In deathly silence, the Arrans glared at him. The Archon’s smile vanished.
The cold, sparkling drink went down tastelessly. Something wrong here.
Augustus again, in English: (“The crashing you don’t hear is the sound of a giant brick dropping.”)
(“What did I do?”) John hissed.
(“You ‘you’d’ the Archon as an equal.”)
(“I meant to.”)
(“He doesn’t like it.”)
Farragut lifted his brows in a kind of shrug.
The Archon declared coldly, “I am not accustomed to being talked to so!” Then, suddenly amicable again, declared, “From you, I shall take it.”
Donner had changed his own choice of
you
. He upgraded Farragut to an equal. The Archon’s glass lifted in imitation. “To your health.” Donner drank, and the room exhaled.
The empty glasses went away so unobtrusively John Farragut did not notice them going. The Archon’s servants were well practiced at being unnoticeable.
Donner introduced no one and asked no names of Captain Farragut’s delegation. There was only Donner and Captain Farragut. Everyone else in the room was furniture.
Ill-mannered furniture. Two of the xenos were whispering together, taking great interest in the floor—a mosaic of precious and semiprecious stones set in lead. Cracks in it and in the marble pillars suggested an unquiet earth. The xenos were discussing seismology; the Archon only saw them eyeing the jewels.
“You came prospecting!” Donner accused Farragut.
“I don’t know how you boys do things on Arra, but where I come from you don’t call your guests thieves,” said Farragut. This encounter was being recorded. Farragut imagined LEN diplomats having seizures at this point in the replay.
“Then you are not claiming my world?” Donner asked, somewhat mollified.
“Of course not. You got here first.”
The whites flared in the Archon’s dark eyes. The room stirred.
(“The discreet approach, hm, John?”)
(“I was just imitating the Archon. He’s blunt.”)
(“Dictators can dish it out, but they don’t usually take it well.”)
And the Archon had had quite enough of the English backchat. He raised his voice, “This is the same as whispering! Thou shalt not whisper in my presence! When you speak, speak to me!”
“I need advice on how to speak to you,” Farragut explained. “I’m new at this language. No disrespect intended. (And, oh shit, Augustus, what did I say now? He’s glaring at me.)”
(“You used the imperial ‘I.’ ”)
But the Archon resumed a magnanimous air and allowed, “You speak my language better than I speak yours.”
“Thank you.”
Augustus: (“He’s not as pissed as he pretends. We’re on camera. A lot of this posturing is for show.”)
The Archon stalked across the vast expanse of jeweled floor to give Augustus a hard look up and down. At five foot seven, the Archon looked absolutely diminutive before the six-foot-eight Roman. Donner asked dubiously, “This is a female?”
Colonel Steele smirked.
(“It’s the height, shrimp,”) Augustus shot back in English to six-foot Steele, who had never been called “shrimp” in his life. (“Look at the women.”)
Farragut answered the Archon, “He is not female. He is tall.”
“Where are you from?” the Archon demanded.
“My planet is called Earth. Augustus’ planet is called Palatine, but his people came originally from Earth.”
The duality surprised Donner. “Where is Earth? Where is Palatine?”
“A long way from here.”
“Outside?” Donner circled the air with a forefinger. He had human hands, four fingers per hand, opposable thumbs. “Outside my Myriad?”
“Outside the globular cluster, yes.”
“Where? How far?”
(“Okay, somebody give me a distance in local units!”) Farragut called to all present.
A xeno fed him the Myriadian translation of six thousand, four hundred parsecs.
The Archon looked profoundly impressed by the reply. The females looked quite vacant, as if they could not count that high.
Donner asked in wonderment, “Where is the
kzachin
you came by?”
Farragut glanced to Augustus, as all the xenos tapped at the language modules.
(“I’m pulling up ‘hollow,’ for
kzachin
,”) said Farragut, perplexed. (“Is he saying they travel between planets by ‘hollows’ or did he change the subject again?”)
Augustus answered in Myriadian, “Ask the Archon if his people used the
kzachin
to travel to this world from Origin.”
Donner reacted as if a chair had spoken. He would not address a minion, so rather than ask Augustus to explain himself, Donner demanded from Farragut, “What do you know of Origin!”
