Three: they would be happy to establish trade with both Hayumans and Hrrubans. Which put Todd right back on the horns of that unresolved dilemma of an adequate spaceport now that there would be three species using it.
Four: it was confirmed that they had found their way to this sector of space by following ion trails, detected by their own equipment. When they had come upon the Doonarralan warning devices, they realized they had finally discovered a sophisticated culture, which they approached cautiously, but openly. They were overwhelmingly relieved to discover they were not the only sentient species in the galaxy. And there was great jubilation when they realized that they had encountered two such species!
“We are joyous to not be alone,” Grizz had said during the conference, bowing her head almost to her knees to signify deep emotion.
Hayuman and Hrruban were hard put not to burst out in cheers. Instead, they gripped hands with the Gringg, allowing their broad grins to demonstrate how happy they were.
“All a little too pat,” Admiral Barnstable told Greene and Castleton when they viewed the tape. “Buddy-buddy, lovey-dovey, but all too pat!”
“Especially as we can’t read their star maps,” Greene added, as if that fact vindicated his distrust of the bearfolk.
“Considering they’ve come into this sector of space from a different quadrant, you couldn’t read them even if they had the same optics as we do,” Grace Castleton felt obliged to remark. She knew these two wouldn’t have believed anything the Gringg said, even if they’d agreed to drop buoys all the way back to their homeworld, like crumbs that marked the way out of a cave in some old children’s tale. Even loosely translating their distances, the Gringg homeworld was one helluva way back in on this arm of the Milky Way.
When the tape was shown in every village on Doonarrala, there was considerable rejoicing, and some doubts were allayed. Copies were dispatched by courier to both Amalgamated Worlds and Hrruban High Councils. Inevitably that brought back the issue of a larger spaceport.
“Zodd, we must resolve this between us,” Hrriss said in Low Hrruban when he managed to find Todd alone in his office.
“Yeah,” Todd agreed unenthusiastically, exhaling a long sigh as he tossed his pen across a desk covered by little piles of flash cards. He managed a half-smile for Hrriss, his dearest friend. “Can’t bury my head in a snake nest any longer. Not if we want to keep the Gringg.”
“First of all, Zodd, you have to agree,” Hrriss said patiently, settling on the edge of Todd’s desk as he had so many times in the past, “it is not Hrruban encroaching on unused space. It is Gringg needing space”—he dropped his jaw at this play on words— “for the very size of them. But more importantly, they provide a neutral factor, cancelling the sort of single-race intrusion you dreaded. In a triangle, all sides are equal.”
“Only if it’s an isosceles,” Todd said, weary to his bones with disputations and arguments, and mostly fearful of a resumption of the estrangement from Hrriss which had cost him much mental anguish.
“Equal sides,” Hrriss repeated, his eyes liquid and pleading. “Equilateral.”
“Two of us don’t quite equal a Gringg.”
“What can equal a Gringg?” demanded Hrriss, throwing up his hands in comic dismay.
“They are to be friends, are they not?” Todd said, suddenly propelling himself out of his chair. He gripped Hrriss by the arms, needing to have all half-doubts dismissed. He had to proceed positively, thinking optimistically; by sheer will power bringing about what he so intensely desired. That method had worked before.
Hrriss’ hands returned his grasp and then pulled him forward into an embrace, thumping Todd on the back as was the Hayuman custom.
“Yesss, friend of my heart, yesss! Even as thou and I,” Hrriss added in High Hrruban. Then, in the less formal speech, he added, “As I have told you hundreds of times now, not all of the Hrrunatan is beautiful.”
Todd frowned as he released his friend. “Where?”
Hrriss gave a sigh. “Where we have always wanted to put it, only you would never let me explain . . .”
“I knew, I knew.” Todd flapped his hand dismissively, then suddenly stopped himself and smiled with chagrin at Hrriss’ careful expression. “I’m doing it again, aren’t I? But you do mean that rocky area on the east coast where that massive subsidence was?” When Hrriss nodded, relieved that his dear friend for once was willing to discuss the problem, Todd said, “But that wouldn’t be large enough . . .”
