by Allen Steele
Apparently someone was watching to see how we were doing, because as soon as my problem was solved, there was a prolonged hiss as the atmosphere was changed out. Another door opened, this one leading to a long corridor with another door at the opposite end.
The others were calm as they marched toward the corridor, yet for no reason at all, I became anxious. Unbidden, my mind began to concoct all sorts of horrors awaiting us beyond that door. Medieval dungeons, where we’d be stripped naked and tortured upon racks. Operating theaters filled with hjadd doctors waiting to dissect us alive. An underground coal mine on Hjarr where we would work as slaves until we dropped dead. Oh, sure, they’d told us that we’d be attending a reception in our honor…but what did they really have in mind?
My steps faltered, and I hesitated just before we reached the door. “Y’know, maybe I should go back to the ship,” I muttered. “Check on Ali, see how he’s doing…”
“Jules, what the hell is wrong with you?” Ted’s voice was muffled by his mask as he turned to look at me. “I swear, you’ve been acting weird ever since…”
“Sorry. Never mind.” I shook my head. “Just feeling kinda ethereal, that’s all.”
He stared at me for another moment, as if trying to decide whether it might be a good idea to let me return to the ship. Then he sighed and turned toward the door. “Well, we’re here. Let’s see what…”
Then the door spiraled open, and we saw what.
VIII
More specifically:
A vast amphitheater, whose steep walls sloped upward to a domed ceiling supported by delicately curved arches, from which hung slender pennants inscribed in what seemed to be several different languages. Arranged in tiers along the walls were dozens of glassed-in cells resembling the box seats of a sports arena; within each one were small figures, none of which were even remotely human.
The amphitheater floor was nearly the size of a baseball field, with a long aisle leading straight down its center toward a raised dais. On either side of the aisle, separated from us by gilded ropes, was a multitude of extraterrestrials. Some I recognized from the images I’d seen on the screens of the docking saucer’s reception area, but most were…well, alien. They regarded us with eyes slitted, multifaceted, and cyclopean, raised on stalks or recessed deep within skulls; antennae switched in our direction, and elephantine ears swiveled toward us. Fur and exoskeletons, stalklike legs and wormy tentacles, mandibles and sucker mouths, pincers and claws, pads and pods and hooves…the denizens of a score of worlds, turning as one to study the handful of strangers who’d come among them.
The cacophony of voices—chirps, clicks, burbles, grunts, hisses, and howls—that had echoed across the enormous room fell away as we made our entrance, until we found ourselves surrounded by an eerie silence. Ted was leading us; he stopped at the end of the aisle, and it was clear that he didn’t have the foggiest notion what to do next. Nor did the rest of us; we looked at each other uncertainly. Should we kneel and bow? Raise our hands to show that we’d come unarmed? Try a little bit of the old soft-shoe? Nothing had prepared us for this moment.
The crowd to our left suddenly parted, allowing two familiar figures to approach us: Jas and Fah, neither one wearing environment suits but instead dressed in ornate robes. They walked down the aisle until they stopped a few feet away; then, as one, they raised their hands in the hjadd gesture of welcome.
“Greetings and salutations,” Jas said, hisher native tongue translated into Anglo by the device around hisher neck. “Welcome to the Talus caan-saah…the Great Hall of the Talus.”
“Thank you.” Ted raised his left hand; the rest of us did the same. “As captain of the Coyote Federation ship Pride of Cucamonga, I’m pleased to…”
Fah made a sharp, coughlike grunt that couldn’t have been anything except a protest, as from all around us came a low resumption of the same voices we’d heard only moments before. Jas’s fin rose slightly, and heshe stepped closer. “They cannot understand you unless you use your translator,” heshe murmured, then heshe reached to Ted’s mask and gently pressed the small button. “Now you may speak.”
“Oops, sorry.” As he spoke, Ted’s amplified voice boomed across the enormous room, followed an instant later by its translation into dozens of extraterrestrial tongues. This time, the audience response was louder, and there was no mistaking their amusement. The first words of a human to the collective races of the Talus: oops, sorry.
