A World of Difference (25 page)

“That she does,” the domain-master said. “She always has, ever since she learned what words are for. It’s one of the reasons I would like to see her stay alive.”

“I wish the two of you wouldn’t talk about me like that, as if I weren’t there,” Lamra said indignantly.

Reatur and the human both stood quite still for a moment. Then Sarah started making the odd noise humans used instead of honest, eyestalk-wriggling laughter, while Reatur widened himself as if he were a mate and Lamra the domain-master. “I humbly crave your pardon, clanf—ah,
clanmother,
” he said.

“Don’t you make jokes at me.” Now Lamra really was angry, angry enough to turn yellow.

Reatur’s voice changed. “I’m sorry, little one. I didn’t mean to tease.”

“Well, all right.” Of their own accord, Lamra’s eyestalks started to twitch. Imagine her telling off the domain-master! Better yet, imagine her getting away with it! She remembered that Sarah had not answered her question. She asked it a new way. “If you don’t know how to keep me from ending yet, how will you find out?”

“Good question again,” Sarah said.

Lamra felt herself yellowing up once more—she wanted an answer that was an answer, not just words that sounded nice but didn’t tell her anything. Finally she got one.

“Try with animals budding,” the human said. “See if animal mates live after what I do. If yes, I do with you. If no, I do new thing with another animal mate, see if live after
that.
”

Lamra thought it over. “That sounds like it might work,” she admitted. “What if none of the animal mates lives, though?”

Sarah opened her mouth, then closed it again without saying anything.

“Then you won’t, either, Lamra,” Reatur said.

“That’s what I thought. That’s what’s supposed to happen, though, so I don’t need to worry about it, do I?”

“Of course not,” he answered at once. “I’ll do all the worrying. That’s one of the things a domain-master is supposed to do. I worry so other people don’t have to.”

“All right,” Lamra said, relieved. “I’m not much good at worrying—you need to think about one thing for a long time to do it right, and I have trouble with that. There are so many interesting things to think about that sticking to just one is hard.”

“All mates like this?” Sarah asked Reatur, again as though Lamra were somewhere else.

“No,” was all he answered.

“Then I see why you want this one to save.”

“Yes,” Reatur said.

The way they talked made Lamra feel foolish. She was just herself and could not imagine being any different from what she was. Her only perception that she was in any way remarkable was that she found other mates boring some of the time. And since they often did not seem to know what to make of her, either, that worked both ways.

“Sarah, if you do find out how to keep me from ending when my buds drop, will it be something only humans can do, or will Reatur be able to do the same thing with other mates later on?”

“Other mates?” Reatur exclaimed. “I hadn’t even begun to think about that.” He started to turn blue, which startled Lamra—what had frightened him?—until he went on, “If all our mates and all their budlings and all
their
mate budlings lived to grow up, how would we feed them all? This domain just raises enough for the folk it has now.”

He and Lamra both turned anxious extra eyestalks toward Sarah. All the human—the human
mate
, Lamra reminded herself; somehow humans dealt with the problem that worried the domain-master—said, though, was, “Not know.”

“Fair enough,” Reatur said. “Worry about one thing at a time. If Lamra lives after budding, then we will see what to do next.”

“Yes,” Sarah said. “Good sense.”

Lamra had not thought so far ahead when she asked her question, but she recognized the trouble once Reatur showed her it was there. “If this harms the domain, clanfather, you don’t have to let Sarah do it.” The sacrifice seemed small to her. She had been going to end when her buds dropped, and the time that might come after still did not feel as though it belonged to her.

Sarah started to say something, then stopped with her mouth half open. As was fitting, she looked toward Reatur—the choice was his.

“I don’t suppose one full-grown mate will eat up all the spare food in the domain,” he said. “Go on, Sarah; I said yes before
and I say yes again. No matter what happens later, Lamra is worth it.”

Lamra widened herself to the domain-master. She had done that countless times before, but only because she had been taught to. For the first time it was the gesture of conscious respect and gratitude it was meant to be—now she understood why she did it.

Sarah bent from the middle toward Lamra—the human gesture that meant the same as widening. “I try hard to save you,” she said.

“Thank you.” Still strongly feeling the ceremony inherent in the gesture, Lamra widened herself in return. Sarah bent again. They could have gone on saluting each other for some time, but Reatur chose that moment to leave, and Sarah walked away with him.

