A World of Difference (3 page)

“I am pleased to receive such a prominent emissary,” Reatur said, more polite than ever. Then, still without abandoning his manners, he started to get down to business. “To what do I owe this privilege?”

“A moment, if you please, before I come to that,” Fralk said. “I have heard from merchants and travelers of a curious—well, a curious thing that you keep here. May I see it? Travelers’ tales are often wild, but the ones that have come to me have enough substance to be intriguing, I must confess.”

“Odd you should mention the strange thing. When Ternat announced you, I was just thinking about the summer I found
it,” Reatur said. “Come this way. In deference to your rank, I will not even ask any price of you.”

“You are generous.” Fralk widened again, then trailed after Reatur and Ternat toward the side-chamber where the domain-master kept the strange thing.

That chamber’s outer wall had much less sand and gravel mixed with its ice than was true of the rest of the castle. As Reatur had intended, more sunlight came through that way; the room was almost as bright as day.

Fralk walked all around the strange thing, looking at it with four eyes and barely managing to keep a polite pair on his hosts. Reatur understood that. When he had first found the strange thing, he had stared with all six eyes at once, lifting the stalk on the far side of his body over his head. He remembered that that had only made matters worse. He was so used to seeing all around him all the time that having a big part of his field of vision blank left him disoriented. He had wanted to lean in the direction his eyes were pointing.

Fralk was leaning a little himself. He noticed and recovered. At last he said, “This once, the tales are less than truth. I have
never
seen anything like that.”

“Neither had I when I came across it, nor have I since,” Reatur said, and meant it. He looked at the strange thing almost every day, and it still made no sense to him. With all those sharp angles—more than on any eighteen things he usually came across—it did not seem as though it had any right to exist. Yet there it was.

“How did you find it?” Fralk asked.

The domain-master had told the tale many times. Somehow, though, maybe because Fralk was a male who displayed extraordinarily good manners, it came out fresher than it had in years.

“I was out hunting nosver.”

“I’ve heard of them,” Fralk said. “We don’t have them in the Skarmer domains.”

“You’re lucky. They’re dreadful pests. By the tracks, a male and his whole band of mates had come down to raid the fields. I trailed them back to the low hills east of the castle. That summer was so hot that when I felt dry, I couldn’t find any ice or snow to pick up and put in my mouth. I had to lie down flat and dip my head in a puddle of water.”

“Annoying,” Fralk said sympathetically. “That always makes my gut itch.”

“Mine, too. Miserable stuff, water. The nosver, curse ’em,
like it, you know. They splashed along a stream coming off a tongue of ice till I couldn’t smell ’em anymore, and I wasn’t having any luck finding their prints on the far side, either. You can imagine how happy I was.”

“I don’t blame you a bit,” Fralk said. He really was a fine fellow, Reatur thought.

The domain-master went on. “So there I was, grouchy as all get out and with the start of some really fierce indigestion. I came round a boulder and almost bumped right into—that.” He pointed at the strange thing. “I looked at it, and looked at it. And then it moved.”

“It did what?” Fralk said, startled.

“Moved,” Reatur insisted. “An arm came out of its bottom and stuck itself into the ground. I tell you, I almost voided where I stood—I daresay the damned water I’d drunk had something to do with that, too. I never imagined the strange thing could be alive. I didn’t stop to think. I just took a whack at it with the stave I was carrying.”

“I would have done the same thing,” Fralk said. “Or else run.”

“I hit it over and over. What a racket it made! It was hard, harder than anything alive has any right to be. Feel for yourself if you like—it’s like midwinter ice, or even stone. It didn’t fight back, and all I can say is that I’m glad. I only quit hitting it when pieces came off. If it wasn’t dead then, it never would be.”

“Has it moved since?” Fralk asked.

“No; I guess I did kill it. My sons and grandsons and I spent days hauling it back here to the castle.”

“What a job that was,” Ternat said, whistling with remembered strain.

“Yes,” Reatur agreed. “It made me wonder all over again how the strange thing could ever have been alive. It’s as heavy as stone, and as hard to get from place to place. But it did move by itself.”

Fralk turned an extra couple of eyestalks on it again. “You could tell me it sang songs and I would not argue with you. It might do anything; it might do nothing.”