“If one filled in the lagoon that was formed by the little subsidence islands and extended a firm base to those islands . . .” Hrriss explained with the weary patience of someone repeating a well-rehearsed argument, and waited for his friend’s reaction.
Todd turned away, shaking his head sharply from side to side, but then slowing the motion as his sense of fair play forced him to examine that compromise. “It would take years . . .”
“To expand, yes, but not to set up the initial facility . . .” Again Hrriss watched his friend’s face, seeing indecision increasing. “The beautiful part of the Hrrunatan would be intact, untouched . . . untouchable!”
“If that could only be enforced . . .” Todd began reluctantly.
“Why not?” Hrriss said, shrugging his tawny shoulders and dropping his jaw. “The terrain is perfect. The first precipice, where the subsidence began, is a natural barrier to the interior, and we will see that the traders abide by our laws.”
“Traders are born to bend laws,” Todd said, but he knew that was a weak argument. He shook his head one more time. “All right. Put the port there, but seal off the rest of the continent!” He shook a stern finger at Hrriss’ grinning countenance. “I find so much as an ounce of ship’s flotsam or the trace of fuel discharge on the mainland . . . I suppose you’ve got rough sketches all ready?”
Hrriss growled a laugh. “Jilamey used them as a device to keep the discontented occupied while we struggled with our growls.”
Todd made a disgusted noise in his throat and rolled his eyes at such complicity. “Only, I’ll have nothing to do with it. I hereby empower you to attend any meetings on my behalf! My heart simply isn’t in it and I’ve got to increase the working vocabulary. I’m much more useful doing that. And, one more thing, I don’t even want spaceships overflying the Hrrunatan. They come in from the east. That sort of racket would be disrespectful to Hrruna.”
“Ah, but”—Hrriss raised a digit, claw half-extended— “Hrruna was a far-sighted progressive.”
“So you say—” Todd caught himself as he was about to embark on the arguments he’d initially used to try to stop the project. With a laugh, he put his fingertip on the claw and gently pushed it back in its sheath. “A triangle is the most stable geometrical figure.” Another thought caught him. “Great snakes! We’ll have to enlarge Treaty Island facilities, too, to accommodate the Gringg.”
“So we will. So we will,” Hrriss replied equably.
* * *
Besides conscripting one of the local manufactories to turn out the voder parts, Todd managed to get the local high school and university, as a work-experience for their students, to assemble the translation devices in their electronics shop classes under the direction of Lieutenant Cardiff. Cardiff was a find. If Todd could have replaced his Spacedep pension, he would have been happy to give him a place on Doonarrala. But Cardiff liked travel and he was used to the military life.
“Maybe I’ll retire here, friend,” he told Todd. “Meantime, you’ve got a thousand of these growl boxes ready to go.”
The crew complement of the orbiting Gringg leviathan numbered one hundred fifty-four, so the remaining devices were split evenly among Humans and Hrrubans. Over protests from the contentious of both homeworlds, Todd insisted that a number be set aside for children. Much debate had shrunk his proposed allotment from one hundred to thirty, but he was satisfied. The point had been mad
e to Alreldep that, once again, the children of Doonarrala were going to play an important part in the missions of peace. In spite of a cry of nepotism, four growlers were assigned to the elder two of Hrriss’ children and to Todd’s twins.
Twenty-seven days after the project began, Todd asked Barrington to bring Jilamey down to the manufactory.
“But don’t tell him why,” Todd instructed, trying to maintain an expression of innocence. The tall, thin manservant regarded him with a calm demeanor, but Todd could perceive a twinkle.
“Of course not, sir,” Barrington assured him, and departed in the small aircraft.
Jilamey was a child when it came to mysteries. In no time, the personal heli was back, scattering dust as it descended next to the factory door. Landreau barely allowed it time to touch down before he sprang out, calling for Todd and Hrriss. With broad grins, they met, one on each side as they guided him into the building. Barrington followed at a more sedate pace.
“What’s the secret?” Jilamey demanded. “Old Silence-is-golden back there wouldn’t give me a clue!”
