A World of Difference

II

Several Minervans kept an eye, or two, or three, on Frank Marquard as he got ready to descend. The lead male of the group was the one called Enoph. “Why are you going down?” he asked for the third time as Marquard checked and rechecked the lashing of his line around the big boulder that would secure it. “Tell me again, in words I can understand.”

“I try,” the geologist said in halting Omalo. He knew he could not have explained even if he spoke the language fluently. The Minervans had not developed the concepts they needed to grasp what he was up to.

“You know I walk on path down this far, more than halfway down J6tm” He caught himself; the human name for the canyon meant nothing to the locals. “Down Ervis Gorge.”

“Not just on the path,” Enoph said with the sinuous wriggle of his arms that Marquard mentally translated as a shudder. “Away from it, too. How do you dare go where you might fall? Especially since you have only two arms and two legs to hold on with.”

“How I go? Carefully.” Marquard sighed when Enoph only opened and closed a couple of his hands in agreement. So much for the old joke. But see how I go. When not on path, always have rope-how you say? tied to big rock. If fall, not fall far.”

“Yes, I grasp that,” Enoph said-a natural image for a six-armed folk to use. “You humans are clever with ropes. I suppose you have to be. But why do you do what you do?”

“To learn from rocks,” Marquard said. That was as close as he had come to rendering geology into Minervan.

“A rock is a rock.” Enoph had said that before. Now, though, he paused to think it over. “Maybe not,” he amended. “Some rocks are harder than others, some better to chip at than others. Do you want to learn which ones are best for tools? I could show you that.”

“No, not for tools. Want to see how rocks change in time.

New rocks near top of Ervis Gorge, rocks older down low.”

Enoph wiggled his eyestalks, which meant he was laughing at Frank. I do better as a comedian when I’m not trying, Marquard thought. “All rocks are as old as the world. How could one be older than another?” Enoph asked.

Marquard shook his head; like other Minervans who had spent a good deal of time with humans, Enoph understood the gesture. “Think of two fossils I find in rocks,” the geologist said.

The key word was in English. Again, though, Enoph followed; the locals had not really started wondering about long ago life preserved in rocks, but Marquard had shown them the couple of specimens he had discovered and had found giving them a new word easier than the elaborate circumlocution he would have needed to say the same thing in Minervan.

“I remember,” Enoph said. “One looked just like the foot of a nosver turned to stone. How can a nosver turn to stone?”

That, Marquard thought, needed a longer and more complicated explanation than he could give. Fortunately, it also was not quite relevant. “Where that rock like nosver from?”

“Not far from the top of the gorge, as I recall,” Enoph answered. “What of it?”

“Now think on other fossil.”

“That weird creature?” Enoph made the shuddery gesture again. “It looked like an eloc, or rather a piece of an eloc, but hardly bigger than a runnerpest. Even newbudded eloca are three times that size.”

“No animal like that now, yes?” Marquard asked. Enoph repeated his hand closing gesture. The geologist went on. “Then that rock old, old, old, yes? No animal like that left now, yes? And that rock from where?”

Enoph pointed an eyestalk at a spot halfway down the side of the canyon. He suddenly turned four of his other eyes toward Marquard. The geologist smiled; no Minervan had ever shown him that much respect before. He also realized Enoph was no fool-he had not had to point out all the implications to the male. With data presented the right way, Enoph was plenty smart enough to work out implications for himself.

“You humans have the oddest notions,” he said. “I see this one is true, but who would have thought rocks could have ages? How does it help you to know this?”

The Minervan, Marquard thought unfairly, sounded like a congressman about to vote against a research appropriation. “The more you know, the more you can find out,” the geologist answered. “If you know nothing, how find out anything? Know one thing: this big rock”-he pointed to the boulder to which he had lashed himself-“come down from up there.” He pointed to a level not far from the one the older fossil had come from.

Minervans did not jump when they were surprised. If they had, Enoph would have. “How can you know that? I helped move it-and a nasty job it was-to secure the bridge to the Skarmer side of the gorge.”

Getting the idea of “bridge” across took a good deal of gesturing and guessing, not least because there was no bridge for Enoph to point at. When Frank Marquard finally thought he understood, he asked the Minervan, “Where bridge now? Not see.”