The mates’ chambers were always boisterous, with mates chasing one another and yelling at one another all through the day. To Lamra, the place seemed empty without Reatur and Sarah. She did not feel like playing with her friends. Even if she had, the growing buds were starting to make her too slow to keep up.

Another mate came up to her. Peri was left out of games a lot, too, as she was also growing buds. “What did the domain-master and the—the funny thing want with you?” she asked, awe in her voice. Why did Reatur keep spending time with a mere mate, especially one with whom he had already mated?

“Reatur and the
human,
” Lamra said, flaunting her superior knowledge, “are working on ways to keep mates alive after budding.”

“You’re teasing me,” Peri said shrilly. “Nobody can do that.”

“I’m not, either. They are so.”

“Don’t be silly,” Peri said. “You can’t fool me, Lamra, not this time. Who ever heard of an old mate?”

Something moved, down in the bottom of Jötun Canyon. The motion was tiny, but anything visible at all from down there had to be good-sized. Shota Rustaveli swung up binoculars for a closer look. Having the depths of the canyon suddenly seem to jump seven times closer always unnerved him; it was as if he were flinging himself down into the abyss.

“What is it?” asked Yuri Voroshilov, who did not have field glasses with him.

“Yuri Ivanovich, I don’t know.” Rustaveli could feel his forehead
crinkle in a puzzled frown. “I can’t figure it out. Maybe it was just the sun, flashing off water down there.”

“
Bozhemoi,
” Voroshilov said softly.

Rustaveli did not follow him for a moment. Then the biologist echoed that “My God” himself. Yesterday the bottom of the canyon had been dry. If it had water in it today, it would have more tomorrow, and as for the day after that … “Forty days and forty nights and then some,” he said.

“
Da.
” Voroshilov laughed softly. “Strange, is it not, how after three generations of a godless society, we still have the biblical images in the back of our minds, ready to call up when we need them?”

“Ask the devil’s mother why that’s so,” Rustaveli suggested. They both laughed then.

“Such impudence.” If Oleg Lopatin had said that, Rustaveli would have bridled. Voroshilov only sounded amused. Then, sighing, the chemist grew more serious. “The flood is upon us, Shota Mikheilovich, in more ways than one.”

“Eh? What’s that?” Rustaveli’s mind was elsewhere. He wanted to get down to the water. There might be—there likely were—plants and animals down in the canyon that stayed dormant until the yearly floods came and then burst into feverish activity. Plenty of Earthly creatures did things like that, but who could guess what variations on the theme Minerva might offer? No one could guess—that was why they were here, to find out.

But Voroshilov was thinking along very different lines. “We will have trouble, for one thing, if Lopatin does not leave Katerina alone. I know, because I will cause it.”

That got Rustaveli’s attention. His head snapped toward Voroshilov. The chemist was such a quiet fellow that he even announced insurrection as if it were no more important than a glass of tea. He meant what he said, though. The Georgian could see that.

“Slowly, my friend, slowly,” Rustaveli urged, wondering how—or whether—to head off Voroshilov. He had no use for Lopatin, but still … “The
chekist
is also a man, Yuri Ivanovich,” he said carefully. “I suppose he has the right to try his luck with her.”

“This I know,” Voroshilov said heavily. “To approach her is one thing. But he has
hit
her, Shota Mikheilovich; I have seen the marks. That is something else again. That I will not stand, even if he has made her too afraid to speak up for herself.”

Rustaveli scowled. Unfortunately, that sounded all too much
like Lopatin. And Katerina had been down to
Tsiolkovsky
lately; she and Voroshilov had just come back to the environs of Hogram’s town. The chemist probably knew whereof he spoke.

“What will you do?” Rustaveli asked.

“Give him a taste of his own when he rotates up here next week. I was hoping you would join me—on the left, of course.”

“A black-market beating, eh?” Though not a native Russian-speaker, Rustaveli understood the slang expression; everyone who lived in the Soviet Union dealt on the left, some more often, some less. Had the Georgian caught Lopatin cuffing Katerina around, he was sure he would cheerfully have pummeled him. Doing it in cold blood, planning it well in advance, was not the same thing. “Lopatin is a pig,
da
, but should we not see first if Tolmasov can bring him to heel?”