Farragut deferred. “Colonel Augustus, what do we know of Origin?”
Augustus answered immediately, “The sun is orange. The air is thin. The oceans are less than one percent saline. Origin is larger than Arra, but it is sixty percent the density. Native-born
T’Arraiet
have a much higher bone density than natives of Origin. A day on Origin is thirty percent longer than on Arra. The period of revolution around Origin’s sun is roughly half a
T’Arra
year. How are we doing?”
Donner looked astonished.
(“I sense a direct hit, Mr. Holmes,”) Farragut commented to his Roman Intelligence Officer in English.
Donner exclaimed, “You have been to Origin!”
Farragut shook his head, then remembered that the gesture did not translate. Spoke, “No. It’s all deduction. From what you are, he can figure back to where you must have come. He is particularly gifted that way.”
“May I have him?”
Refusing a request for a gift was always a dicey thing. Farragut demurred, “Actually, he is on loan to me. He is not mine to give.”
Donner beckoned the captain closer, advised softly, “Then you should give him back. He bears you no good.”
Farragut nodded. Very astute observation from an alien species. But then one would not expect the Archon to be the dimmest star in the cluster.
“Can you tell me, then, where Origin is?” Donner challenged.
Before the captain could answer, a large, collared animal trotted into the chamber. A boxy-headed, muscular dog-thing. It looked up at its adored master, Donner, then veered to the line of Marines along the wall.
The husky dog-thing raised its hackles and growled at Colonel Steele.
The Archon pointed at Steele. “That one bears me ill.” The Archon’s guards stiffened, and the Marines stiffened in response.
“No,” Farragut tried to tell him.
“Oh, he does,” Donner insisted, knowing.
“He does,” Colonel Steele confirmed for him.
And on second look, Farragut agreed that gentle lies were probably a bad approach here. He explained, “My ship tripped a minefield at the perimeter of your Myriad. Colonel Steele lost a man.”
“The minefield was not meant for you,” said Donner. “You must not take it as hostility, Captain Farragut.” Donner offered no apology to Steele.
“Who were the mines meant for?” Farragut asked.
“Not for you.”
His dog-thing growled.
“Oh,
sit
down!” the Archon commanded.
The dog-thing squared itself like a gargoyle opposite Colonel Steele, sat.
The Arran women tittered behind long, graceful hands, an infectious sound, and in a moment the Earth Marines lost the fight to contain their sniggers. Donner scowled at the women, and Farragut stared at his Marines in confusion. (“What
is
it?”)
At that, the Marines sputtered, and the Arran women bubbled with giggles.
Flight Sergeant Cole blurted in English, (“They look like bookends, sir!”)
Kerry Blue yelped, stifled a laugh with a whimper. The Arran women tittered, not understanding the words, but the pitch of the voices translated well enough.
“Bookends,” Augustus translated, and the Arran women squealed. The Arran guards’ lips unstiffened, perilously close to cracking their stony faces.
The Archon stalked to the lieutenant colonel, had to look up to study Steele’s dour face—his white-blond hair buzzed flat across the top of his squarish head; his eyes of vivid, piercing blue; his brawny shoulders set straight across.
Donner turned then to his growling, blocky, muscular dog-thing. “I see it.”
The women’s laughter sparkled.
“What happened to him?” Donner asked Farragut.
Farragut puzzled a moment. Donner’s question seemed to refer to Colonel Steele. “Nothing. What do you see that you think is wrong with him?”
“His color.”
Farragut was a loss of how to explain Steele’s fairness. “That is just his color.”
“He has hideous eyes. Yours are merely ugly. His eyes are creepy.”
“The women don’t think so,” Augustus said.
The Archon jerked up short. Partly that the furniture was talking again, and partly from what the furniture said. Donner turned sourly to his women, demanded doubtfully, “Is this so?”
The sylphs dissolved into high, musical Geisha giggles.
The Archon turned away, miffed and mystified. “Well. Blue eyes. Who could have guessed women liked blue eyes?” Donner returned to Colonel Steele, pointed to the black bars bracketing the outer corners of Steele’s eye sockets. “What are those?”
Farragut hesitated, answered, “Cameras.”
“And what more?”
The hesitation had not escaped notice. Donner heard the missing “and.” Surprising, the nuances that the alien could detect.