“It’s done nothing since it’s been here,” Ternat said.

“Well, not quite,” Reatur said. “Most travelers I charge food or tools to see it. Over the years, now that I think, it’s earned me a tidy sum.”

“That I do believe,” Fralk said. “It’s worth traveling a long way to see.”

A well-spoken young male indeed, Reatur thought. “Guest with me tonight,” he said expansively. “My ice is yours.”

“I thank you,” Fralk said. Then he proceeded to wreck the fine impression he had made, for he took the old proverb literally. He reached out a couple of arms, used his fingerclaws to scrape a good handful of ice from the wall, and put it in his mouth. “Very nice,” he said.

Reatur saw Ternat turn yellow with anger. The domain-master glanced down at himself. He was the same color, and no wonder. “Envoy of the Skarmer domains, you forget yourself,” he said. His voice was stiff as glacier ice in midwinter.

“No, domain-master, I do not. For this I was sent here.” Fralk took more ice and put it in his mouth as calmly as if he were munching it from the walls of his own castle. Suddenly, his politeness seemed something he had assumed at will, not native to him.

“This is insolence,” Reatur said. “Why should I not send you back to your clanfather without the arms you have used to prove it?”

Fralk spun round in a circle. “Which arms are those?” he asked when he stopped. Yes, he was mocking Reatur.

“Any two will do,” the domain-master growled.

He had to give Fralk reluctant credit; the Skarmer envoy went neither blue from fear nor an angry yellow. “You would be unwise to take them,” Fralk said. He was the very odor of good manners again. Reatur, whose moods ran fast and deep, began to see why this young male had been chosen ambassador. Like smooth ice reflecting the sun and hiding whatever lay beneath, he did his clanfather’s bidding without revealing himself in the process.

“We come down to it, then,” Reatur said, still trying to provoke a reaction from him. “Why should I not?”

“Because I aim to inherit this domain from you,” Fralk said. “That is why I treated it as my home to be.”

The chamber with the strange thing had no weapons in it. Reatur knew that. His encircling eyes glanced around it anyway, just in case. One of the things he saw was Ternat’s eyestalks twisting in a similar search. Another was that Fralk had turned blue. He was afraid now.

If he had been standing on Fralk’s claws, Reatur would have been more than afraid. “Shall I think you have gone mad, and
set you free on that account?” he said. “I could almost believe it. Why else would you speak so, in the presence of a domain-master and his eldest?”

Fralk slowly regained his greenish tint. “Because the domains that come from the first bud of Skarmer grow straitened in their lands. Just as mates must bud, Skarmer must grow.”

“How?” Reatur thought about what he knew of the lay of the land west of the Ervis Gorge: not much. But one piece of knowledge came to him. “Are not all the domains in the west Skarmer, all the way to the next Great Gorge?”

“They are,” Fralk said. “We will be coming to the east, across the Ervis Gorge.”

“He lies!” Ternat exclaimed. “What will the Skarmer domains do, send one male at a time across the rope bridge? Let them. After we have slain the first warrior, and the second, and if need be the third, they will grow bored with dying and all will be as it has been before.”

“We will be coming,” Fralk said. “We will be coming in force. I do not think you will stop us. You may reckon me witstruck, but a year from now the mastery of these lands will be walking on its eyestalks, of that I assure you.”

“Suppose for the sake of talk you are
not
witstruck,” Reatur said slowly. “Why come to me to announce what you intend? Why not simply fall on me one night when none of the moons is in the sky?”

“Because your domain lies at the eastern edge of the Ervis Gorge,” Fralk said. “We would have you aid us, if you will. We know you have no great love for either of your neighbors.”

“You know that, do you?” As a matter of fact, Reatur thought, Fralk had a point. As far as he was concerned, Dordal was an idiot and Grebur a maniac, and both of them disgraces to the name of domain-master. Still—“Why should I like your clanfather Hogram better, or any other Skarmer? Why do you have the arrogance to claim my domain will be your own? I have an eldest, and he an eldest after him. This domain is ours, and has belonged to great clan Omalo since the first bud. Should I tamely yield it to males sprung from a different bud?”

