3xT

by Harry Turtledove

  Pitkhanas also saw a couple of Terrajin in the square. The foreigners still drew stares from peasants new in town and attracted small groups of curious children wherever they went, but most of Kussara had grown used to them in the past year-quarter. Their odd clothes and coloring, the metal boxes they carried that clicked or hummed, were accepted peculiarities now, like the feather-decked turbans of the men from the city of Hurma or the habit the people of the town of Yuzat had of spitting after every sentence.

  The Terraj called Kastiyo was haggling with a carpenter over the price of a stool as the king and Radus-piyama came by. "I know wood is valuable because you have to trade to get it," the Terraj was saying, "but surely this silver ring is a good payment." Kastiyo fumbled for words and spoke slowly, but he made himself understood; after tiny Jingmaylin, he probably had the best grasp of Kussara's language.

  The carpenter weighed the ring in his hand. "Is it enough?"

  "Who—ah, whom—do you ask?" the Terraj said.

  "Why, my god, of course: Kadashman, patron of woodworkers. He says the bargain is fair." The carpenter lifted the stool, gave it to Kastiyo, and held out his hand for the ring.

  The foreigner passed it to him, but persisted, "How is it you know what the god says?"

  "I hear him, naturally, just as I hear you; but you will go away and he is always with me." The carpenter looked as confused as the Terraj. Then he brightened. "Perhaps you do not know Kadashman because you are not a woodworker and he has no cause to speak to you. But surely your own gods talk to you in much the same way."

  "I have never heard a god," Kastiyo said soberly. "None of my people has. That is why we is—are—so interested in learning more about those of Kussara."

  The carpenter's jaw dropped at Kastiyo's admission.

  "You see?" Radus-piyama said to Pitkhanas. "Out of their own mouths comes proof of their accursedness."

  "They have gods, or a god," the king answered. "I have asked them that."

  Radus-piyama laughed. "How could there be only one god? And even if there were, would he not speak to his people?"

  To that Pitkhanas had no reply. He and the priest walked in silence to the temple of Tarhund, the Great House, as it was called: after the shrine of Tabal, the tallest and most splendid building in Kussara. The temples towered over the palace of the steward-king, who was merely the gods' servant. The huge rectangular tower of mud-brick rose in ever smaller stages to Tarhund's chamber at the very top.

  Together, Pitkhanas and Radus-piyama climbed the temple's 316 steps—one for each day of the year. Under-priests bowed to their chief and to the king, who could see the surprise on their faces at his unscheduled visit.

  "Is the god properly robed?" Radus-piyama called when they were nearly at the top.

  The door to Tarhund's chambers swung open. A priest whose skin was gray with age emerged, his walk a slow hobble helped by a stick. "That he is, sir," he replied, "and pronounces himself greatly pleased with his new vestments, too."

  "Excellent, Millawanda," Radus-piyama said. "Then he will give our king good advice about the Terrajin."

  Millawanda's eyesight was beginning to fail, and he had not noticed Pitkhanas standing beside Radus-piyama. The king waved for him not to bother when he started a shaky bow. "Thank you, my lord. Yes, Tarhund has mentioned the foreigners to me. He says—"

  "I will hear for myself what he says, thank you," Pitkhanas said. He stepped toward the god's chambers. When Radus-piyama started to follow him, he waved him back; he was still annoyed that the priest had feared Tarhund was not speaking to him any more.

  Tarhund stood in his niche, an awesome figure, taller than a man. Torchlight played off the gold leaf that covered his face, hands, and feet, and off the gold and silver threads running through the thick, rich cloth of his new ankle-length robe. In his left hand he held the solid-gold globe of the sun, in his right black stormclouds.

  The king suddenly saw with horror that he had forgotten to bring any offering when the god summoned him. He groveled on his belly before Tarhund as the lowliest of his slaves would have before him. Stripping off his sandals with their silver buckles, he set them on the table in front of the god next to the gifts of food, beer, and incense from the priests. "Accept these from this worm, your servant," he implored.

  Tarhund's enormous eyes of polished jet gripped and held him. The god's words echoed in Pitkhanas's ears: "You may speak."

