Clausen remained genial, hands at ease in smart, suede-trimmed pockets. “My dear Dr. Levy, I merely offered an appropriate exchange. Your little Sawls are well versed in the intricacies of commerce.” He came and stood before Megan, smiling. “I had noticed, you see, that your young friend Liphar was particularly enamored of a certain implement in my possession. It seems that in his priestly studies, the fellow has learned how to write.”
McPherson dumped her coffee mugs in the galley and came back crowing with delight. “That old pen of yours, right, Emil? You fobbed that crummy old pen off on him!”
Clausen swung to focus on this more appreciative audience. “A fountain pen, McP. A rare and valuable antique. Like Dr. Levy and myself.”
“Speak for yourself, Clausen,” Megan returned, but one hand strayed unconsciously to her short gray hair. “And how do you think Liphar will like his deal when this antique ceases to write?”
“Status as an antique is proof of one’s longevity.” Clausen smiled. “Is it not, Meg?”
Susannah reached to pat Megan’s fisted hand. “It’s all right, Meg. The Sawls make ink. No reason why it shouldn’t work in Emil’s pen just as well as Terran ink.” She stretched and attempted to change the subject. “Listen, Emil, have you noticed how quiet it is out there?”
But Clausen was busy affecting deep personal injury. “I was greatly fond of that pen, Megan. It’s seen me through the doldrums of nine expeditions. I even showed the little fellow how to clean and refill it.”
McPherson bounced at his elbow. “What’d you get for it?”
Clausen licked his lips comically, blue eyes raised in ecstasy. “The dear boy talked that terrifying mother of his out of a brace of those pheasanty birds she raises up there in a black pit where no self-respecting bird should survive.”
McPherson celebrated with rude slurping sounds.
“Sounds delicious,” Susannah agreed.
“Those birds are normally reserved for high ceremonial occasions in the guild halls,” Megan complained.
“Is that so?” Clausen returned innocently. “Well, that’s your specialty, not mine, but if that’s the case, then the least we can do is enjoy them with high ceremony. A little ritual sparks any meal, eh? Isn’t that what table manners are all about?”
Megan rose once again to his bait. “Dammit, Emil, everything you don’t define in terms of profit, you define in terms of your stomach!”
“Two worthy currencies!” Clausen chortled slyly.
McPherson jeered noisily. “What about earlier when you were reading us a whole lecture about the politics of food, huh, Meggies?”
Susannah abandoned all hope of working and began to pack her specimens away in neatly labeled plastic envelopes. “Come on, Meg. Ease up. You’ll be just as glad for some fresh meat as we will. Besides, Liphar’ll run that pen down to one of his craftsy older siblings and they’ll get a whole work cycle’s worth of entertainment out of trying to reproduce it. That cousin of his in the Glassblowers’ Guild will probably have a fine line of glass pens available in the Market in no time.”
Clausen considered. “Maybe I should demand a percentage.”
“Paid in foodstuffs.” Susannah grinned. “No currency here, remember.”
“Except those stones they’re always passing around,” added McPherson.
Megan drummed her fingers, dangerously close to another tantrum. “Official policy is quite explicit in these matters. We are forbidden to interfere with alien technologies in any way.”
“Quit whining, Meg,” Clausen yawned. “It’s a pen, not a starship.” He tossed a smirk in Susannah’s direction to see if it would be returned.
Megan’s fist pounded the table. The plastic sample bags jumped around. Several cascaded to the floor. “It’s not the pen,” she roared, “it’s the principle!”
“Oh. Principles.” Clausen raised a satirical eyebrow.
Megan rounded on Susannah. “You want to know why I’ve had so little experience with living extraterrestrial cultures? It’s guys like this one, with their fast ships and their big corporate money—they’re always there first, hauling in their military and their machinery, digging up the place until there’s nothing left but slag heaps and mining saloons!”
“Mmmm,” Susannah replied. She wished that Megan would not consider her an automatic ally in these confrontations with Clausen.
“Well?!?”
“Well, Meg, I think that’s a little black-and-white, the way you put it.” Susannah tried to sound placating, but her determined neutrality only goaded Megan further.