That got a response from several of the males who had come down, and not a polite one. They turned all their eyestalks away from the western side of the canyon and extended sharp fingerclaws as far as they would go. They also turned the bright yellow that Marquard had learned to be the color of anger.

“The stupid Skarmer wanted to cross to this side of Ervis Gorge and take our land and our mates from us,” Enoph said. “Seeing them try with the rope bridge up would have been plenty funny. How they propose to cross the gorge without it I cannot say.”

“Anyone with the wit even of a mate would see it can’t be done,” another male said. There was loud agreement from his companions.

Marquard looked toward the western horizon, which was, in essence, the distanceblurred western wall of Jotun Canyon. He had not thought his Minervan vocabulary would need to include terms like “invasion.” He looked again. Like Enoph, he had no idea how the Skarmer would get across the canyon if the people on this side did not feel like letting them. “They say they do this?” he asked at last.

“The Skarmer say all manner of foolish things,” Enoph said scornfully. “I think that comes down to them from the first Skarmer bud. What they can do is something else again.”

“I hope you right,” Marquard said. All the same, he remembered, and rather wished he hadn’t, something he had read or heard so long before that he had forgotten just where: “Son, if a man comes up to you in a bar and wants to bet he can make the jack of spades leap out of the deck and spit apple cider in your ear, never bet with that man because, son, if you do, sure as hell you’ll end up with an earful of cider.”

He snorted, imagining the fun he would have translating that into Minervan. His breath steamed out. What he did say was, “You watch, ah, Skarmer side of gorge to know Skarmer not come?”

“Aye, we watch,” Enoph said. “A waste of time, but we watch-the domain master would have it so. Like you when you check your rope so carefully, he takes few chances.”

“Thank you,” Marquard said; being compared to Reatur had to be a compliment. The geologist gave the line another yank, though now he was convinced it would hold-if that boulder had supported a rope long enough to stretch across Jotun Canyon, his relatively tiny weight would not send it tumbling into the abyss.

He made the check just the same. It was, after all, his neck.

Moving slowly and cautiously, he began to descend. The going was still a long way from extreme; he did not need to think to pick hand and footholds. He thought about the Skarmer in stead. Jotun Canyon struck him as a handy sort of thing to have between oneself and unfriendly neighbors…

“At least,” he muttered, “till they figure out how to shoot across it.” He reminded himself to tell Irv about what Enoph had said-and Emmett Bragg, too, come to think of it. Assessing threats was part of Bragg’s job.

As he lowered himself, he began concentrating more and more on his own job. The wall of Jotun Canyon was like an enormous geological layer cake, with him the tiniest of ants nibbling data from it.

In more literal terms, the canyon wall was sandstone alternating with conglomerate, with an occasional thin layer of igneous rock telling of a time of vulcanism. Frank felt like cheering every time he came across one of those. He collected igneous specimens with special care. Potassium-argon dating from them would give him absolute dates on which to hang the relative dates of the stratigraphy he was developing.

Thought about another way, the conglomerates might have been even more impressive than granite or basalt. The rocks accreted in the sandy matrix ranged up from pea sized to bigger than a VW bus. When the glacier melt off got rolling, it did not care what it moved. Anything in the way went.

For the moment, though, Marquard was scrambling over neither pragmatically valuable igneous rock nor awe-inspiring conglomerates. This layer was just rather weathered yellow-brown sandstone. He got out his geologist’s hammer and took several small specimens.

He grinned wryly as he wrote up a data tag for each one. If he had taken all the specimens he wanted, Athena would have ended up too heavy to get them back to Earth.

His eyes flicked over an oddly shaped shadow, and he bent down for a closer look. Only remembering that he would alarm the Minervans above kept him from shouting out loud. Finding a fossil was always good for a rush.

The thing was not very big and was built on the same radial pattern dominant all over Minerva. Aside from that, it didn’t look like anything with which Frank was familiar. No reason it should, he thought; it was a couple of hundred million years old if it was a day. Maybe Pat would have some idea of what it was related to.

He photographed the fossil in situ. Then, using hammer and chisel, he freed the stone in which it was embedded from the canyon wall. He was glad it was small. That way he could get it all out, which would make his wife happy.