  "Thank you, my master." Still on the floor, the king poured out everything that had happened since the coming of the Terrajin. "Are they stronger than you, lord, and your brother and sister gods? When we first met them, their powers and strangeness silenced your voices, and we despaired. You returned as we grew to know them, but now you speak in one way to your priests and in another to me. What shall I do? Shall I destroy the Terrajin, or order them to leave? Or shall I let them go on as they would, seeing that they have done no harm yet? Say on; let me know your will."

  The god took so long answering that Pitkhanas trembled and felt his limbs grow weak with fear. If the strangers were mightier than the gods— But at last Tarhund replied, though his voice seemed faint and far away, almost a divine mumble: "Let them go on as they would. Seeing that they have done no harm yet, they will keep on behaving well."

  Pitkhanas knocked his forehead against mud-brick. "I hear and obey, my master." He dared another question: "My lord, how is it that the Terrajin hear no gods of their own?"

  Tarhund spoke again, but only in a gabble from which the king could understand nothing. Tears filled his eyes. He asked, "Is it as Radus-piyama says, that they are accursed?"

  "No." This time the god's answer came quick, clear, and sharp. "Accursed men would work evil. They do not. Tell Radus-piyama to judge them by their deeds."

  "Aye, my master." Sensing that the divine audience was over, Pitkhanas rose and left Tarhund's chamber. Radus-piyama and Millawanda were waiting expectantly outside. The king said, "The god has declared to me that the Terrajin are not accursed. Accursed men would work evil. They do not, and they will keep on behaving well. Judge them by their deeds. This is Tarhund's command to me, and mine to you. Hear it always."

  The priests blinked in surprise. But their obedience to the king was as ingrained as their service to Tarhund. "I hear you and obey as I hear and obey the god," Radus-piyama acknowledged, Millawanda following him a moment later.

  Satisfied, Pitkhanas started down the long stairway of Tarhund's Great House. Had he conveyed his orders in writing, the priests might somehow have found a way to bend them to their own desires. Now, though, his wishes and Tarhund's would both be ringing in their ears. They would give him no more trouble over the Terrajin.

  * * *

  The tape of Ramon Castillo dickering with the Kussaran woodworker ended. The video screen went dark. Helga Stein lifted her headphones, rubbed her ears. "Another one," she sighed.

  "What was that?" Castillo was still wearing his 'phones, which muffled her words. "Sorry." He took them off quickly.

  "It's nothing," Helga said wearily. She turned to Mei-lin, who had been going over the tape with them. "Did I understand that correctly—the native calling on a deity named Kadashman at the decision-point?"

  "Oh yes," the linguist answered at once. To Ramon she added, "You do very well with the language. He had no trouble following you at all."

  "Thanks," he said; Mei-lin was not one to give praise lightly. But he had to object, "'Calling on' isn't quite what happened. He asked a question, got an answer, and acted on it. Look for yourselves."

  When he reached to rewind the tape, Helga stopped him. "Don't bother; all of us have seen the like dozens of times already. The local's eyes get faraway for a few seconds, or however long it takes, then he comes out of it and does whatever he does. But what does it mean?"

  " 'Eyes get faraway,' " Ramon said. "That's not a bad way to put it, I suppose, but to me it just looks as though the natives are listening."

  "To what?" Helga flared, her face going
pink. "And if you say 'a god,' I'll brain you with this table."

  "It's bolted to the floor," he pointed out.

  "Ach!" She snarled a guttural oath that was emphatically not Latin, stormed out of the workroom.

  "You should not tease her so, Ramon," Mei-lin said quietly. Trouble rested on her usually calm features.

  "I didn't mean to," the cultural anthropologist replied, still taken aback at Helga's outburst. "I simply have a very literal mind. I was going to suggest that if she had to hit me, the stool I bought would serve better."

  Mei-lin smiled a dutiful smile. "At least you and Sybil have your stools and other artifacts you can put your hands on to study. All Helga and I can do is examine patterns, and none of the patterns here makes any sense that I can find."