“And you call yourself a xenoscientist? You’ll be sorry, you’ll see!” Drawing herself up to her most righteous posture, she leveled an accusing finger at the grinning Clausen. “His work here is in direct conflict with ours, Susannah. His very presence on a First Contact expedition is an affront to the scientific integrity of the mission!”
“As well as a prime factor in its funding,” added Clausen dryly.
Susannah gazed at Megan steadily. “Sure, I call myself a xenoscientist, which means to me that I collect and observe, and in my case, do a little doctoring when I’m needed. What I don’t do is legislate morality.”
Megan threw up her hands in disgust. “Glib! Glib!”
Susannah shook her head stubbornly. “You have to take it as it comes, Meg. He’s here, right? We can’t very well tie him up and lock him in a closet!”
Clausen relaxed against a landing strut. His placid smile suggested that the debate was an old and tired one which he had won many times before on many worlds, merely by waiting it out. “Civilization moves in one direction, Meg—forward. Face it, our very presence here, just the seven of us in our shiny metal ship, interferes with the Sawls’ technology. Before my first mine is sunk, even before my claim is staked, those little brown folk have a brand-new view of their universe, simply because we appeared in it, out of the heavens. That one event will change them more than any number of mines and machines. It has to. They may be primitive, but they don’t seem stupid.”
Megan gave up and relapsed into beleaguered gloom. Clausen opened his mouth to deal a final blow, then lost interest as he spotted Susannah’s sample bags. He dragged a crate over to her side of the table to pick through the cuttings she had discarded. He crushed one leaf against his palm and held it to his nose with a hopeful sniff.
Susannah could not help smiling. In pursuit of food, Clausen was at his most Gallic and charming. “What do you need, Emil?”
“Would you believe rosemary?”
McPherson drifted over to lean against his shoulder with a rakish grin. “So where’s the Ethiopian Prince?”
“You mean Tay?” Sniffing at another sample, Clausen jabbed a blunt finger upward. “I came down here especially to argue with you all because I got bored of listening to Taylor argue with CRI.”
Megan rose, stretched, moved away from the table, away from Clausen. “Sort of a Zen sport, arguing with a computer.”
Clausen showed small white teeth. “Exactly. You think Taylor’s pulling out his curly little hairs for nothing?” He appropriated a small dried sprig and wrapped it neatly in a monogrammed handkerchief. “Actually, what he’s doing now is refusing to believe her most recent weather data.”
McPherson snickered fondly. “Again?” But Megan glanced up, alert.
“Which is particularly perverse of him this time,” Clausen continued, “considering what her data says.”
“Yeah,” grumped the little pilot. “Snow yesterday, snow today, and tomorrow, for a real change…” She trumpeted a fanfare. “Snow!”
“Not exactly.” Clausen rocked gently on his crate. “It’s stopped snowing.”
McPherson bolted upright. “What?”
Four long strides brought Megan back to the table. Susannah spread her arms wide in disbelief. “The quiet. Of course! That’s what it was! My god, Emil! You stand there for ten minutes rapturing about pheasants when it’s stopped snowing?”
A
smug grin stretched Clausen’s jaw.
McPherson threw herself out of her chair with a victory yell and dashed behind the crate wall into the bunk area. Drawers and lockers crashed open and shut. “Where’s my therm-suit? Anybody seen my therm-suit?”
Clausen turned his grin on Susannah, reveling in his carefully orchestrated stir, but her attention moved past him with a smile of welcome toward the entry tunnel.
A young Sawl stood there, breathless, cast in dark miniature against the mirrored arc of the giant cylinder. His smile was insecure. One hand clutched at a blue leather bag tied to a thong around his neck. His thick woolen cape was tossed hastily over one shoulder. His beltless tunic had twisted around his childlike body as he ran. He struggled to unbind his arms, then shoved his thick ringlets out of his face in an attempt to make himself presentable.
“Liphar! Speak of the devil!” Clausen boomed. “How’s the publishing biz?”
“How, pleezhe?” the young man stammered.
“Have you written the Great Sawlian Novel yet, my boy?”
Liphar smiled again, uncertain.
