Better for you it is a shark, if you are mistaken. By damn!” He stumped into the turret and glared out through salt encrusted plastic. The light was dimming as the sun went lower and the approaching storm clouds swept across its ruddy face. “So! Where is it, this pestilential boat?”

“There, sir,” said Wace. “That schooner—”

“Schooner! Schnork! Powder and balls, you cement head, that is a yawl rig… no, wait, by damn, there is a furled square sail on the mainmast too, and, yes, an outrigger — Ja, the way she handles, she must have a regular rudder — Good saints help us! A bloody-be-damned-to-blazes dugout!”

“What else do you expect, on a planet without metals?” said Wace. His nerves were worn too thin for him to remember the deference due a merchant prince.

“Hm-m-m… coracles, maybe so, or rafts or catamarans — Quick, dry clothes! Too cold it is for brass monkeys!”

Wace grew aware that Van Rijn was standing in a puddle, and that bitter sea water streamed from his waist and legs. The storeroom where he had been at work must have been awash for — for hours!

“I know where they are, Nicholas.” Sandra loped off down the corridor. It slanted more ominously every minute, as the sea pushed in through a ruined stern.

Wace helped his chief off with the sopping coverall. Naked, Van Rijn suggested… what was that extinct ape?… a gorilla, two meters tall, hairy and huge-bellied, with shoulders like a brick warehouse, loudly bawling his indignation at the cold and the damp and the slowness of assistants. But rings flashed on the thick fingers and bracelets on the wrists, and a little St. Dismas medal swung from his neck. Unlike Wace, who found a crew cut and a clean shave more practical, Van Rijn let his oily black locks hang curled and perfumed in the latest mode, flaunted a goatee on his triple chin and intimidating waxed mustaches beneath the great hook nose.

He rummaged in the navigator’s cabinet, wheezing, till he found a bottle of rum. “Ahhh! I knew I had the devil-begotten thing stowed somewhere.” He put it to his frogmouth and tossed off several shots at a gulp. “Good! Fine! Now maybe we can begin to be like self-respectful humans once more, nie?”

He turned about, majestic and globular as a planet, when Sandra came back. The only clothes she could find to fit him were his own, a peacock outfit of lace-trimmed shirt, embroidered waistcoat, shimmersilk culottes and stockings, gilt shoes, plumed hat, and holstered blaster.

“Thank you,” he said curtly. “Now, Wace, while I dress, in the lounge you will find a box of Perfectos and one small bottle applejack. Please to fetch them, then we go outside and meet our hosts.”

“Holy St. Peter!” cried Wace. “The lounge is under water!”

“Ah?” Van Rijn sighed, woebegone. “Then you need only get the applejack. Quick, now!” He snapped his fingers.

Wace said hastily: “No time, sir. I still have to round up the last of our ammunition. Those natives could be hostile.”

“If they have heard of us, possible so,” agreed Van Rijn. He began donning his natural-silk underwear. “ Brrr! Five thousand candles I would give to be back in my office in Jakarta!”

“To what saint do you make the offer?” asked Lady Sandra.

“St. Nicholas, natural — my namesake, patron of wanderers and—”

“St. Nicholas had best get it in writing,” she said.

Van Rijn purpled; but one does not talk back to the heiress apparent of a nation with important trade concessions to offer. He took it out by screaming abuse after the departing Wace.

It was some time before they were outside; Van Rijn got stuck in the emergency hatch and required pushing, while his anguished basso obscenities drowned the nearing thunder. Diomedes’ period of rotation was only twelve and a half hours, and this latitude, thirty degrees north, was still on the winter side of equinox; so the sun was toppling seaward with dreadful speed. They clung to the lashings and let the wind claw them and the waves burst over them. There was nothing else they could do.

“It is no place for a poor old fat man,” snuffed Van Rijn. The gale ripped the words from him and flung them tattered over the rising seas. His shoulder-length curls flapped like forlorn pennons. “Better I should have stayed at home in Java where it is warm, not lost my last few pitiful years out here.”

Wace strained his eyes into the gloom. The dugout had come near. Even a landlubber like himself could appreciate the skill of its crew, and Van Rijn was loud in his praises. “I nominate him for the Sunda Yacht Club, by damn, yes, and enter him in the next regatta and make bets!”

It was a big craft, more than thirty meters long, with an elaborate stempost, but dwarfed by the reckless spread of its blue-dyed sails. Out-rigger or no, Wace expected it to capsize any moment. Of course, a flying species had less to worry about if that should happen than -

“The Diomedeans.” Sandra’s tone was quiet in his ear, under shrill wind and booming waters. “You have dealt with them for a year and a half, not? What can we await for from them?”

Wace shrugged. “What could we expect from any random tribe of humans, back in the Stone Age? They might be poets, or cannibals, or both. All I know is the Tyrlanian Flock, who are migratory hunters. They always stick by the letter of their law — not quite so scrupulous about its spirit, of course, but on the whole a decent tribe.”

“You speak their language?”

“As well as my human palate and Techno-Terrestrial culture permit me to, my lady. I don’t pretend to understand all their concepts, but we get along—” The broken hull lurched. He heard some abused wall rend, and the inward pouring of still more sea, and felt the sluggishness grow beneath his feet. Sandra stumbled against him. He saw that the spray was freezing in her brows.

“That does not mean I’ll understand the local language” he finished. “We’re farther from Tyrlan than Europe from China.”

The canoe was almost on them now. None too soon: the wreck was due to dive any minute. It came about, the sails rattled down, a sea anchor was thrown and brawny arms dug paddles into the water. Swiftly, then, a Diomedean flapped over with a rope. Two others hovered close, obviously as guards. The first one landed and stared at the humans.

Tyrlan being farther north, its inhabitants had not yet returned from the tropics and this was the first Diomedean Sandra had encountered. She was too wet, cold, and weary to enjoy the unhuman grace of his movements, but she looked very close. She might have to dwell with this race a long time, if they did not murder her.

He was the size of a smallish man, plus a thick meter-long tail ending in a fleshy rudder and the tremendous chiropteral wings folded along his back. His arms were set below the wings, near the middle of a sleek otterlike body, and looked startlingly human, down to the muscular five-fingered hands. The legs were less familiar, bending backward from four-taloned feet which might almost have belonged to some bird of prey. The head, at the end of a neck that would have been twice too long on a human, was round, with a high forehead, yellow eyes with nictitating membranes under heavy brow ridges a blunt-muzzled black-nosed face with short cat-whiskers, a big mouth and the bear-like teeth of a flesheater turned omnivore. There were no external ears, but a crest of muscle on the head helped control flight. Short, soft brown fur covered him; he was plainly a male mammal.