  "You shouldn't expect an alien species to think as we do."

  "Spare me the tautology," the linguist snapped; her small sarcasm shocked Castillo much more than Helga's losing her temper. "For that matter, I sometimes wonder if these Kussarans think at all."

  Ramon was shocked again, for she plainly meant it. "What about this, then?" he said, holding up the stool. It was a fine piece of craftsmanship, the legs beautifully fitted to the seat, the dyed-leather seatcover secured by bronze tacks to the wood below. "What about their walls and temples and houses, their cloth, their fields and canals, their writing, their language?"

  "What about their language?" she retorted. "As I said, you've learned it quite well. You tell me how to say 'to think' in Kussaran."

  "Why, it's—" Castillo began, and then stopped, his mouth hanging open. "No sé," he admitted, startled back into Spanish, a slip he rarely made.

  "I don't know either, or how to say 'to wonder' or 'to doubt' or 'to believe' or any other word that relates to cognition. And any Kussaran who says, 'I feel it in my bones' suffers from arthritis. Your 'literal mind' would make you a wild-eyed dreamer among these people, Ramon. How can they live without reflecting on life? Is it any wonder that Helga and I feel we're eating soup with a fork?"

  "No-o," he said slowly. Then he laughed. "Maybe their precious gods do their thinking for them." The laugh was not one of amusement. The problem of the gods vexed him as much as it did Helga. Where she fretted over failing to understand the locals' psychological makeup, he had the feeling he was seeing their cultural patterns only through fog—superficial shapes were clear, but whatever was behind them was hidden in the mist.

  Mei-lin failed to find his suggestion even sardonically amusing. "There are no gods. If there were, our instruments would have detected them."

  "Telepathy," Ramon probed, hoping to get a rise out of her.

  She did not take the bait. All she said was, "Assuming it exists (which I don't), telepathy from whom? The bugs we've scattered around show that the king, the ministers, the priests talk to their gods as often as the peasants do—oftener, if anything. There are no secret rulers, Ramon."

  "I know." His shoulders sagged a little. "In fact, the Kussarans who hold the fewest one-sided conversations are some of the soldiers and merchants—and everyone else looks down on them on account of it."

  "Still, if they were all as interested in us as Tushratta, our job would be ten times easier."

  "True enough." The gate-captain spent as much of his time at the Howells as his duties allowed. "I wouldn't be surprised if he's around so much because we have no gods at all and give him someone to feel superior to."

  "You're getting as cynical as Stan Jeffries," she said, which canceled his pleasure at her earlier compliment. Feeling his face grow hot, he rose and took a hasty leave.

  As he passed the galley, he thought there was some god working, and probably a malignant one, for Jeffries himself called, "Hey, Ramon, come sit in for a while. Reiko's engine-watch just started, and we're short-handed."

  The inevitable poker game had begun when the Howells was still in parking orbit around Terra. Castillo rarely played. Not only were the regulars some of his least favorite people on the ship, they also won money from him with great regularity.

  He was about to decline again when he saw Tushratta was one of the players. The Kussarans gambled among themselves with dice, and the soldier was evidently picking up a new game. He looked rather uncomfortable in a Terran chair: it was too small for him and did not quite suit his proportions.

  "What does he use to buy chips?" Ramon asked, sitting down across from the native.

  João Gomes, one of the engine-room technicians, said a little too quickly, "Oh, we give them to him. He just plays for fun."

  Castillo raised an eyebrow. The technician flushed. Jeffries said, "Why fight it, João? He can always ask Tushratta himself. All right, Ramon, he buys it with native goods: pots and bracelets and such. When he wins, we pay off with our own trinkets: a pair of scissors, a pocketknife, a flashlight." He stared defiantly at the anthropologist. "Want to make something of it?"

  That sort of dealing was technically against regulations, but Ramon said, "I suppose not, provided I get photos of all the Kussaran artifacts you've gotten from him."

  "Naturally," Jeffries agreed. Faces fell all around the table. Castillo hid a smile. Of course the poker players had been planning to hide the small trinkets and sell them for their own profit when they got home. It happened on every expedition that found intelligent natives, one way or another. The anthropologist was also certain he would not see everything.