He wondered what Pat would have done had he stumbled over the Minervan equivalent of, say, Brachiosaurus. He had a picture of her holding a gun on the rest of Athena’s crew and as many locals as possible until they dug out the whole specimen. When Pat set her mind on something, she generally got it.

She would have nothing to complain about this time, he thought as he wrapped the fossil in bubbled plastic and stuck it in the bag he carried on his belt just for such lucky finds. Minervan fossils, Frank thought fondly, were the most fun Pat had out of bed.

Tolmasov pulled off the headphones, both the static of the scrambled transmission and Lopatin’s furious shouts were giving his ears a workout. “Calmly, Oleg Borisovich, calmly,” he urged.

“The devil’s grandmother take calmly,” Lopatin yelled across the kilometers from Tsiolkovsky.

Tolmasov scowled. When a KGB man started calling on the devil and his relations, something really had gone wrong somewhere. The oath was a surer sign of trouble than Lopatin’s using the scrambler, as a matter of fact: give a security man a scrambled circuit and of course he will use it.

“At least stop swearing long enough to tell me what you’re swearing about,” the pilot suggested.

“The Americans, those deceiving sons of-”

“What about them?” Tolmasov broke in sharply, though Lopatin seemed ready to go on in that vein for some time yet. “What about the Americans?” the colonel repeated, letting the snap of command enter his voice.

“Sergei Konstantinovich, the Americans deceitfully concealed the true location where their Viking came down. When Athena landed east of Jotun Canyon, it was no navigational error. They knew where their spacecraft was, and went there. All the data they published over the last decade and a half were false, and deliberately false at that.”

Tolmasov rubbed his chin as he thought. “How can you be certain of this?” The whole thing struck him as a ploy more in character for the KGB than the Americans, who were usually too naive to come up with such ideas.

“We have people in NASA,” Lopatin reminded him. Tolmasov would have been surprised if the Americans did not know that, too. As if reading his mind, Lopatin went on, “No, Sergei Konstantinovich, this is not disinformation fed our folk by the CIA. Athena’s crew has sent word back to Houston that they are in contact with the very male who wrecked the Viking. Do you think any navigational error would have been likely to put them so precisely on the spot?”

“Nyet,” Tolmasov said flatly. More to himself than to the KGB man, he mused, “How best to use the information?”

“Beat them over the heads with it,” Lopatin answered at once. “The American hypocrites always embarrass us for not blabbing everything to the heavens as they do. Now we can pay them back, and let us see how they enjoy it.”

“You know, Oleg Borisovich, I like that.” Tolmasov could not keep the surprise from his voice; he was not used to liking Lopatin’s suggestions. He let out an anticipatory laugh. “I will enjoy seeing the good Brigadier Bragg embarrassed. Till this moment, I had not thought such a thing possible.”

What I really would enjoy, Tolmasov thought, is seeing Bragg’s fighter in the center of my radar screen, and hearing the tone that tells me my missile has locked on to his tailpipe. He sighed. Even in a fantasy, it was all too easy to imagine Bragg somehow evading him. The man was good.

The colonel blinked. Lopatin had said something, and he had missed it. “I’m sorry, Oleg Borisovich. I was woolgathering.”

“I said, is Katerina Fyodorovna still occupied with her researches at the town? Perhaps she should return to Tsiolkovsky for a time, to perform data analysis and transmit some concrete results to Moscow.”

“I will inquire, Oleg Borisovich,” Tolmasov said blandly.

“Out.” He knew how delighted Katerina was with Lopatin.

When the rover came back, Tolmasov decided, he would send it off to Tsiolkovsky with Katerina aboard. She would want to examine Rustaveli and Bryusov before she left.

The colonel’s mouth twitched wryly, and he sighed. Ever since the rover had left, he had had the only woman on this part of the planet all to himself-and made love with her exactly once. They were both too busy.

Sighing again, Tolmasov killed the scrambler circuit. He switched frequencies to the one the Soviets and Americans used to talk back and forth. He felt his blood heat. Dueling with Emmett Bragg brought its own excitement.

Reatur walked down the spiral ramp into the cellars. The flashlights he carried in two of his hands gave much more light than the ice globes full of glitterers set into the wall every so often. The domain master was glad to be carrying the twin bright beams. More than once, he had almost stumbled off the edge of the ramp and reached the bottom faster than he wanted to.