Ted’s face went as red as the patterns of his sha. Before he could try again, though, Morgan stepped up beside him. “Thank you, Prime Emissary Mahamatasja Jas Sa-Fhadda of the hjadd,” he said smoothly, raising his left hand while assaying a perfunctory bow. Once more, the Great Hall fell silent. “As leader of the first trade delegation from the human world of Coyote, Morgan Goldstein humbly accepts the invitation of the Talus, in hopes that this meeting leads to peaceful and profitable relations between its worlds and our own.”
Nice speech, albeit a bit presumptuous. Even as its translation echoed through the caan-saah, Ted gave Morgan a sharp look. Perhaps Morgan had come to the rescue, but Ted was obviously irritated at having been upstaged. Morgan just smirked; after all, he’d spent more time with the hjadd than anyone else, even Ted and Emily, and thus knew the proper protocols.
“We recognize you, Morgan Goldstein of Coyote, along with your companions.” Fah’s fin had lain down flat against hisher skull; apparently heshe was no longer miffed. “The Talus welcomes your delegation and hopes as well that this first meeting will result in a long and prosperous relationship.”
From all around us, dozens of voices rose at once, as the aliens gathered within the amphitheater spoke in unison. I had no idea what they were saying, but I couldn’t help but grin. Okay, everything was hunky-dory. We weren’t about to be tortured or dissected or enslaved; thanks to my good and dear friend Morgan Goldstein, I was an honored guest of the Talus.
“Yippie-yo ky-yay,” I muttered. “Let’s party.”
Rain was standing next to me. She quickly raised a finger to her mask, silently shushing me. I shrugged. My translator wasn’t activated, and I hadn’t spoken loud enough to be heard by anyone else. But again, from the corner of my eye, I caught the worrisome look on Ash’s face.
Neither Jas nor Fah seemed to notice. “A place of honor has been reserved for you,” Jas said, extending a hand toward the center of the room. “If you will be so kind, we will take you there.”
“Thank you, Prime Emissary.” Ted was not about to let Morgan steal the limelight again. “As captain of the Coyote Federation ship Pride of Cucamonga, I accept your hospitality on behalf of my crew.”
As we followed Jas and Fah toward the dais, the swarm of voices resumed its former volume. Countless alien faces stared at us from either side of the aisle…and just beyond the ropes, something that looked like a cross between Mardi Gras and a Texas hoedown was under way. Now that they had dispensed with the necessary formalities, the members of the Talus were going back to what they’d been doing before we showed up. From various locations within the crowd, fumaroles of fragrant incense rose in the air, while shimmering white balls floated overhead, serving no purpose that I could perceive except to be pretty. A quartet of hairy arachnids pounded upon an array of drums, supplying the music to which several bipedal giraffes performed an intricate dance. A pair of blue-skinned, four-armed beings, as skinny as ballerinas but with heads like giant bananas, juggled luminescent gold batons, tossing them back and forth to each other to form complex airborne patterns. A hideous caterwaul, and I glanced around to see an enormous creature that looked like a yeti pounding its fists against its barrel chest; several white balls shot toward it, and the yeti abruptly calmed down.
“Oh, man,” Doc said quietly. “Haven’t seen anything like this since my nephew’s bar mitzvah.”
That made me laugh so hard, I doubled over, clutching at my stomach. Everyone stared at me, and even Jas turned hisher head upon hisher long neck. Rain grabbed my sho
ulders, pulled me upright. “What’s gotten into you?” she whispered, her voice low and urgent.
Ted fell back a couple of steps. “Cut it out!” he hissed angrily. “This isn’t the time or place!”
“I know, I know…sorry.” Yet I couldn’t wipe the grin off my face. Everything was so ludicrous, so surreal, that it was nearly impossible to take any of it seriously. Fifty-four light-years from home, and what did I find? The biggest party in the galaxy, with everyone wearing the damnedest costumes I’d ever seen. I took a deep breath, shook my head in an effort to clear it. Ted gave me a warning glare, then moved back to the front of the line.
We reached the end of the aisle, where six chairs had been arranged in a semicircle facing the dais, upon which stood a large, thronelike couch proportioned to nonhuman contours. Jas and Fah took up positions on either side of us; they waited patiently while we took our seats, yet I noticed that their eyes kept swiveling toward an elevated runway leading to the throne from a door off to the right. Obviously they were expecting someone.