Without speaking, Todd escorted him into the quality-control room. At his nod, Lieutenant Cardiff came forward, bearing a small device attached to the center of a soft, flexible strap.
“In rrrcognition of srrvice above and beyond ze call of duty,” Hrriss said formally, “zo wit, keeping ze nuisances out of our furr, we want you to have ze first wrrrking speech zranslator.”
“Truly?” Jilamey gasped, looking from one friend to the other. Todd wore a face-splitting grin as he nodded. Enchanted, Jilamey held still while the voder was fastened on, then cleared his throat. “My dear friends, this is ever so super!” The sound echoed, expanded, and dropped several octaves through the speaker. Jilamey jumped. “This will need some time to get used to,” he said, covering the voder input with his hand, but his eyes were glowing. “I sound like a bassoon.”
Lieutenant Cardiff took a sonic probe to the side of the voice box. “Your voice is not as deep as some, sir. I tried to leave a little personality in each one.”
“How’s it work? I warn you”—Jilamey peered out of the corner of his eye at the technician— “I’m dreadful with machinery.”
“Well, it transposes the pitch of your voice, compresses your range a little,” Cardiff said. “Gringg don’t hear as many of the upper tones as we do. It has a full language memory, with plenty of bytes left for expansion. You’ll notice a bit of a pause—that’ll take time to get used to—between the words out of your mouth and the Gringg equivalent from the growl box. It’ll translate Terran into Gringg or Hrruban, whichever you set it for. At least the words that it currently recognizes. Otherwise it defaults to Middle Hrruban, since Hrriss said you’re fluent in that.”
“We’d like them to learn one language at a time,” Todd said.
“One language I speak better than any other”—Jilamey laughed— “and that’s trade. I’ve been contacted by a consortium on Terra. I say, Todd, there’s a bit of unfair play going on. The Hrruban trading contingent grows with every grid operation and, if it weren’t for the presence of Kiachif, Horstmann, and that crowd that got here originally, you and Hrrestan would be in for real trouble from Terra. However,” he added, swiftly shifting mood again from the semi-critical to the self-satisfied, “I managed to salve injured feelings and, if I say so myself, managed quite a coup.” He preened a bit, which set his shirt to shimmering with a cascade of subtle color shifts. “I’ve been appointed agent for the biggest and most diverse consortium of AW.”
“Congratulations,” Todd said, grinning. “The Gringg’ll never know what hit them.”
Jilamey pretended modesty, but was quick to make a demand. “When can we get down to the nitty-gritty? I’ve been arguing day and night on your behalf, but, since you’ve solved the voder problem, when are we going to get to trade? That financier Hrrouf is like a Momma Snake, and I hear old Hrrto just gridded back in.”
Although Jilamey could be discreet, neither Todd nor Hrriss mentioned that Second Speaker was here because he had insisted on a private conference with Grizz. That was the only way they could pacify the Hrruban after he’d received his copy of the initial voder-assisted conference. The same concession would not be granted to Barnstable, on the grounds that he was only an admiral and not the temporary head of the Hrruban world.
“You will be happy to learn that the original spaceport conference can be reconvened,” Todd told Jilamey.
“Wow!” Jilamey rounded his eyes and dropped his jaw in astonishment. “I thought you’d never relent.”
“The Gringg constitute a new factor,” Todd said obliquely. “Hrriss has been deputized to stand in for me.”
“Ahha!” Jilamey waggled a finger in Todd’s face. “I knew you’d figure out how to renege.”
“I haven’t reneged, Jilamey,” Todd said with an edge of rancor. “But”—he waggled his finger in Jilamey’s face— “if we want to trade with the Gringg—and we do—the old Hall and spaceport are totally inadequate. And letting the Gringg come in and out of Doonarrala obviates the necessity for their knowing the coordinates of our respective homeworlds. I still don’t like to see the Hrrunatan—”
“Corrupted.” Jilamey finished off one of Todd’s well-known objections. “But old Hrruna would have approved of consorting with the Gringg. You know that! And by utilizing that rocky eastern coast, your preserve will be sacrosanct.”
