A World of Difference (27 page)

Now that the mission controller—his name was Jesse Dozier—was talking to him, Irv said, “Me? What’s up?” just as if the man could hear him. Catching himself, the anthropologist laughed at his own foolishness.

He had only talked over a sentence or so, and that not directly relevant to him, or so he thought. “—continued excellent response to the assistance you folks gave the Soviets, both here and in the States and from around the world,” Dozier was saying. “Interest in the Minerva mission hasn’t been so high—or so favorable—since just after
Athena
touched down. The polls are running strongly for continued contact and exploration.”

Polls … Irv felt his mouth twist. He half wished polling had never been invented. These days, no politicians dared moved half an inch past what their polls told them. They followed so closely that most of them had forgotten how to lead.

Again Dozier’s words ran parallel to his thoughts. “We’re preparing to have the new appropriation submitted while things look so good. And to help nail it down, we’d like to be able to
show Congress another major success. That’s where you come in, Irv.”

Levitt blinked. “Me?”

Dozier, of course, took no notice. Irv shut up and listened. “From the data you folks and
Tsiolkovsky
have sent back, it seems likely that the two groups in whose lands you find yourselves will soon be at war. We want you to arrange a radio hookup with the Soviets, so that the leader on your side of Jötun Canyon can confer with the ruler on the western side. Think what a feather in your caps it will be if you can mediate a dispute between rival factions of an alien species.

“Louise”—the mission controller changed the subject—“we have some new subroutines to speed up your number-crunching. First—”

“Dozier, you are stoned out of your gourd,” Irv said. Now he didn’t care if he missed some of the feed from Houston. He wished he hadn’t heard any of what Dozier had just finished saying. What did they think back home, that Reatur and the domain-master across the canyon were a couple of Third World dictators, to be brought into line by threatening to cut off their weapons shipments?

“Sounds like it,” Emmett Bragg said when Irv, throwing his hands in the air for extra emphasis, shouted that question at him.

“But we don’t have anything like that kind of leverage on them,” Irv said, still loudly. “Tolmasov had it right—they were going to fight whether we were here or not. The other fellows want to cross, Reatur doesn’t want to let them. Where’s the room for discussion?”

“Good question.” Bragg laughed two syllables of a humorless laugh. “Maybe, if we’re real lucky, the Russians won’t cooperate. That’d get us off the hook.”

“Maybe.” Irv was as skeptical of that as Emmett sounded. The Russians spent even more time beating their breasts about how peace-loving they were than the United States did. They would have to link—Hogram? Irv wasn’t sure he remembered the western chieftain’s name—up with Reatur, assuming Reatur was willing to talk.… “Do you suppose Houston would let me beg off if I told them the domain-master would feed me to the crows for bringing up the idea at all?”

“You could try, I suppose, but I don’t think it’ll fly. Trouble is, Houston already knows Reatur’s got an open mind, because if he didn’t, he’d never have gone along with your wife’s trying
to save that female. If he’s game for that, chances are he’d be willing to talk peace, too.”

“You have this disgusting habit of being right.” Irv sighed. “Of course, just because he’ll talk doesn’t mean he’ll agree to anything. I wouldn’t, in his shoes.”

“Neither would I, not that he wears shoes. And somehow I don’t think the art of negotiation’s come as far here as it has back home. Which is to say that Reatur’s more likely to call the westerner every name in the book than talk turkey with him.” Bragg grinned crookedly. “Which is what you said a while ago.”

“You know it, I know it, the Russians here know it, I’m sure the Minervans know it, too. What do you think the odds are of convincing Houston?”

“Slim, Irv, slim. After all, they have the experts there. Just ask ’em.”

“Thanks a lot.”

“Valery Aleksandrovich, do you seriously believe Hogram will make peace with the clans east of Jötun Canyon?” Oleg Lopatin demanded. “He has been preparing for war since we landed, and for some time before that.”

“You are right, Oleg Borisovich,” Valery Bryusov agreed. The linguist did not like admitting Lopatin was right about anything. He consoled himself by mentally sneering at the way the KGB man pronounced Hogram’s name: he said it as if it started with a
G
, as most Russians did with foreign words that began with the sound of rough breathing. “Still,” Bryusov went on, “we must make the effort. Moscow would not be pleased if we let the Americans brand us as warmongers.”