Yet that wasn’t what got my attention. Perched on the left armrest of my chair was a gnosh, identical to those I’d packed aboard the Pride earlier that day. Whether it was supposed to be a party favor or merely a decoration, I didn’t know, but nonetheless I was delighted to find it.
I wrapped my hand around its delicately curved shaft, and ecstasy flooded through me. If I’d been in a happy frame of mind before then, once I touched the gnosh I was positively delirious. You could have hit me over the head with a ball-peen hammer and I would’ve only giggled. Pure joy, unbridled and without end, was at the center of my personal universe; so swept up in pleasure as I was, it only barely occurred to me that no one else in our group was touching their own gnoshes.
“Jules.” Rain was sitting beside me, yet her voice sounded as if it was being transmitted from some planet many parsecs away. “Jules, snap out of it. You’re…”
The long, loud toll of a gong, and once again everything went quiet as all eyes turned toward the runway. A door opened at the side of the amphitheater, and two dozen hjadd, wearing armor that vaguely resembled that of ancient Romans, entered the room. Carrying staffs from which dangled ribbonlike flags, they marched in perfect cadence until, two at a time, they took up positions on either side of the runway. Raising their staffs to shoulder height, they unfurled their flags, then stood at stiff attention.
“All rise for the chaaz’braan!” Jas commanded.
At a loss for what else to do, we stood up from our seats, gazed toward the door. The Great Hall had gone silent, yet from two seats to my left, I heard Morgan’s quiet voice. “The chaaz’braan,” he whispered to no one in particular. “Spiritual leader of the Talus. Sort of a holy man, if you could call him that. He’s…”
He abruptly went quiet as the gong sounded once more, and then the chaaz’braan entered the room.
I don’t know what I was expecting—the Pope, maybe, or perhaps the Dalai Lama—but that wasn’t what I saw. What came through the door was something that looked like a bloated and incredibly ancient bullfrog. Swaddled in heavy robes of crimson and gold whose train dragged behind him, he lurched forward on thick, bipedal legs, his shoulders bowed by the weight of years. Rubbery jowls fell from either side of a broad, thick-lipped mouth, and sparse white hair hung limp from a flat, slightly ridged skull. Two deep-set eyes—one half-closed and slightly askew—gazed straight ahead in what appeared to be an expression of senile boredom.
As the chaaz’braan slowly approached the throne, it suddenly occurred to me that this was the funniest thing I’d ever seen. So this was the High Hoodoo of the Talus. If he’d been a bit smaller, I could have stuck him in a terrarium and fed him houseflies. Almost as if to confirm my impression, his mouth lolled open, and a long tongue spilled out for a moment before disappearing again, leaving behind a moist tendril that drooled from his lips.
Feeling an uncontrollable urge to crack up, I quickly raised a hand to my mouth. Yet I was too late to keep from laughing out loud. In the silence of the Great Hall, it sounded like someone busting a gut during a funeral…which made it even more ridiculous.
Rain grabbed my arm. “Shut up!” she snapped, no longer trying to be quiet. “You’re going to…!”
But the damage was done. The chaaz’braan had heard me. Stopping just short of his throne, he slowly turned to regard me with a walleyed stare that was both wise and moronic at the same time. And, indeed, everyone else in the Great Hall seemed to be watching me as well. My crewmates, Jas and Fah, the hjadd honor guard, the hundreds of extraterrestrials gathered around us…all had turned to see what was going on with the impetuous young human who’d brayed in the presence of the holiest of holies.
“Sorry…I’m so sorry.” I gazed back at the chaaz’braan, trying to show the proper respect yet still incapable of hiding my grin. “My apologies, your worship…your highness…your frogginess, or whatever…”
“Jules!”
Ignoring Rain, I stepped forward, approaching the dais with my hands outstretched. “No, really…I mean it. I’m just some poor goof from Earth…hell, two weeks ago, I was a stowaway…and now, here I am, face-to-face with the greatest…um, toad, I guess…in the entire galaxy.”