Come to that, the glitterers were not shedding as much light as they should have. Reatur made a mental note to get after a couple of the younger males to feed them more often. Nothing, he thought resentfully, ever got done unless he turned an eyestalk toward it himself.

The cellars might have been dim, but at least they were cool. Down half a male’s height below the surface, there was always ice in the ground-never any risk of the cellar collapsing, as there was in very hot weather with the parts of the castle aboveground. If it weren’t for the lighting problem, Reatur would have been just as happy living underground. He did not like summer.

“Never hurts to have something to complain about,” he said aloud. “Especially something I can’t help.” He listened to his voice echoing back from the gloomy corridors.

There was no help for breaking out the stone tools, either, not any more. As the weather grew warm, small pieces of worked ice like hoe blades got soft and brittle and started to melt. So, unfortunately, did swordblades. Hardly anyone made war during high summer. Swinging weapons of stone and timber was usually reckoned more trouble than it was worth.

Usually. Reatur kept remembering Fralk’s threats. Nobody could tell what the Skarmer would do. They were so sneaky, the domain master thought, they likely could not even tell themselves. He paused. Did that mean they took themselves by surprise?

He chased the thought around his arms a couple of times, then gave it up as a bad job. The miserable Skarmer would do whatever they did, and he would deal with it. That was what a domain master was for. A domain master was also for making sure the crops stayed tended no matter what the Skarmer did. A fine thing it would be if those wretches stayed on their own side of Ervis Gorge and the domain went hungry because everyone had forgotten the crops from worry over them!

Reatur got to the threshold of the chamber where the stone farm tools had been stored after good weather had returned last fall. He shone one of the flashlights into the underground room.

The furious hoot he let out rang through the cellar. Turning the other flashlight on himself, he saw he was as yellow as the sun, and no wonder! He had every right to be furious. The tools, which should have been grouped in neat rows by type, were dumped in a higgledy-piggledy pile.

The domain master stormed up the ramp. Males who spied his yellow color got out of his path as fast as they could. He let them go until he saw Ternat. Almost literally by main force, he took his eldest back down to the cellar with him.

“This was your job!” the domain master shouted. “Look at the mess you made of it! Did you let a herd of massi run through here, or what? Curse it, Lamra could have done better than this-eighteen times better! How do you propose to run this domain one day if you can’t do the simplest things properly?” He turned the second flashlight on his eldest, to see how he was taking it.

Ternat’s eyestalks drooped with shame, but he was as yellow as Reatur. “I’m going to tear an arm off Gurtz, or maybe two, that worthless matebudling of a nosver. He said he would see it was taken care of, and sounded as though he knew how to do it. After a while, none of the stone tools were left above ground, so I assumed he’d dealt with things.”

As Ternat’s fury grew, Reatur’s abated. He let air hiss out through his breathing pores. “So that’s how it was, then?”

“By the first Omalo bud, yes, clanfather. That Gurtz! I’ll reel his-”

“Yes, do, but he’s taught you a lesson, too, hasn’t he, eldest.’?” Reatur watched Ternat’s eyestalks lengthen and shrink k surprise and confusion. “Simple enough, if you give a male something to do, always check to make sure he’s done it. Yot may sleep less on account of it, but you’ll sleep better.”

Ternat thought that over. He slowly began to regain his usual color. “I think you’ve found truth here, clanfather. Yes, I remember. And now,” he added grimly, “I’ll go and deal with Gurtz.”

“Don’t leave him too sore to work,” was all Reatur said. “After all, having made this mess, who better than he to set it right again? And I will want it set right again, and soon. If we lose any time cultivating the crops because of Gurtz’s blundering, what you do to him won’t be enough. I’ll settle the slacker myself, even if he is a bud I planted.”

“I’ll tell him you said so.”

“Yes, do.”

Reatur and Ternat went up the ramp together, the domain master lighting the way. While his eldest hurried off to deal with the luckless Gurtz, Reatur went to check on how the infant male budded from Biyal was doing.

“He will be a fine one, clanfather,” said the budling-keeper, a male named Sittep. “He is the youngest here, of course, but already tries to take food away from males a quarter of a season older than he is.”

“Bring him out. Let me turn three eyes on him.”

Sittep returned with the young male a few moments later.