“No,” Lopatin growled, dragging out the word as if it pained him. “But Moscow will not be pleased if we forfeit the position of trust we have earned here, either. And asking Hogram to do something he manifestly does not wish to do may well bring that fate down on our heads.”

“You are right,” Bryusov said again. This second admission hurt twice as much as the first one had. Bryusov scratched at his arm. His fingers clicked on the plaster of his cast. He knew it was there, but reflex made him scratch every so often anyhow. Both long-unwashed skin and healing bone itched ferociously.

“Now I wish I were up at the tent by Hogram’s town instead of here on
Tsiolkovsky,
” Lopatin grumbled. “We must tread carefully, subtly.”

“Colonel Tolmasov will do well.” Bryusov slightly stressed
the pilot’s rank to remind the
chekist
who was in charge. All Lopatin knew of subtlety, the linguist thought, was how to knock on a door at midnight. “Sergei will make Hogram understand that the request to confer with the eastern chieftain comes from our own domain-masters,” he continued, “and as dutiful males we have no choice but to convey it to him.”

“I suppose so,” Lopatin said in a tone that supposed anything but. “Negotiations have their uses, like any other tool. But once these fail—and fail they will, quite without help from us—we must be prepared to extend our full support to Hogram and his males.”

Bryusov frowned, wondering if he had heard the KGB man correctly. He saw he had. Coughing, he reminded Lopatin, “Oleg Borisovich, these are capitalists about whom you speak in such glowing terms. Alien capitalists,
da
, but capitalists even so.” Had it been the end of the sixteenth century rather than the end of the twentieth, he would have been accusing Lopatin of devil-worship.

But the
chekist
was no mean Marxist-Leninist theologian himself. “There is nothing wrong with capitalism as it emerges, Valery Aleksandrovich, only when in its decadence it stands in the way of the arrival of true socialism, as it does on Earth. Here on Minerva, capitalism is the progressive ideology and economic structure. To the east of the canyon, the domains are feudal in organization, is it not so?”

“
Bozhemoi.
” Bryusov was not used to eyeing the KGB man with respect; carefully veiled contempt was what he usually felt for him. But he had to confess, “That is a very pretty argument, Oleg Borisovich.”

“Yes, I know,” Lopatin said complacently.

A clever
chekist
is still a
chekist
, Bryusov reminded himself.

“Interesting also, I think,” Lopatin went on, “how here as well as on Earth the Americans find themselves aligned with the forces of reaction while we stand with those of progress.”

“Most interesting,” the linguist agreed. The more he thought through the implications of what Lopatin had said, the less he liked them. He held up his healing arm. “Don’t forget how the Americans helped us—helped
me
—at great risk to themselves. Here on Minerva, if nowhere else, we truly have a classless society of humans.”

“Of humans, perhaps,” Lopatin said, as if making a great concession, “but not of intelligent beings. And what we do here
will also be closely observed by people’s movements all over the world back home.”

“And by the Americans and their friends.” Now Bryusov was genuinely alarmed. Bringing quarrels from Earth to Minerva was bad enough, but letting a Minervan quarrel create trouble on Earth struck him as worse.

“Moscow will instruct us as to our proper course,” Lopatin said.

He sounded as if he were trying to reassure the linguist, but Bryusov remained unassured. The
apparatchiks
back home were as rigid as Lopatin. “I would sooner let us make our decisions on the spot,” Bryusov said. “Surely we have a better feel for the Minervans than do men who have never seen one.”

“Even the Americans, with their prattling of liberty, are not so foolish as that,” Lopatin said. “When Houston gives an order—as it did about these talks—the crew of
Athena
simply obeys.”

“Oleg Borisovich, this is the first time I have ever heard you argue that we can do no better than imitating the Americans,” Bryusov answered mildly. He cherished the glower the
chekist
gave him.

Reatur glowered at the box Irv held in one of his large, strange hands. The domain-master had come to accept and eventually to ignore such boxes in humans’ hands, even when the voices of other humans came out of them. He had never imagined a
person
’s voice might also travel in such fashion—especially not if the person was a Skarmer. “He won’t be able to see as well as hear, will he?” Reatur asked for the third time.