Ted tried to grab my arm and pull me back, but I was on a roll. Slipping free of his grasp, I continued walking toward the chaaz’braan. “So I’m absolutely, completely, totally overwhelmed,” I babbled, making my way up a short flight of steps to the dais. “This is a real honor, your…um, whatever they call you back in the pond…and I just want to say that me and my friends are happy to be here, and thanks for all the paperweights, and…”
By then, I’d reached the top of the dais. The chaaz’braan was only a few feet away; his one good eye peered at me with what seemed to be amusement, as his mouth stretched open to allow his tongue to loll forward again.
“Well,” I finished, “I promise I won’t eat your legs.”
I was about to wrap my arms around him in what I meant to be a brotherly hug when, all of a sudden, the small airborne balls I’d seen earlier swooped down upon me. They circled me like the electrons of an enormous atom, preventing me from getting any closer to the chaaz’braan. Annoyed by their interruption, I raised my hands to swat them away.
One of them touched the back of my left hand, and that was it. I was out like a light.
( FOURTEEN )
The morning after…
the frog-god is amused…
truth and consequences…
an act of atonement.
IX
Exactly how long I was out of commission, I couldn’t know. What I did know for certain is that, when I woke up on the sofa in the library, it was with the worst hangover of my life. Which isn’t saying much, because I’ve never been a heavy drinker. If this was what Ash had to deal with every time he went on a bender, though, it was enough to make me vow then and there never to get smashed again.
But…I hadn’t been drunk. The last thing I recalled was raving at the chaaz’braan; then little glowing balls swarmed in upon me. Up until that point, my behavior had been erratic, to say the least, but I could’ve sworn in good faith that neither grain nor grape had passed my lips. And if not, then why did my brain hurt so much and my eyes feel as if they’d been rubbed with sandpaper?
Rolling over on the sofa, I looked up to find Rain gazing down at me. The expression on her face wasn’t pleasant; she’d changed out of her sha, but I didn’t need its patterns to tell me that her mood was black.
“Umm…hey there,” I muttered. “What happened?”
“I don’t know. You tell me.” Despite her anger, her voice was gentle, genuinely concerned. She reached over to a side table, picked up a glass of water. “Here. Drink this.”
I managed to sit up enough to take the glass from her without spilling it. Even that, though, was sufficient to make my skull feel as if it was ready to explode. But my mouth tasted like a sandbox, and a drink of water was worth the pain. “T
hanks,” I gasped once I’d quenched my thirst. “Where…I mean, how did I get back here?”
“We carried you. Hold on a sec.” Rain was wearing her headset; she tapped its lobe and murmured something I didn’t quite catch. “Everyone’s in bed,” she continued, “but the skipper said he wanted to be awakened as soon as you came to.”
“So you’ve been up with me all night?” She nodded, and I glanced at my watch. A quarter to seven, by the ship’s clock. “Thanks. I appreciate it…and the lift back, too.”
“Yeah, well…” Rain pushed my legs aside so that she could take a seat at the other end of the sofa. “You’re lucky we were able to get you out of there. The hjadd…Fah in particular…wanted to take you into custody for what you did back there. Fortunately, Morgan interceded on your behalf, and, well…”
“Wait a minute.” Holding up a hand, I struggled with my memory. Lots of holes there that needed to be filled. “What did I do back there?”
She stared at me. “You mean you don’t remember?” I started to shake my head; it was too painful to do so, but she got the idea. “God, Jules…”
“I’m in trouble, aren’t I?”
“No…we’re in trouble,” Ted said. “You’re just the guy who got us there.”
I hadn’t heard the door of his room open and shut; when I looked up at the gallery, though, I saw the captain heading for the stairs, with Emily behind him. Like Rain, they were back in their own clothes. Realizing that I was still wearing my sha, I suddenly wanted to get out of it; the robe felt filthy, as if I’d done something embarrassing while wearing it. Which apparently was the case.
“Next time I give you an order,” Ted went on as he came down the stairs, “you damn well better listen to me.” He nodded toward the table where the food the hjadd had brought us still lay. “And that includes skipping a free meal.”