Wriggling in his grasp, it was blue with fear. It tried to bite him, then voided on the two hands that were holding it. “A spirited budling,” Sittep said. His eyestalks gave the slow wiggle of resigned amusement.

“Yes,” Reatur said, admiring the budling-keeper’s patience. He stepped closer to give the budling the careful examination he had promised. It lashed out with the three sharp fingerclaws of one tiny hand. The domain master jerked an eyestalk back just in time. “He moves quickly enough, that’s certain. You said he’s been eating well?”

“Yes, clanfather-nothing shy about him at all, as you’ve seen.

Usually, with the very small ones, I have to make sure they get their fair share, but this one has no troubles there. He’s fast, he’s strong-”

“Good. We’ll set him to running down vermin in the halls,” Reatur said. Sittep’s eyestalks started to quiver again, then stopped, as if he were not quite sure the domain master was joking. “Never mind,” Reatur told him. “Seeing the new budling reminds me life goes on, that’s all. With the humans’ being here tying everyone’s eyestalks in knots, sometimes that’s hard to remember.”

“I understand, clanfather. The combination of the humans and the Skarmer would be plenty to make anyone worry,” Sittep said sympathetically.

“Aye, sometimes it all seems too much-“ Reatur broke off, embarrassed to have shown his mind so clearly to one of his males. Not even Ternat should have to listen to him maundering on so, let alone the budling-keeper, whose biggest responsibility was making sure his charges did not kill one another before they understood that they were not supposed to.

Just then, the budling did managed to break loose from Sittep.

It scuttled around like a berserk runnerpest until the budling-keeper and Reatur managed to catch it again. In that undignified ‘ process, it clawed Reatur twice and bit him once.

“With your permission, clanfather, I’ll put him back now,” Sittep said, holding the squirming, squalling budling a good deal tighter than he had a moment before.

“Go ahead.” Reatur was still working the hand the budling had bitten, trying to squeeze out the pain. “You’d think the idiot little thing would know who’d planted its bud,” he grumbled. “Or at least that you and I were the same sort of creature it was, not a couple of clemor out to run it down and eat it.”

“It’s still very young,” the budling-keeper reminded him. “I know, I know.” All the same, Reatur thought as Sittep returned the budling to its chamber, the foolish creature should have had more sense-but then, Biyal had never had much sense, even for a mate. Somehow Reatur was sure the budlings from Lamra, male and mates, would behave better.

He could only see if he was right, though, after Lamra was dead. He hated the idea of that, more than he had for any other mate he had known. Air hissed out through his breathing pores. Even without the humans, he would have had plenty to keep his eyestalks all knotted up.

“The boats are coming along excellently, clanfather,” Fralk told Hogram. “We have plenty of workers to put frames together and stretch hides over them. As you foretold, the prospect of work has drawn males from many straggling farms.” A little flattery never hurt, Fralk thought, especially when what he was saying also happened to be true.

Hogram, though, had been hearing-and discounting-flattery longer than Fralk had been alive. “By the time Ervis Gorge fills, I presume we will have made enough boats to send across as many males as we have planned.”

“Yes,” Fralk said confidently. Again, he was telling the truth-no point to lying about something Hogram could so easily check, and something where failure would make itself so obvious come the day.

“Good.” Hogram’s voice was dry. Fralk had to remind himself that the domain master was smart enough to think along with him. After a pause perhaps intended to let the younger male remember just that, Hogram went on, “Will the cursed things actually stay on top of the water once our males are in them?”

“Float, you mean?” Fralk brought out the Lanuam technical term as if it belonged in his mouth; he could see he had impressed his overlord. He beckoned with the arm opposite Hogram and called, “Panjand, Iverc! Bring up the basin and model. I’m ready to show them to the domain master now.”

The two males slowly came up from the back of Hogram’s reception hall. They carried the heavy stone basin between them, holding on with three arms apiece. One of Iverc’s hands slipped. The basin tilted until he could regain his grip. Water sloshed over the edge.

“Ah,” Hogram said, extending another eyestalk toward the advancing males. “I’d wondered why they weren’t using a vessel made of ice. Now I see.” His eyestalks wiggled. “Put water in ice and you won’t keep either one long.”