“Oh, Emil!” Susannah threw Clausen a disapproving maternal frown and held out her hand to the young Sawl as his brown eyes mournfully sought her aid. But her halting attempts in the brusque syllables of his own tongue only puzzled him further. His answer began as a bemused spreading of his open palms and ended in a violent gesture of dismay as he recalled the purpose of his visit. With a yelp, he ran to the table, punctuating incomprehensible chatter with equally mysterious arm-wavings, grabbed Susannah’s field pack and thrust it at her. One brown hand snatched at the sample bags while the other pulled frantically at her sleeve. His small pointed features ran through an entire vocabulary of distress. Susannah stood open-mouthed as he continued to tug at her, then slowly she began to stow the bags in her pack. Liphar nodded eagerly, as one would to encourage a child.
“Maybe someone’s sick up there,” Megan suggested. Her hands dwarfed the young man’s shoulders as she reached to still his hysteria. “Liphar, is anyone sick? Sick?”
“He’s not deaf, Meg,” Clausen reminded her.
“But they have their own healers, don’t they, Meg?” Susannah chewed her lip. “Maybe it’s Stavros. Liphar, I’ll come right up. Just let me get my medikit.”
Liphar pondered this closely, then shook his head so violently that his long brown curls whipped against his cheeks. “No ’Tavros!” he exclaimed. He pointed a finger at each Terran in rapid succession. “You, you, you, you. Under’tand? Very danger!” He squirmed out of Megan’s grasp and ran about slapping at the crates and furniture. “This, this, this thing, out! You, out!” He gathered up piles of printout and clothing from the ground, including the discarded rubbish lying nearby, and tossed it all in the direction of the entrance. When two or three armloads failed to spur his stunned audience into action, he halted, panting, and stared at them over the heap of clutter, his eyes begging their instant comprehension. When they still did not react, he dove back to the table to shove a load into Megan’s arms, then recommenced the frantic stuffing of Susannah’s pack, railing all the while at high volume.
Susannah grabbed at him. “Liphar. Liphar! Slow down!” She summoned her best bedside manner as she pinned his hands gently to the table. “What do you need? Please explain slowly.”
McPherson reappeared from behind the crate wall, shrugging on her white therm-suit. “What the hell’s with him?”
“He seems to want us to pack up and leave,” Susannah murmured.
McPherson yanked up her zipper with a sage nod. “Oh, right. Ten meters of snow on the ground, the ship encased in ice, and he wants us out on the double. He got any bright ideas how?”
“Ron, will you shut up a minute!” Megan leaned across the table to stare at Liphar intently. “Where is damn Stavros when we need him to translate?… Why would they want us to leave all of a sudden?”
Susannah looked thoughtful. “There’s one difference between now and any other point in the last six weeks: it’s stopped snowing.”
“So?”
The mention of snow set off another of Liphar’s violent noddings. His face promising patience, he pried his hands loose. Immediately, they began sketching vast dramas in the air. “Okay,” he announced. “Snow ’top, yes? Okay. Now, you hear.” The brown hands rose and fell like seas. “Snow gone, big water come, oh so much!” His hands stretched wide, then rushed together to grapple madly with each other. “Han chauk! Big fight come, no good! Danger!” His tongue clicked sharply under furrowed brows.
“This is weird,” commented McPherson.
“Puts on a good show,” said Clausen.
“Liphar, who’s going to fight?” Susannah pursued.
Liphar moaned, his hands fainting in frustration. “O rek!” he expostulated finally. “O malaka rek! Han chauk!”
“Rek,” Susannah repeated softly.
“Rek,” said Megan. “Isn’t that…”
Susannah nodded. “Pretty sure… You know, that fits right in with Stavros’s interpretation of the friezes.”
Clausen fished out a silver penknife and began to clean his nails.
“Will somebody clue me in?” McPherson demanded. “What’s this rak?”
“Rek,” Megan corrected primly. “The gods. He’s saying the gods are going to war.”
McPherson rolled her eyes. “Well, that’s useful. For that he’s going to throw us out of here?”
Weng Tsi-Hua appeared at the door of her curtained cubicle. “Is there some problem I should be informed about?”
“Liphar claims we’re in danger,” Megan explained.
“From the gods.” McPherson giggled. “Boy, am I scared!”