Todd sighed. “Hrriss made that point, too.”
“Humph! At least the Gringg have made you two friends again, haven’t they?” And Jilamey peered anxiously into Todd’s face.
“We have never been not friends, Jilamey.”
“Still and all, you can’t get me to believe that things weren’t pretty strained there, just before the Wander Den put in its serendipitous appearance.”
“Leave off, Jil,” Todd said, and pushed the carton of voders at him. “These are for your guests. We’re giving everyone a day to get accustomed to the growlers. Show them how they work, and put them to use tomorrow. When I told Grizz that the voders were ready, she assured me that her delegates would be here directly after lunch. I’m taking hers up to the Wander Den this evening.”
He did not say that he’d also be taking the Second Speaker in the scout for his meeting with Captain Grizz.
* * *
Waiting until the old port facility was relatively vacant, Hrriss and Hrrto gridded there from First Village and got on board the scout just before Todd made a more public appearance. He whistled as he loaded the cartons of growl boxes, and waved affably to those who noticed him. The tower gave him clearance, and he made no mention of passengers.
As usual, Grizz had been cooperative about meeting Second Speaker, styled to her as the “Oldest Elder” of the Hrrubans. Hrriss also managed to convey that the Elder was . . . nervous about spaceships, which was the nearest he could manage with a limited vocabulary, to offset any lack of Stripe that Hrrto might display when finally faced with the reality of the huge Gringg captain.
“Weddeerogh,” Grizz had told him and, using two fingers, pantomimed her son meeting and escorting the visitor to a private place to talk. “Two,” she signed, holding up two digits and sliding her hands sideways, one above the other, making it plain that she and Hrrto would be the only ones.
Todd could tell by the tense look on Hrriss’ face that his friend was not entirely happy about that. This meeting would be quite a test of old Hrrto’s Stripe! Hrriss had hoped to be an observer. Still, Hrrto had insisted! Todd hid a grin and indicated that Hrrto would have the growlers to help the conversation.
Grizz did the Gringg equivalent of relieved smiling and much snapping of her claws in and out of their sheaths. Todd just hoped she would refrain from doing that in Hrrto’s presence.
However, when they arrived at the Gringg bay, Weddeerogh stood there by himself, looking comparatively small and harmless. H
e was also wearing a growler, and someone had tied a reef knot in the cord that had been designed to encircle adult Gringg necks. The knot stuck out behind one ear and made him quite appealing. Hrrto reacted appropriately, by dropping his jaw in a half-smile, though he was clearly stunned by the size of the bay and the immense boxy shuttle-craft parked there.
On the short trip from the planet’s surface, Hrrto had practiced with the voder, getting accustomed to the growling guttural reaction to his spoken words.
“Good evening,” he now said, inclining his head to the cub. “You are my escort?”
Weddeerogh began to growl, and then his voder started off with “I am”—there was no equivalent for his name— “male child of captain. Come with me!”
With that, the cub did an about-face that Greene couldn’t have faulted and strode toward the interior.
“You will wait for me,” Hrrto said to the two friends with great dignity and turned to follow his guide.
They were about the same height, though the Hrruban was longer in the leg. As they disappeared through the iris of the lock, Todd wondered if he ought to have warned Hrrto once more about the size of adult female Gringg. He felt Hrriss touch his arm, and the laughter in the cat man’s eyes suggested that he entertained similar thoughts.
“I wonder if he will howl,” Hrriss said mischievously.
“Well, he demanded a private audience,” Todd said and then began to unload the cartons. As soon as Hrrto and his guide had reached their destination, Eonneh and Koala—and probably half the crew—would arrive to receive their growlers and practice before tomorrow’s talks.
* * *
Hrrto had been much encouraged by the size and dignity of his escort. The creatures at least understood the basics of courtesy. The stumpy legs of the Gringg made its hind end waggle as they moved down the corridor-rather like a young cub, not quite leg-long. Still, the creature wore a harness that even Hrrto could see was beautifully crafted. So he had been accorded a senior official as his guide. That was as it should be.
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