“No,” Irv answered. “
You
see into Skarmer lands?”

“No,” Reatur admitted unhappily. “Let me listen to his lies, then, and have done, so I can go on working to keep my domain safe from his greed.”

When humans sighed, the domain-master thought, they sounded eerily like people. Irv pressed the box here and there and then spoke into it. A rumbling voice—a human male’s voice—replied at once. It belonged to neither Emmett nor Frank; Reatur recognized the way they sounded. So there truly were more humans than he had seen.… Despite everything the weird creatures had said, he had wondered.

Irv brought him out of his eyestalk-twiddling by handing him the box. “Talk into it,” the human said. “Hogram hears you.”

“So, Skarmer, what have we to say to each other?” Reatur demanded in trade talk.

“How should I know?” Hogram used the same clipped, simplified speech. He sounded old, Reatur thought. The Omalo domain-master had known that; it had to be so, if Hogram’s eldest of eldest was a male who could be entrusted with responsibility. But hearing Hogram’s voice made the knowledge real in a way it had not been before.

“Why are you talking to me, then?” Reatur said.

“Because the”—Hogram used a word Reatur did not know—“asked me to.”

“The who?”

“The two-legged, two-armed creatures who make strange things like the box we are using to talk now. That’s what they call themselves in their own language.”

“Oh. The ones here call themselves ‘humans,’ and so we use that name for them, too.”

“Call them whatever you like. They are strange enough and strong enough that I do not care to tell them no without some truly pressing reason—nor do you, I notice.”

“Never mind what I do,” Reatur snapped. “The humans here say that if we talk, perhaps we can find a way not to fight. Stay on your side of Ervis Gorge and you will prove them right.”

“If I could, I would. But we have too many males, too many mates for our land to feed. If you peaceably yield your domain, perhaps we can work out a fate for your males less drastic than the one Fralk first proposed to you. Some of your budlings might be allowed to live on, to plant buds themselves and to work with us toward building a new land.”

“What do you mean, work with you?” Reatur did not trust the sound of that smooth-sounding phrase. “As what?”

“You know that many of us are traders rather than farmers or herders,” Hogram said. “We could, I suppose, use some males whose talents lie in those directions.”

Rage ripped through Reatur. “Use them as slaves, you mean, without even right of appeal to clanfather. For they’d not be of the same clan as your precious young Fralk, now, would they? You Skarmer aren’t traders, Hogram, you’re cheats and thieves.”

He was deliberately insulting, trying to infuriate Hogram as he had been infuriated. The Skarmer domain-master, though, seemed armored against insult. “In your obstinacy, Omalo, you have made me become more generous. Cherish that; not many may boast of it.”

“Imagine my delight.” Reatur made his voice as hot with scorn as the melt-water that brawled through Ervis Gorge. “Save such praise for dealings with your fellow Skarmer, who can properly appreciate it.” He shortened his eyestalks in surprise as he thought of something new. “Why even think of crossing the gorge, Hogram? Why not seize the domains of your neighbors, if you need land so badly? Surely that would be simpler for you.”

“I wish you had been budded a fool; my life would be easier.” This time Hogram sounded as though he really was giving a compliment, not sardonic as he had been before. “In truth, though, all the Skarmer domains hereabouts find themselves in the same straits as do I: too many folk, not enough food. My domain might be bigger were I to conquer them, but no better off.”

That made sense to Reatur. He almost wished it had not; he had not expected to be able to see out of Hogram’s eyestalks. Thinking of the Skarmer domain-master as a male with problems of his own was less comfortable than simply thinking of him as the enemy. It could be useful, though, if it gave him clues about how Hogram would plot.

As if changing the subject, Reatur asked, “Do your humans come in two kinds, one with a deep rumbling voice and the other that sounds like a person?”

Hogram, Reatur thought, was sharp or at least suspicious. The Skarmer domain-master’s voice turned cautious at once as he answered, “Yes, they do. What of it?”

The reply was innocuous enough, but Reatur felt like hooting with glee. Instead, as casually as before, he asked, “Have they told you that the ones who sound like people are mates, and the others males?”