“It’s stopped snowing, Commander,” Susannah reported, still gazing intently at the little Saw!. His sincere concern was unmistakable. “Big water,” she repeated. “You know, according to Stavros, the Sawls believe that when the gods go to war, the weather turns bad. Do I have it right, Meg?”
“You have Stav’s interpretation right,” Megan conceded.
“He’s saying it gonna get worse?” McPherson exclaimed, looking to Clausen. “Didn’t you just say…?”
Clausen chuckled. “Worry not, my friends. CRI’s new data promises sun and fun. Fortunately for our peace of mind, our ship’s computer is not in the habit of consulting the local deities.”
McPherson fastened the cuffs of her therm-suit. “Well, I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m heading out!”
“I think it would make Liphar feel better if we all went out,” said Susannah. “Is that all right, Commander?”
Weng nodded graciously. “Though it is not the best idea, Dr. James, I think we could all do with some fresh air and exercise.”
“I’ll stay with the ship, Weng,” Clausen offered. “Taylor and I have business upstairs.”
In the disorganized scurry for boots and therm-suits, Susannah kept one eye on Liphar, who danced impatiently at the tunnel entrance. Why is he so frantic? she wondered, and then a not entirely unrelated thought occurred to her. If the silence was the snow and the wind stopping, then what in hell was that rumbling noise?
5
Outside, the cold land waited. The snow-swept cliffs towered above the smothered plain. The mountains behind bore their crushing weight patiently, snow layered on ice layered on snow. The stillness was like an intake of breath.
Then, overhead, the cloud cover lightened. Paler fissures edged wormlike across the stubborn gray. Billows churned, slowly at first, like a ponderous machine gathering momentum. The frigid air softened. A spear of light dazzled the clifftops with pink and amber. The clouds thinned as a breeze sprang up, revealing widening patches of turquoise sky. A low red sun burned through the last shreds of haze. Brilliant orange set the white cliffs glowing as if they were on fire. At the scarp’s eastern tip, a solitary spire of rock blazed like a red-and-white sentinel. Below, the vast rolling plain glittered as the snow moistened under a warm southerly wind.
The cave mouths erupted with activity. From rows of dark recesses high up the cliff face, the Sawls poured out into the sudden sun. Wrapped in layers of leather and wool, their eyes slitted against the light, they tested the wind and hefted their tools, chattering among themselves. Long lines moved briskly along the ledges connecting the four levels of caves, some snaking upward toward the very top of the scarp, some hurrying downward, armed with brush brooms and wooden picks to clear the snow and ice from the ascending steps and trails. Their chatter carried on the wind, high and urgent, mingling with the starting phrases of a work chant, begun at the top of the cliff and relayed down the lines of workers to the bottom. The rhythm of the chant was brisk, the tune melodic. At each arched cave mouth, a small group remained to scour the entry ledge and sing out an antiphonal chorus.
One woman, taller than the rest, thin and hard, set her crew to work, then leaned her pick against the snow-drifted rock to shed a heavy leather outer garment. She stood for a moment, her seamed face set into a frown, listening as the wind’s desert yowl delivered the dull thunder of avalanches from the southern mountain range. Her upper lip gleamed with moisture. She blotted her forehead on a knitted sleeve, her frown deepening as she scanned the greenish sky, nostrils flared. She thrust an arm forward, shoved back her sleeve and bent the arm at the elbow, lining it up to measure the height of the crimson sunball that hugged the western horizon. Then she turned northward, to stare for a long time across the plain. The distant wave of mountains was blurred by clouds of steam off the melting snowfields, tinged sunset pink and amber. The woman squinted, straining to see, her grim face caught in a tension between wariness and resignation. Finally, as if she had been resisting it, she let her eyes rest thoughtfully on the blunted cone shape of the Terran Lander where it sat out on the plain, its broad base sunk in thirty feet of snow and ice. From where she stood on the second tier of caves, the Lander’s narrow nose was nearly at eye level, though it was a healthy half mile away. The late sun glinted dully on scoured metal broken here and there with patches of a more reflective surface. Her eyes flicked eastward to the sentinel spire of red rock now shedding its damp blanket of white, then back to the Lander. The crooked arm went up again to measure: height, width. The woman muttered to herself, her mouth tight.
The Wave and the Flame Page 3