Bluntness was apparently the wisest course. “And gun sights,” Farragut let the other shoe drop.
“Ah. Is this a gun?” The Archon reached, but Steele’s hand clapped over his side arm first.
The Archon’s guards bridled, but Donner backed them down, and Steele barked his Marines into line.
Farragut maintained a calm, friendly manner. “Yes, those are guns. Colonel Steele, indulge our host.”
Steele briskly unsnapped the flap, unholstered the side arm, and flipped it around, butt end out.
The Archon fit his small hand around the fat grip. “How does this work?”
“It doesn’t,” said Farragut. “It is coded to its issuant. In your hand, it’s a lump of metal.”
Of course, the Archon would have to try it. Testing the truth as much as the weapon, the Archon pointed the weapon at Steele, pulled the trigger.
Nothing happened.
Donner smiled. Steele had not blinked.
“What an excellent idea. You must tell me how it is done.” He was speaking to Farragut. He relinquished the weapon to Colonel Steele. Donner then pointed to Captain Farragut’s sword. “Ceremonial?”
“Actually not. We use them.”
The Archon gave a disbelieving cough. Then guessed, “So that you do not poke holes in your spaceship?”
“Oh, I have put holes in my ship,” Farragut admitted merrily. “The force field keeps the vacuum out. I am more worried about hitting one of my own guys on the other side of the bulk. This is a useful antique, like Morse code.”
“Like . . . ?”
Morse code
did not translate.
“Don’t ever throw out your old technology, Donner.” Farragut probably ought not advise a new contact, but he had made an instant primitive connection with this alien leader. “Swords are useful.” That and John Farragut liked ’em.
Kerry Blue, standing at attention, lost track of the conversation, distracted by a tickle on the back of her neck. She knew there was a white ledge lined with plants high behind her head. The tickle felt like a leaf from a hanging vine touching her neck hairs. She edged discreetly forward. The touch returned, grazed her cap.
Finally she cranked her head back and up to look at the plants.
The plants looked at her.
Under thick coats of iguana green, nictitating membranes flicked over saurian eyes. A very long sticky tongue flicked experimentally to Kerry’s cheek.
With wooden slowness, Kerry returned to face forward, adamantly ignoring the lizard plants.
The Archon and the Arran women were chuckling at something the captain had just said.
The Archon explained that no one had used that expression in at least ten years. Augustus had made these language modules when the ship was still ten light-years from Arra, so the slang was a little stale.
A plant stepped down and perched on Kerry’s shoulder. Kerry straightened, rigid. Hissed between her teeth: (“
Colonel
!”)
The tongue flicked into her ear. She shut her eyes. (“
Colonel Steele!
”)
The Marine nearest Steele nudged the colonel and cocked a head sideways to direct the CO’s attention Kerryward.
The plant hunkered down on Kerry’s shoulder and crooned.
Steele strode out of line, pulled the plant from Kerry’s shoulder, and tossed it back up to its ledge.
(“Thank you, sir,”) Kerry whispered.
The Archon broke off his conversation with the captain and looked quite cross. Kerry assumed that the side chatter had offended him. But Donner’s onyx glare was not for the visitors.
“Why are my plants walking?” The soft anger in the Archon’s voice promised someone would catch hell later.
Cowed servants scurried to fill shallow white bowls on the ledges with water. There followed the soft lapping of froglike tongues.
The contented plants hunched down into their places and turned their green leaves to the starlight. The servants vanished.
And Kerry’s pet dropped back down to her shoulder. Put a webby foot on her cheek. Crooned.
The Archon broke off again and stalked toward her.
The plant squeaked and dived down the back of Kerry’s impeccable white uniform.
The Archon’s jewel-black eyes bored into hers. Kerry scoured her language module for words. “I—I got a plant down my back. Sir.”
The Archon looked her up and down hard. The fugitive plant, huddling against Kerry’s back, pulled her jacket tight across her chest. The Archon’s gaze paused at the suggestion of breasts beneath the dress whites.
Donner turned back to Captain Farragut, hesitated, as if fearing he was about to say something incredibly ignorant, “Is this . . . is this a
female?
”
“Yes, Flight Sergeant Blue is female.”
“She is pregnant,” Donner surmised.