  Tushratta pointed at the deck of cards. "Deal," he said in heavily accented but understandable Latin.

  To keep things simple for the beginner, they stuck with five-card stud and one joker. "A good skill game, anyway," Jeffries said. "You can tell where you stand. You play something like seven stud, low in the hole wild, and you don't know whether to shit or go blind."

  Ramon lost a little, won a little, lost a little more. He might have done better if he hadn't been paying as much attention to Tushratta as to the cards—or, he told himself with characteristic honesty, he might not. As was to be expected among more experienced players, the native lost, but not too badly. His worst flaw, Castillo thought, was a tendency not to test bluffs—a problem the anthropologist had himself.

  When Tushratta ran low on chips, he dug in his pouch and produced a cylinder seal, a beautifully carved piece of alabaster about the size of his little finger designed to be rolled on a mud tablet to show that he had written it. The stake Gomes gave him for it seemed honest.

  A couple of hands later, the Kussaran and Jeffries got into an expensive one. Ramon was dealing, but folded after his third card. Everyone else dropped out on the next one, with varied mutters of disgust.

  "Last card," the anthropologist said. He tossed them out.

  Someone gave a low whistle. Jeffries, grinning, had four diamonds up. A couple of chairs away, Tushratta was sitting behind two pairs: treys and nines.

  "Your bet, Tushratta," Ramon said. The Kussaran did, heavily.

  "Ah, now we separate the sheep from the goats," Jeffries said, and raised. But the navigator's grin slipped when Tushratta raised back. "Oh, you bastard," he said in English. He shoved in more chips. "Call."

  Looking smug, Tushratta showed his hole card: a third nine. "Ouch," Jeffries said. "No wonder you bumped it up, with a full house." Castillo was not sure how much of that Tushratta understood, but the Kussaran knew he had won. He raked in the pot with both hands, started stacking the chips in neat piles of five in front of him.

  Jeffries managed a sour grin. "Not that you needed the boat," he said to Tushratta. He turned over his own fifth card. It was a club.

  Laughter erupted around the table. "That'll teach you, Stan," Gomes said. "Serves you right."

  Tushratta knocked several piles of chips onto the floor. He made no move to pick them up; he was staring at Jeffries's hole card as though he did not believe his eyes. "You had nothing," he said.

  The navigator had learned enough Kussaran to follow him. "A pair of sixes, actually."

  Tushratta waved that away, as of no importance. He
spoke slowly, sounding, Ramon thought, uncertain where his words were leading him: "You saw my two pairs showing. You could not beat them, but you kept betting. Why did you do that?"

  "It was a bluff that didn't work," Jeffries answered. The key word came out in Latin. He turned to Castillo for help. "Explain it to him, Ramon; you're smoother with the lingo than I am."

  "I'll try," the anthropologist said; he did not know the word for "bluff" either. Circumlocution, then: "You saw Jeffries's four diamonds. He wanted to make you drop by acting as though he had a flush. He did not know you had three nines. If you only had the two pairs that were up, you would lose against a flush, and so you might not bet against it. That was what he wanted—that is what bluff is."

  "But he did not have a flush," Tushratta protested, almost in a wail.

  "But he seemed to, did he not? Tell me, if you had only had the two pair, what would you have done when he raised?"

  Tushratta pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes. He was silent for almost a full minute. At last he said, very low, "I would have folded."

  Then he did retrieve the chips he had spilled, carefully re-stacked them. "I have had enough poker for today. What will you give me for these? There are many more here than I had yesterday."

  They settled on a hand-held mirror, three butane lighters, and a hatchet. Ramon suspected the latter would be used on skulls, not timber. For the moment, though, Tushratta was anything but warlike. Still in the brown study that had gripped him since he won the hand from Jeffries, he took up his loot and left, talking to himself.

  Castillo did not think he was communing with his mysterious gods; it sounded more like an internal argument. "But he didn't . . . But he seemed to . . . But he didn't . . . Bluff . . ."