“Yield it tamely and you will stay on as domain-master for your natural life. Your sons and grandsons will not suffer, save that all mates henceforward will take no buds from them. Resist, and I will become domain-master here as soon as your castle has been melted to water. You and all of yours will die. The choice is yours.”

Fralk sounded very sure of himself, Reatur thought. He thought the Skarmer domains could do what he said they could do. Reatur was convinced of that. Fralk was no clanfather, though; he lacked the years to have learned the difference between what one wishes, even what one is sure of, and what turns out.

“Your choice is no choice,” Reatur said. “Either way, my line fails. I will defend it, as long as I may.”

“Thank you, clanfather,” Ternat said quietly. Then his voice turned savage. “Shall I now deal with this—this clankiller as he deserves?” He moved to put himself between Fralk and the one exit.

The Skarmer envoy went blue again. “The penalty I told you of will fall on you if I come to harm here,” he gabbled.

“From what you say, it will fall anyhow,” Ternat said. “So how are we worse off for punishing your filthy words?”

“Let him go, eldest,” Reatur said. “Shall we make ourselves into hunting-undit, as the Skarmer seem to be?” He turned all his eyestalks away from Fralk, denying that the young male deserved to exist. Still speaking to Ternat, the domain-master went on. “If ever he shows himself on our side of the gorge again, it will be the worse for him. Now take him out and send him on his way.”

“As you say, clanfather.” That was as close to criticism as Ternat would let himself come. He escorted Fralk out of the little chamber; Reatur still kept his eyes averted from the Skarmer male. Ternat was a good eldest, the domain-master thought. Unlike so many, he did not stand around waiting for his father to die or, as also happened sometimes, try to speed the process along. A good eldest, Reatur thought again.

The domain-master walked slowly back into the great hall. Ternat soon returned. Some of his hands still had claws out. Reatur guessed that he had not been gentle in escorting Fralk away. He did not blame him for that.

“What now, clanfather?” Ternat asked.

“I don’t know.” The admission made Reatur unhappy. “None of my eyes sees any way the Skarmer could make Fralk’s boasts good. Is it the same with you?”

“Yes. But he would not have been here boasting if they did not have something. War across a Great Gorge …” Ternat’s eyestalks wiggled in disgust.

Reatur felt the same way. Wars against neighboring domains were rarely pushed to extremes. In the end, after all, everyone
hereabouts sprang from the first Omalo bud. But the Skarmer would care nothing for that, would be aiming to plant their own buds on the local mates—Fralk, curse him, had come right out and said as much.

“We will have to set a watch on the gorge,” Ternat said.

“Hmm? Oh, yes, eldest.” Lost in gloomy musings, Reatur had almost missed Ternat’s words. The domain-master’s wits started moving again. “See to that at once. And I suppose we will have to send word to the rest of the Omalo domains, warning them of what may be happening. And if nothing does, what a laughingstock I’ll be.”

He paused. “I wonder if that isn’t the purpose of this whole affair, to split me off from the rest of the domains and leave me alone vulnerable to the Skarmer.” He hissed. “I dare not take the chance, do I?”

“Clanfather, the answer must come from you.”

Reatur knew his eldest was right. So long as Ternat was in his power, the younger male had, and could have, no responsibility of his own. The domain-master’s six arms had to bear that burden alone. “Send the messengers,” he decided. “Better to be ready for a danger that does not come than off our guard to one that does. You tend to it, in my name.”

“In your name, clanfather,” Ternat agreed proudly. He hurried off.

Reatur started to follow, then changed his mind. Instead, he walked down the corridor to the mates’ chambers. As they always did, they cried out with joy when he opened the door; they never failed to be delighted to see him. “Reatur!” they shouted. “Hello, Reatur!” “Look what we’re doing!”

“Hello, Lamra, Morna, Peri, Numar,” he said, patting each one of them in turn. He did not stop until he had named and caressed them all; he made a point of remembering their names. Unlike some clanfathers, he treated mates as people, as much as he could. They could not help it that the sardonic saying “as likely as an old mate” meant something that would never happen. They had a directness of their own, a beautiful openness males outgrew too soon.

“Look, Reatur, look what I did!” Numar proudly showed him some scribbles she had made with a soft, crumbly red stone on a piece of cured hide.

“That’s very good,” he said gravely.