“No,” Fralk agreed, as respectfully as if Hogram had said something clever rather than coming out with a clich6. “Set it down here,” the younger male added when Panjand and Iverc brought the big stone bowl up to him.

The two males widened themselves to do as he asked and stayed in the posture of respect until a wave from Hogram released them. In one of his free hands, Panjand was carrying a small boat. He passed it to Fralk.

Fralk gently set it on the water. “You see, clanfather, it doesfloat. “ “So it does, by itself,” Hogram said. “But will it bear weight and still stay on top there?”

The domain master might reject the fancy foreign word with which Fralk enjoyed showing off, but he knew what questions to ask. “lverc,” Fralk said.

The male handed him the stickwork cage he had been holding in the hand away from Hogram’s eyes. A half-tame runnerpest scurried about inside. Fralk undid the lashings that held the cage closed. He reached in and picked up the runnerpest. Its tiny arms flailed at him, but it did not really try to claw.

“The runnerpest’s weight, clanfather, is about the same in proportion to this small boat’s capacity as that of a load of our males will be to a fullsized boat,” Fralk said. He set the little animal down in the boat. The unfamiliar sensation of moving on water made the runnerpest chitter with terror but also made it freeze in place where Fralk had put it.

Hogram peered at the laden boat with three eyes, turning another on Fralk. “Very interesting, eldest of eldest,” he said at last. “You seem to have most of the answers we need.” Coming from Hogram, that was highest praise.

The runnerpest, of course, chose that exact moment to try running away instead of holding still. The boat overbalanced; water began pouring in. There was a fancy foreign word for what happened when something that had been floating abruptly ceased to do so. Fralk could not have thought of it to save his eyestalks. He stared in numb dismay as the runnerpest, all its appendages writhing frantically, went down through the water to the bottom of the stone bowl.

As befitted his years, Hogram kept his self-possession. He pulled the runnerpest out of the basin and set it on the floor. It scuttled off with the speed that had given its kind their name. Fralk watched it go, wondering if his hopes were fleeing with it.

“I presume our males will be instructed not to leap over the walls of their boats while crossing Ervis Gorge,” Hogram said drily.

“What? Yes, clanfather. Certainly, clanfather!” Fralk realized he was babbling and did not care. The domain master’s sarcasm was a small enough price to pay for a botched demonstration; Hogram could have canceled the whole boatbuilding effort or put another male in charge. In his relief, Fralk missed something Hogram had said. He contritely widened himself. “I’m sorry?”

“I was wondering, eldest of eldest, if the humans know anything about these boats. They’re such hot creatures that tricks with water should come as naturally to them as those with ice do to us.”

“They have said one or two things, clanfather,” Fralk answered cautiously, “but as I am still only a budling in such matters myself, I am not certain how much help they can be. I also have not shown them the fullness of my ignorance, lest they demand more for what they know.”

“Good enough,” Hogram said, and Fralk had to fight to keep from changing color in relief-he had dreaded that question and been sure Hogram would ask it. The domain master went on. “I was wise, it seems, to set you over both the building of the boats and dealing with the humans, if the two enterprises have the links they appear to.”

“No male of your clan has ever doubted your wisdom,” Fralk said. That was true enough and politer than saying that no male- himself very much included-expected Hogram to go so much as a fingerclaw’s width against his own advantage.

“Keep at it, then, eldest of eldest,” the domain master said. “Be sure I shall be watching with six eyes what you accomplish.”

“The notice you grant me is more than I deserve.” Fralkwidened himself. He had already suspected that some of the males who helped build boats also passed word on to Hogram. Had he been domain master, he would have kept an eyestalk or two on that project himself. As he had thought a moment before, Hogram was too clever not to protect his interest so.

After a few more polite exchanges, Fralk took his leave. A little while later, he unrolled a hide in front of one of the leading town merchants. Small red rectangles, each decorated with a white cross, spilled out.

“And what are these?” asked the trader, whose name was Cutur.

“Something new from the humans,” Fralk answered.

“Look-an eighteen of tools in one-a knifeblade, a rasper, an awl…” He used a fingerclaw to pull each tiny claw out of the case as he named it. “And they are all of this hard shiny stone the humans use, see, not of ice, so they’re good winter and summer, but so small and light that no one will mind using them.”

“Interesting-some, anyway.” Cutur never sounded more bored than at the start of a dicker.