“A pig and a snake both,” Voroshilov growled. “Not only does he abuse Katya, he paws through my cabin and types my poems into his computer file for evidence. Evidence of what I do not know—perhaps only that, no matter how I try, I am no Akhmatova or Yevtushenko.” The chemist’s broad, fair face darkened with anger. His gloved hands folded into fists; had Lopatin been there at that moment, he would have had a bad time of it.

Rustaveli knew that the
chekist
snooped. Anything he wanted to keep to himself, he wrote in Georgian—let Lopatin make what he could of
that
! But then, snooping was part of Lopatin’s job. “Let us talk to Tolmasov,” Rustaveli repeated.

Voroshilov gave him a sour look. “You southerners are supposed to be men of spirit. So much for folk legends.”

“You Russians are supposed to be steady and unflappable,” Rustaveli retorted; he did not add “and boring,” as he might have. “If we go home, we will be heroes, so nothing may happen to us, but what of our families? I, for one, do not care to have the KGB know I assaulted one of theirs. Or do you think we could disguise ourselves as Minervan hooligans?”

He had hoped to make the chemist laugh, but Voroshilov was still scowling. They walked on a while in silence. Finally Voroshilov grunted, “Very well, we will speak with Tolmasov. Once.”

As always, Rustaveli rejoiced at the warmth inside the tent. As always, his
valenki
squelched on mud; keeping the tent heated to a temperature humans found bearable meant that the frozen ground underfoot thawed out.

By luck, Tolmasov was there and Katerina was not. The colonel
glanced up from the report he was writing. He set aside his pen at once. “Why the long faces, comrades?” he asked. Rustaveli nodded to himself; he might have known Tolmasov would notice something was wrong.

Voroshilov did the talking. He was more fluent than Rustaveli expected, more fluent, in fact, than the Georgian had ever heard him—just as he had been all day, come to that. Anger lent him words he could not normally command.

Tolmasov held his face impassive as he listened. Finally he said. “I have seen the mark you mean, I think: the bruise that runs close by her left breast and along her ribs?”

“Da, Sergei Konstantinovich, that is the one,” Voroshilov nodded.

“Katerina said it came from a fall.” Tolmasov’s features clouded. “If that is not so—”

“Yes, what then?” Rustaveli deliberately made his tone mocking. “What do you dare to do to a man with such, ah, influence?” The only way he saw to make Tolmasov take real action was to suggest he could not.

“I command here, not Lopatin.” The pilot’s words might have been graven in stone. Rustaveli made sure he did not smile. “I shall inquire further of Dr. Zakharova, and shall take whatever action I find appropriate,” the colonel went on. “Thank you for bringing this matter to my attention.” He turned his eyes back to the report, in its way a dismissal as formal as were his last couple of sentences, spoken for the record.

“He will do nothing,” Voroshilov predicted as soon as they were far enough from the tent to speak without Tolmasov’s hearing.

Rustaveli shook his head. “Tolmasov disdains to use his strength against the weak, but I should not care to be in his way after having done so myself.” He rubbed his gloved hands in anticipation of Lopatin’s comeuppance.

But the comeuppance did not come. Rustaveli waited for Tolmasov to travel down to
Tsiolkovsky
, for Lopatin to be peremptorily summoned to the tent, for orders or warnings to come from Earth. Nothing happened. Day followed day, busily, yes, but otherwise routinely.

Voroshilov waited, too, with growing unhappiness. He was always quiet. Now he turned downright taciturn—dangerously so, if Rustaveli was any judge. He tried to draw out the chemist and failed. Voroshilov answered only in grunts. Those were
more than he gave either Tolmasov or Katerina, but they were not enough.

Fearing a brewing explosion under that silent mask, Rustaveli finally did what he had told himself not to: he talked with Katerina about the trouble. “Yuri worries about you,” he said as they walked through the marketplace of Hogram’s town.

“Why?” she asked. “I am a grown woman, Shota Mikheilovich, and quite able to care for myself.”

That gave the Georgian the opening he had hoped for. “Can you?” he countered quietly. “What of your ribs?”

She stopped so suddenly that a Minervan behind her had to swerve to keep from running into her. The male angrily waved arms and eyestalks as he went past. Katerina paid no attention. “Not you, too!” she said. “Sergei was after me about that last week. They’re almost healed—why make a fuss now?”